A clean energy future hinges on minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements. But the race to secure them puts pressure on the places where they are mined, often affecting communities contributing the least to climate change. With some supply and processing concentrated in just a few countries, these critical raw materials (CRMs) have also become a geopolitical flashpoint.
To secure CRM sources, the United States and European Union are moving supply chains to aligned regions—producing more at home, bringing industries back or moving operations to allied countries. But simply shuffling where minerals are mined does not automatically make extraction more ethical or sustainable.
In a commentary published in January in the journal Nature Energy, researchers propose a new framework of “just-shoring” to shift focus from competition and security to the rights and interests of those whose lands are most at risk.
“Right now, powerful—often Western—governments and firms are attempting to reshape the geographies of supply chains without changing the rules of extraction,” said lead author Jessica DiCarlo, human geographer and political ecologist at the University of Utah. “If we don’t rethink who benefits and who bears the costs, we risk repeating the same injustices of the fossil fuel era under a ‘green’ label.”