Digging Deeper An Introduction

We must urgently phase out fossil fuels and reshape the global economy to deliver climate justice. But shifting to renewable energy sources will likely require significant amounts of new materials, a fact that mining companies are exploiting and exaggerating to drive their own profits. From lithium to niobium, a new wave of mining is taking off, driven by projections (or speculation) of increased demand for these minerals. As social movements fighting for a social-ecological transformation, how can we deal with this apparent tension? What is the real relationship between climate action and mining? How much new mining today is really linked to a green transition? Could a different kind of transition reduce or eliminate the need to mine new materials? What does it mean to view mining within the lens of transformational just transitions, and how can we fight for just outcomes for frontline, fenceline, rural, indigenous and other affected communities, and the planet? Is ‘just’ mining possible at all, and, if so, what kinds of campaigns or demands might help to create the right conditions? What are the key demands of workers and communities affected by mining? What kinds of democratic tools, structures or processes are needed to negotiate tensions between them? This interview series with activists and activist-scholars aims to explore these questions, and to foreground the bold solutions that diverse movements are already building.

Mining is a phenomenally destructive business, rife with conflict and human rights abuses. Global Witness has documented more than 345 murders of land and environmental defenders fighting mining since 2012. The EJAtlas documents more than 790 current environmental justice conflicts linked to ‘mineral ores and building materials extraction’. In the words of Thea Riofrancos, ‘when we talk about expanding mining without governance reform, we are talking about expanding death’. And yet, many renewable technologies, including electric vehicles, batteries, photovoltaic solar panels, and wind turbines, to say nothing of the expanded and modernised electric grids needed to deal with renewable energy, rely on new minerals and metals. On this basis, the mining industry predicts skyrocketing demand for materials like lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, graphite, and rare earth elements.

Responding to their own vision of how a transition might take place, corporations, investors and Northern countries are taking aggressive steps to ensure access to these raw materials. They seem bent on using this moment of crisis to reinforce colonialist and imperialist patterns that have seen countries in the Global South, and poor, working class, rural, racialised, marginalised or otherwise peripheral communities, bear the costs of extraction while the benefits are mainly concentrated in Northern countries, wealthy enclaves and with national elites in the Global North and South. TNI has extensively documented these new extractivist dynamics, and social movements’ resistance to them. But the picture is complex. Some countries see the new mineral wealth within their borders as an opportunity to diversify, industrialise or ‘develop’ their economies; to invest in under-resourced public services; and to gain a stronger negotiating position with powerful countries. In this context, the role of China is especially complex. China’s early development of the technology and supply chains to extract ‘rare earth elements’ and its dominance in other ‘critical’ supply chains has triggered a dramatic shift in the way that Europe and North American countries think about these resources, driven by a fear of China’s growing control of supply chains. For countries in the Global South, and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, this creates risks and opportunities, and countries are exploring how these rivalries might create space for less economically powerful countries to maneuver.  

At the same time, social movements have also been struggling to define what kind of transition needs to take place – away from what, towards what, led by whom? The term ‘just transition’ was born out of labour and environmental justice movements, and more radical proposals for genuinely just transitions are still being advanced by these and other movements. These proposals take seriously questions of ‘energy for what and for whom’, and aim at transformation away from extractivism and exploitation, toward social and environmental justice. However, thus far, the question of whether, how and to what extent mining is needed to carry forward this kind of social-ecological transformation has received less attention. There is an urgent need for strong, coherent and transformational proposals, backed by broad coalitions of progressive movements, if we are to have any hope for a less brutal, violent and destructive mining in the future. This series hopes to make a modest contribution to the conversations that are building these critical proposals and alliances by digging into the complex relationship between mining and just transition.

The interviewers had the privilege of speaking with experts from a variety of fields to better understand the situation, and to explore real solutions for transformation away from imperialism, capitalism and climate destruction. But, we share these interviews in the spirit of starting a conversation, not ending one. Around the world thousands of movements and millions of creative and powerful activists and thinkers are working on questions related to the intersection of mining with climate and environmental justice. We hope that this dossier provides an orientation for newcomers to the topic, and that diverse participation means there are new insights – even for seasoned activists and experts. At the same time, we are keenly aware of the many voices missing here. While we spoke with activists and activist scholars from every continent, from a variety of movements and with many different backgrounds, there were many more who we wanted to speak to and were unable to in the time available. Therefore, these conversations are far from exhaustive. As we continue to work on these questions, we hope to connect with many more. But, thus far, a number of themes, or observations about the current situation, emerged repeatedly:

So-called ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ mining is not sufficient to address the many and multi-dimensional problems with mining, and is much more likely to lead to increased greenwashing. This is doubly true where standards rely on self-regulation by the mining industry, and is also true of industry-defined corporate social responsibility or human rights standards. Not only do these legitimise continued extraction but they allow companies to profit further by marketing as ‘value added’ what ought to be basic requirements for doing business, always and anywhere. Instead, we need solutions that fundamentally transform power and economic structures, and which address environmental and social harms that extend far beyond the mining site.

Industry and government projections of the need for new mining are often inflated. Massive speculation is occurring in mining today, and many predictions about future demand are based on flawed assumptions, for instance in assuming that mobility must be provided primarily by private car ownership. Such speculation has real consequences for people on the ground, affecting national policies and corporate decisions, as well as the choices of people in rural communities. In reality, changing the way we use minerals can dramatically reduce the amount of mining required, and mining on the basis of inflated projections risks creating self-fulfilling prophecies as markets are flooded with temporarily-cheap materials obtained at enormous social and ecological cost. At the same time, while new waves of extraction are being justified by the demands of the green transition, many of these minerals are also or primarily used for military and defense purposes, and included in government lists of critical minerals through corporate lobbying by these sectors.

Collective action can dramatically impact the amount of minerals needed for the energy transition. A wide range of different proposals can help reduce the tension between reducing emissions and reducing mining. Movements and campaigns focusing on a raw material transition emphasise the need to re-think the way we extract, process and use minerals, particularly in industrialised economies. Recycling of many metals and minerals can never reach 100%, meaning it is critical to focus on different ways to reduce overall consumption. This may include reducing individual consumption for the richest consumers, but, more significantly it involves rethinking the way we produce and consume as a society. Shifting from private electric vehicles to robust public transport; rethinking product design to make parts repairable, replacable, or reusable; making companies accountable for the whole lifecycle of products (e.g. for their repair and safe disposal); banning planned obsolescence and increasing the lifespan of products can all play a part in reducing total demand for materials. At the same time, reducing primary mining may make recycling more economically viable. Building more regional circular economy structures can help Southern countries to develop their own green economies rather than relying on low value extraction for export.

The costs and benefits of mining are unevenly distributed within and between countries. As racial and environmental justice movements have long identified, extractive industries tend to shift environmental harms on to some people (predominantly rural, indigenous, racialised, female, poor or otherwise marginalised), while others (usually rich, white, urban, Northern) tend to benefit. This process occurs at every level, and is actively maintained by trade and economic policies. Rich, industrialised and Northern countries are maneuvering to ensure they benefit from extractivism and Southern countries often bear the brunt. Within both Northern and Southern countries, powerful actors, companies, investors and elites benefit. Meanwhile marginalised people, particularly women and working people, bear the brunt of extraction. They face oppression, violence, and loss of territories and rights to self-determination; work in mines under appalling conditions; and rarely see benefits of extraction in the form of reinvestment in communities or public services. Making mining more just therefore involves contesting power structures, including through building coalitions and solidarity between people who suffer in different ways from the negative impacts of mining, at every link of the supply chain.

Some countries and communities see mining as a way to develop their economies – industrialising or using the wealth generated for other social purposes – and to push back against imperialism and colonialism. A new geography of resources will create new winners and losers. Some countries in the Global South are preparing new national policies in an effort to capitalise on these resources. For example, countries like Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Chile and Mexico are, in different ways, nationalising industries or restricting exports of raw materials in order to ‘move up the value chain’ by processing resources locally. These moves are motivated by a vision of increasing economic autonomy and negotiating a better position within international hierarchies, and sometimes by an intention to invest these new resources in public services and other public goods (although history shows this does not always happen). In a similar way, frontline or affected communities may themselves be divided about whether to block mining altogether or to attempt to negotiate a more equal share of benefits from investments, and more control over the ways in which mining takes place. Corporations exploit this to divide communities and weaken social forces. But this discussion about whether mining can deliver benefits that outweigh or offset its environmental, social and human rights harms, and what kind of redistribution of power would make that possible, is alive at many levels and in many spaces.

Mining looks very different in different places, with different impacts. In some communities around the world there are long traditions of ‘artisanal small-scale mining’ (ASM), which may be part of traditional indigenous livelihoods and even offer ways to reclaim traditional territories. But the pressures of the new mineral rush are also transforming these livelihoods, bringing new pressures and threats. ASM practices are often connected to the same supply chains that benefit large companies and local, national and global elites. A significant percentage of the world’s minerals come from such informal extraction, but commodity markets obscure this entirely. Once minerals are processed and enter the industrial supply chain they bear no trace of their origins, good or bad. Furthermore, traditional, artisanal, and small-scale mining can be just as dangerous and destructive as large-scale corporate mining – or even more so as labour, safety and other standards may be even more laxly enforced than in industrial mines. Nonetheless, traditional and artisanal mining communities can offer a vision of a different kind of mining, with potentially very different costs and benefits. Are there conditions under which this form of mining might offer real livelihood options, controlled by local democratic institutions, and protecting rather than destroying peoples’ access to and control of land and resources?

Many of the harms of mining result from the unjust, colonialist, imperialist global economic order in which it is embedded. To have any chance at mining in a less unjust, less destructive way, we need to transform this system. The conversation around a just transition – including the role of mining in it – offers the opportunity to return to what Fadhel Kaboub describes as ‘the unfinished work of decolonisation’, working simultaneously to decarbonise, deprivatise and decolonise our economies. While this will require action from the countries of the Global North – cancellation of odious debt, payment of climate reparations, rolling back unjust trade laws, genuinely committing to technology transfer, and more – interviewees emphasised that this does not mean that this transformation needs to be led by historically colonising countries. Instead, countries of the Global South are experimenting with new ways to control their own resources, leverage new mineral wealth, and form coalitions to transform the global economic system. In the words of Kennedy Manduna, ‘In Africa, the narrative is: ‘we first need to recenter African agency.’ At the same time it’s critical to explore the ways that solidarity between transnational social movements can push governments in the North ‘to do something different around industrial policy, and the architecture of trade and finance’. Solidarity and collective programmes for transformation are needed, for the protection of activists and environmental human rights defenders, as well as to move towards the kind of financial and economic system that would be necessary to enable less extractive and less destructive mining.

The democratisation of decision-making around mining, including by workers and communities, is fundamental to creating the possibility of just transitions. At every scale the possibility for just mining depends on creating and defending robust democratic mechanisms to ensure that questions like ‘how much is mined?’ and ‘where?’  and ‘how?’ are made collectively and democratically. In the words of Thea Riofrancos, ‘Even in a just society, choices have to be made through democratic contestations’. However, in many contexts today, this is not the case. States are instead working in close alliance with corporations and against the needs, interests and human rights of their people. Interviewees shared many examples of real-life struggles for democratic control of decision-making – from defending communities’ ‘right to say no’ to labour-union driven social dialogue approaches, and from democratic federalism to community councils. In many cases, concrete instruments, mechanisms, or legal tools are proposed which offer possible spaces for complex negotiations between different actors with different interests to take place, in a way that prioritises the rights of working people and affected communities. However, as Maxine Bezuidenhout emphasised, ‘the law doesn't compensate for organisation and mobilisation on the ground’ . There is no mechanism, regulation, or law that will, on its own, deliver just outcomes. No law is self-implementing. Rather, as was evident throughout all these discussions, we are dealing with processes of social and political struggle to define a collective future. Any governance mechanism for mining can only make it easier – or harder – to achieve just and democratic outcomes. The outcomes of these struggles will be defined, to a large degree, by the extent to which movements can form effective alliances to advance shared visions of a better future for working people and affected communities.

There are concrete proposals that diverse movements from different countries can come together behind, but these proposals and the popular power behind them are still developing. Interviewees shared countless examples of work being done to bridge gaps between movements and articulate common demands. From developing regional circular economy initiatives to pan-African industrial policies, from land reform and struggles for territorial recognition, and creating new mechanisms for genuine democratic engagement by rural working people, it’s clear that situating mining within a just transition means tackling struggles that extend beyond the mining site. While the lives and struggles of frontline and fenceline communities and people working in mines are critical, systemic problems will not be solved with local solutions alone. Rather, wider coalitions, new ways of organising, and powerful convergences of many different people’s movements will be needed to bring about the necessary profound transformations. These coalitions are already being built.

Global movements and their activist-scholar allies are working to articulate concrete proposals and demands that have the potential to deliver (more) just, sustainable and democratic approaches to mining. No single intervention will be sufficient, and no single movement can bring about transformation on its own. We share here some of the different proposals brought forward by interviewees, from their diverse contexts and perspectives, in the hope that some may provide inspiration for wider programmes that movements in other contexts might elaborate. There is an urgent need to explore these more deeply and develop them more completely. Many of those interviewed are doing just that.