Currently, Nova Scotia has eight lithium exploration projects underway, which are part of the province’s strategy for increasing economic and energy security.

Along with developing critical minerals for domestic use, Nova Scotia is seeking export markets “as more companies look for reliable supplies in stable regulatory environments,” a representative of the Department of Natural Resources writes in an email.

Because of its essential role for energy grid storage and electric vehicles, lithium could see global demand skyrocket 1,500% from 2022 under a net-zero 2050 scenario and has strong potential for extraction in Nova Scotia’s southwest and east, according to a 2023 strategy document released by the department.

Natural Resources Canada estimates that battery applications such as EVs and grid storage account for 87% of global lithium demand. According to the Mining Association of Nova Scotia (MANS), lithium mining is important not just for EV batteries and energy storage but also wind turbines and solar panels, and promises more jobs and government revenues to offset health and education costs.

The International Energy Agency projects that the world will need six times more lithium by 2040 than it produced in 2024. That would mean more than 750 kilatonnes. China, Australia and Chile mine about three-quarters globally, with China refining nearly two-thirds.

Nova Scotia has long wanted to join the international market for lithium. Pegmatite, a primary geological source of lithium, was discovered at Yarmouth County’s Brazil Lake in 1960, along with lithium ore spodumene and other critical minerals such as tantalum and rubidium. For decades, Champlain Mineral Ventures Ltd., a private drilling and prospecting company based in Bridgetown, N.S., has explored the site.

John Wightman, a Champlain Mineral Ventures engineer leading the Brazil Lake Lithium Project, selected Australia’s Lithium Springs Limited to drill the site. With $8 million already spent and only a fraction of drilling done, a long road lies ahead to get a mine running, but with the eventual promise of supplying lithium to markets around the world.

Lithium-bearing spodumene concentrate extracted from the Brazil Lake mine would be shipped abroad, to supply lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide, and used by companies such as South Korea’s LG Electronics to produce batteries, Wightman says.

But to first open a lithium mine, “it takes about two-and-a-half years to get the permitting done, and then a year to two years to build out the facilities at the mine to process the ore,” Wightman says. “We’d be very optimistic to say that we could be in operation by 2030, but if the market turns around sufficiently over the next 12 months, we might be close to that.”

Despite the need for lithium to help slash global emissions over the next 25 years, this critical mineral has struggled on the market. In 2023, the price plummeted 32% due to oversupply and weak sales and hasn’t significantly recovered since, though Wightman estimated in September that lithium had rebounded 10 to 15% off August lows.

Minerals are a finite resource, and we should reduce, reuse and recycle them as much as possible.

– Sean Kirby, executive director, Mining Association of Nova Scotia

Wightman anticipates lithium’s value doubling over the next year, bringing more mineral deposits and companies back into the game. Business consulting firm Grand View Research further projects that the global lithium market will see a compound annual growth rate of 18% between 2025 and 2030, reaching US$74.8 billion.

This year saw a “major turnaround” for lithium prospects in Nova Scotia, Wightman says, thanks largely to Premier Tim Houston’s outspoken support for the sector, including at an international mining conference in Toronto in March. Houston has helped put Nova Scotia on the map for the lithium market, Wightman says, and has made it easier for companies to obtain granting approvals from the province.

Still, Champlain Mineral Ventures must raise $25 million more to “move the project to the next level,” which includes conducting mining feasibility studies, analyzing mineral content and cutting into the lithium bed using diamond. He says the Brazil Lake mine, if approved, would create 100 to 200 local jobs.

Mining’s environmental footprint

Many lithium deposits in Nova Scotia lie on farmland, including around Annapolis Royal, and “raise a bit of a red flag,” says Abbygail Lefebvre, energy coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre (EAC). Following a drought spell, record temperatures and strict water limits in the province this summer, “it’s just scary to think that now you’re going to start mining, which does require a lot of water,” she adds.

If mining moves forward at Brazil Lake and other sites, Lefebvre would want to see strict water use and discharge limits, prevention of watershed contamination, land and biodiversity protections, and climate accountability plans.

But the industry is confident that bringing lithium mining to Nova Scotia would be both environmentally and ethically sound. Wightman explains that the pegmatites of lithium “are completely environmentally benign, so there’s no chance of acid rock drainage or other threats to the environment from this type of mining.”

Mining domestically also ensures an ethical supply, MANS executive director Sean Kirby says in an email statement to Corporate Knights. “If we do not extract minerals in places like Canada, more mining will be done in countries that do not share our values, or take proper care of the environment and worker safety,” Kirby says, criticizing Chinese export markets for poor environmental and safety records. “Blocking a mining project in Canada does nothing to protect the environment – it just offshores impacts to a jurisdiction where they will likely be worse.”

But while “modern mining takes excellent care of the environment,” Kirby adds, the industry must keep doing all it can to slash emissions and consumption of energy and water. “All mining operations, for any mineral, need to meet the highest environmental standards.”

Potential for circular economy

As the industry pushes ahead, Lefebvre sees big potential for Nova Scotia to establish battery recycling infrastructure in conjunction with its lithium mining ambitions. “I would hope, too, that even if they decided to break ground, that they would still look into the economic investment and opportunity of getting into the recycling industry,” she says. “This is a circular-economy integration that we could start in the coming years – as soon as you put a facility on the ground, create a bunch of green jobs.”

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Natural Resources Canada deems lithium “infinitely recyclable,” and Kirby echoes the importance of battery recycling, which recovers up to 95% of material, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. “Minerals are a finite resource, and we should reduce, reuse and recycle them as much as possible,” he says. “Lithium batteries are just one example of where society needs to further improve recycling efforts.”

Cirba Solutions, which operates across the United States and in Trail, B.C., reports recycling 36 million pounds of lithium-ion batteries over three decades. In Quebec, Lithion Technologies says it’s slashed average greenhouse gases from battery recycling operations by 75%, using wet shredding technology to salvage 98% of minerals.

In a March 2025 report, EAC said it hopes Nova Scotia’s government will pivot toward battery recycling as the critical-mineral industry grows.

Lefebvre emphasizes that without such facilities anywhere in Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia is well positioned to establish itself as a hub for the battery recycling industry and potentially even manufacture new batteries in province, rather than focus on exploiting raw lithium.

Evert Lindquist reports from Revelstoke, B.C. He has reported in Uganda on nature-based solutions and written for Canada’s National Observer, Climate Stories Atlantic, The Energy Mix and The Narwhal.

The post Lithium is a tough market. Nova Scotia wants in. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“We’re only producing a few commodities,” says Elizabeth Holley, a professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “The question is: What else is in those rocks?”

The answer: a lot.

In a study published today by the journal Science, Holley and her colleagues aimed to quantify what else is in those rocks. They found that, across 70 critical elements at 54 active mines, the potential for recovery is enormous. There is enough lithium in one year of U.S. mine waste, for example, to power 10 million electric vehicles. For manganese, it’s enough for 99 million. Those figures far surpass both U.S. import levels of those elements and current demand for them.

Critical minerals are essential to the production of lithium-ion batteries, solar panels and other low- or zero-carbon technologies powering the clean energy transition. Where the United States gets those minerals has long been a politically fraught topic.

The vast majority of lithium comes from Australia, Chile and China, for example, while cobalt comes predominantly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While securing a domestic supply of rare or critical materials has been a U.S. policy goal for decades, the push has intensified in recent years. Former president Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, included incentives for domestic critical mineral production, and this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking wartime powers that would allow more leasing and extraction on federal lands.

“Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” the order read. “It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”

Trump also made critical minerals a cornerstone of continued support to Ukraine. Meanwhile, China recently expanded export controls on rare earth metals, underscoring the precarious nature of the global market.

Holley’s research indicates that increased domestic by-product recovery could address this instability. Even a 1% recovery rate, it found, would “substantially reduce” import reliance for most elements. Recovering 4% of lithium would completely offset current imports. “We could focus on mines that are already corporate and simply add additional circuits to their process,” Holley says. “It would be a really quick way of bringing a needed mineral into production.”

This latest research is “very valuable,” says Hamidreza Samouei, a professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University who wasn’t involved in the study. He sees it as a great starting point for a multipronged approach to tackling the by-product problem and moving toward a zero-waste system. Other areas that will need attention, he says, include looking beyond discarded rock to the “huge” amounts of water that a mine uses. He also believes that the government should play a more aggressive policy and regulatory role in pushing for critical mineral recovery. “Mining is a very old-fashioned industry,” Samouei says. “Who is going to take the risk?”

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a by-product recovery pilot program, and the Pentagon took a $400-million stake in the operator of the country’s only rare-earth metal mine. At the same time, Congress recently repealed large chunks of the Inflation Reduction Act, which would have driven demand for critical minerals, and has slashed federal funding to the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, among other research arms.

The general thrust of the Science study is “not new,” says Isabel Barton, a professor of geological engineering at the University of Arizona. “It is a very hot topic in mining these days.”

The attention is contributing to a burgeoning shift in thinking, from an intense focus on the target mineral to consideration of what else could be produced, including critical minerals. “There are some that are probably relatively simple. There are others that are heinously difficult to get to,” Barton says, and whether a mineral is recovered will ultimately come down to cost. “Mining companies are there to make a profit.”

Figuring out the most economically viable way forward is exactly the next step Holley hopes this research will inform. By-product potential varies considerably by mine, and the analysis, she says, can help pinpoint where to potentially find which minerals. For instance, the Red Dog mine in Alaska appears to have the largest germanium potential in the country, while nickel could be found at the Stillwater and East Boulder mines in Montana.

“The [research and development] funding on critical minerals has been a little bit of a scattershot,” Holley says. “Our paper allows the development of a strategy.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

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Weeks later, President Donald Trump issued an executive order signalling his administration’s support for seabed mining in both U.S. and international waters, claiming a “core national security and economic interest” in deep-sea resources.

The ISA has yet to make a decision about whether it will allow deep-sea mining or adopt rules to regulate such an industry, and the UN-backed authority is pushing back against the rush to develop the ocean floor. At the close of its latest meeting in July, the ISA launched an official investigation into efforts by deep-sea miners like TMC to circumvent international law.

Deep-sea mining poses profound risks to ocean ecosystems. Prior to the recent ISA assembly meeting in Jamaica, a group of 40 financial institutions representing nearly €4 trillion in assets urged governments to refrain from permitting deep-sea mining until the environmental, social and economic risks are better understood and alternatives have been explored. The statement was coordinated by the Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, whose mission is to reverse nature loss this decade.

Questioning the rationale for seabed mining

Gerard Barron, TMC’s chairman and CEO, has claimed that seabed mining supports the green energy transition, but critics call this greenwashing. The narrative has since shifted toward defense and competition with China.

Also coinciding with the ISA gathering in July, Greenpeace published a new report on the deep-sea mining industry’s efforts to fast-track underwater mineral exploitation, calling the latest push “a lifeline for an industry in crisis” and challenging the national security argument for seabed mining.

“Deep sea mining is not a strategic necessity,” Randy Manner, a retired major general in the U.S. Army, wrote in an introductory letter to the report. “What we are witnessing is not a fact-based response to a military need, but an attempt by private actors to drape a speculative commercial venture in the flag of national defense.”

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In a March 2024 report, the sustainable finance non-profit Planet Tracker found that mining the deep sea would be a financial mistake “due to negative returns on invested capital” given the high operating expenses and liabilities, and that “preserving the planet’s abyssal plains is worth at the very least ten times more than exploiting them.”

TMC has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States for two exploration licences and one commercial-recovery permit in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean.

“The scale of strip mining proposed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is unprecedented. The area under consideration is the size of India,” Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Republic of Palau, said at the ISA assembly. “Is this the legacy we want to leave our children? A lifeless ocean floor stretching across millions of square kilometres, that could have cascading impacts on the entire Pacific ecosystem and beyond?”

Mark Mann is a journalist and editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

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Fast fashion is one of the most polluting industries globally, often relying on synthetic fibres that have an ultimate origin in fossil fuels.

At the same time, the links between corporate fast-food entities and poor health and deteriorating environmental conditions is well established. Likewise, fast technology brands design for obsolescence to boost sales, requiring that more and more mineral wealth is extracted from the ground. Almost all of these activities require mining in some form along the supply chain.

Mining is also increasingly fast, with a focus on the creation of wealth for a select few and meeting global demand, not on the needs of local communities. Since the 1970s, global material footprint has quadrupled. While circular-economy strategies, such as recycling, can play a role in meeting the increasing demand for raw materials, mining cannot be completely offset by recycling alone.

The slow fashion and slow food movements are an antidote to overconsumption, promoting sustainability by emphasizing the value of quality, origin and production. New research suggests that a slow, small-scale mining movement could maintain supply, yield similar sustainability outcomes and provide a range of other benefits.

Out of this earth

The central premise of slow mining is to give control over production levels to those who work at the mine site itself. The concept recognizes that meeting global demands for raw materials requires local solutions and was evolved out of research into small-scale mining in Yukon, Canada. Additional research in Ghana has also shown how slow mining efforts led by small-scale miners can supply vital materials while also taking care of both local communities and environment.

Small-scale mining is the gradual harvest of a resource by a community (known as a rural collective economy) using more bespoke technologies (such as sluicing equipment) that miners are able to purchase – or build – and maintain themselves. Small-scale miners can also be owner-operators of their mines, where they have control over production rates to protect local communities and extend the life-of-mine for continued and secure steady income.

Small-scale mining activities are relatively common throughout the Yukon, where 108 active small- to medium-scale placer mines work to produce around 72,464 crude ounces of gold annually. By comparison, a single large-scale hard-rock gold mine can generate approximately 200,000 ounces annually in the same territory.

Yukon stands out as one of the few active small-scale mining industries in the Global North.

Artisanal and small-scale mining employ more than 40 million people in the Global South. “Slow” small-scale mining operations in Ghana have persisted despite shutdowns by a government that have favoured large, often multinational, mining enterprise under the banner of environmental protection.

Supportive structures

There are significant similarities and differences between the experiences of small-scale miners in Canada and Ghana. Notably, in both the Global North and the Global South, governance and regulation can hinder the existence of smaller mining enterprises.

Important regulatory frameworks, such as the Canadian National Instrument 43-101, are designed to protect markets, not communities or environments. This framework can make it difficult for small-scale mining enterprises to enter the sector. The dominant focus on large mining enterprises, tied to stock markets and globalization, overshadows the potential benefits of small-scale mining.

However, the Yukon government’s Placer Mining Act has helped to incubate and protect small-scale mining. Meanwhile, a floating pool of professionals who work with Yukon mining practitioners to develop place-based solutions that promote positive outcomes for mining practitioners and environment has helped the Yukon become a global leader in slow mining.

The resulting embrace of slow, small-scale mining has enabled rural communities to gradually adapt and grow with the industry. This approach enhances community resilience to boom-and-bust commodity life cycles, facilitates the development of integrated rural value chains and promotes local ownership and management, all of which can curb urban migration and create meaningful work.

Sustainable production-consumption ethos

The insights in small-scale mining from the Yukon have implications for a growing array of globally in-demand mineral and metal resources. Sustainability concepts in the mining industry have advanced toward holistic understanding, rooted in strong sustainability. Mining need not be an inherently colonial activity, and working with Indigenous people and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into the mine life cycle are key to overcoming sustainability challenges.

We need new mining business models anchored in local communities. Modern small-scale mining and switch-on/switch-off mining are being considered in Europe. Artisanal and small-scale mining in medium- and low-income nations produce a significant amount of critical minerals.

Who owns a mine is important, and research has shown that decentralized, locally owned mines positively correlate with high human development index outcomes and can help resist state-corporate mineral ownership.

In Canada, community-owned small-scale mining of critical minerals is economically and socially viable.

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Better alternatives

This comes at an important juncture in the expansion of raw material extraction activities that are needed to sustain the low-carbon transition but can potentially cause excessive stress to the natural environment and communities.

Slow mining illustrates how widespread global consumption is tied to the experience of mining communities, and the expectations of local stakeholders for sustainable livelihoods in sustainable environments.

Alongside slow fashion and slow food, slow mining demonstrates that the responsibility for better environmental and social outcomes lies with both a truly responsible mining industry, and a responsible culture of moderate consumption.

Cassia Johnson is a PhD candidate in earth and environmental sciences; Deborah Johnson is senior lecturer in politics and international relations; and Kathryn Moore is senior lecturer in critical and green technology metals, all at the University of Exeter.

This article first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

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But conservation and financial experts say that conditions of the approval are inadequate to protect the Elk Valley in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, where the company’s mining operations have for decades released high levels of the mineral selenium from waste rock into local waterways, harming fish populations and raising human health concerns.

“Teck is walking away from an unprecedented environmental disaster, with a windfall of billions of dollars,” says Casey Brennan, conservation director with the B.C. environmental group Wildsight. He says the company has been let off the hook for this water pollution by the decision last week by Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne to permit the takeover by Glencore. “It’s a pretty sweet win for Teck to be able to get this approval out of the minister like this with some very limited language that has very unclear legal implications.”

Simon Nicholas, steel industry analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (a global network of energy transition analysts), says it will be difficult for the government to hold Glencore accountable for Teck’s environmental record with its plan to transfer control of the mines to a new coal company. “It’s hard to see this as progress given that Glencore’s intention is to spin off its coal operations,” Nicholas says.

The new company – focusing solely on coal production, in contrast with both Teck and Glencore, which are large diversified mining and metals companies – will face big risks as the world moves away from coal-based steel and power production, raising the possibility it could go out of business before the cleanup costs are met. “There ought to be concerns about whether the new entity will be able to afford long-term rehabilitation,” Nicholas says.

Teck is walking away from an unprecedented environmental disaster, with a windfall of billions of dollars.

– Casey Brennan, Wildsight

The federal approval, announced late last Thursday during a week with major summer holidays in Canada and the United States, was the last hurdle for Glencore and Teck to finalize the deal, expected to close July 11.

Under the approval, Glencore has committed to paying $350 million in rehabilitation and closure activities over five years to reduce selenium pollution in the Elk Valley watershed.

Teck has spent $1.4 billion since 2014 and will spend up to $250 million this year on water treatment. It has also posted a reclamation bond of $1.9 billion with the Government of British Columbia to pay for future environmental liabilities.

According to the B.C. government, Teck’s water treatment facilities are removing only a small fraction of the selenium in the Elk River, especially when spring and summer rains wash large amounts of the mineral into waterways from the man-made mountains of waste rock at the company’s open-pit coal mines. This means that despite Teck’s spending more than $1 billion on water treatment, selenium levels remain more than 200 times higher than what’s considered safe for aquatic life.

Cleanup estimated at $6.4 billion

A consultant commissioned by Wildsight (a conservation organization working extensively in B.C.’s interior) recently estimated the cost of cleaning up the pollution at $6.4 billion, which is almost as high as the total value of the takeover deal at US$6.9 billion.

In his statement announcing approval of the deal, Champagne said Glencore will maintain responsibility for payment of any environmental obligations through to 2050, including if the company is sold to another party. “Glencore’s commitment will result in generational assurance of sound environmental stewardship of the asset, regardless of future ownership,” Champagne said.

Glencore released a list of commitments it is making as conditions of the approval, including promises to maintain Canadian office and staff, donate to community organizations, honour existing agreements between Teck and Indigenous Nations, work with local Indigenous Nations, and increase Indigenous benefits.

The company also pledges to cover Elk Valley environmental obligations over the course of its ownership and potentially beyond. Glencore is committing to obtain prior approval from the minister on a mechanism to cover its obligations if the company is sold, or to continue to stand behind such obligations itself until 2050.

But these assurances don’t satisfy Wildsight, which would have preferred to see upfront reclamation bonds posted in addition to the existing $1.9-billion bond to the provincial B.C. government. “We will continue to press for greater levels of bonding, at least three times higher than what the provincial government is pulling out,” Brennan says. “It really is the only assurance at any level that things will be done and managed properly.”

Brennan says that a decision by the International Joint Commission to investigate pollution in the Elk River watershed could create pressure for a faster cleanup. The issue has become a problem for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden because of objections from the Ktunaxa Nation, an Indigenous community on both sides of the border.

Last week’s decision also contains some stringent guidance on foreign takeovers of critical-minerals businesses, but this was unrelated to the Elk Valley takeover since steelmaking coal is not considered a critical mineral under the new federal rules.

The sale of the Elk Valley mines to Glencore will permit Teck to focus on its copper and critical-minerals businesses which are in high demand with the climate transition, as well as buy back US$2 billion of its own shares. “The large majority of its funds from the sale will be used to buy back shares in order to maximize returns to shareholders and will do nothing for local communities and contaminated waters that they’re leaving behind after billion-dollar profits,” Brennan says.

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

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“Sheer mineral wealth hasn’t always translated into development, particularly for the communities who live next to mines,” said report author Colin Robertson, a senior investigator at Global Witness.

The team investigated mining projects for lithium, an essential mineral in the production of batteries for electric vehicles and power storage, in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Namibia. They highlighted the risk that future mining will “embed corruption, fail to develop local economies, and harm citizens and the environment.”

Last January, residents living near Uis in western Namibia started noticing a daily convoy of trucks leaving an area they believed to simply be an artisanal mining site. The large vehicles were passing through the community on their way to the port of Walvis Bay on the country’s western shore, according to Jimmy Areseb, a community activist. In reality, the trucks were exporting minerals from an extensive operation residents knew little about. In March, people took to the streets to protest the activities of Chinese miner Xinfeng Investments, the owner of the trucks and entity extracting resources, alleging the company was carrying out large-scale industrial mining without the proper permits or social license.

Uis sits at the heart of an area of immense cultural, ecological and economic significance. The mining site falls within the expansive Tsiseb Conservancy, which supports residents through legal wildlife hunting. Ancient rock art believed to be thousands of years old lies a few kilometers from the town of Uis. These rocky outcrops also hold pegmatites, igneous rocks traditionally mined for tin, and, more recently, lithium.

In a petition, some community leaders, including Areseb, alleged that the company didn’t properly consult with community members when it appeared on the scene last year, adding that leaders of the operation bought off local chiefs to obtain permissions for their mining project. Areseb accused the government of “total negligence,” overlooking the interest of ordinary citizens in granting approvals.

Rather than bringing tangible benefits, the mining activity interferes with the breeding of wildlife like springbok, hyenas and rhinos that bring in revenue for the conservancy, he said, adding that they’re scared away by the noise from the mining operation.

“We’re not saying the company must go,” he said, adding the community just wants a seat at the table so that “we can discuss the way forward.”

According to documents reviewed by Mongabay, a Namibian company, Long Fire Investments, owned by businessman January S. Likulano, bought 10 mining claims for around $160 in total to carry out small-scale mining in the region. Only Namibian citizens can apply for small-scale mining permits, which are much cheaper than industrial mining permits issued to foreign companies. The Global Witness report cited ties between Long Fire Investments and Tangshan Xinfeng HongKong Ltd., owner of Xinfeng Investments, as evidence that the Namibian company was a front for Tangshan Xinfeng.

In an export application, Long Fire Investments requested permission to export 55,000 metric tons of lithium-rich ore valued at $32 million to Tangshan Xinfeng. Such a relationship allows the Chinese company to profit from a major lithium deposit for a pittance of its actual value while dodging the need for a proper environmental impact assessment for industrial mining by operating under small-scale mining permits.

“A company is exporting minerals worth millions. The royalty fee they pay our government is only 2%,” 28-year-old Areseb said. “We cannot allow this while the hospitals are falling apart, schools are falling apart, the roads, everything in our country is debilitated.”

An assessment of Namibia’s mining code found that fiscal requirements for foreign companies, including the royalty rate of 2% for industrial mining of minerals, were hurting the government. The policy translates into low upfront revenue for the state, and isn’t designed to bring proportional benefits when the price of minerals like lithium increases on the global market, according to the assessment. Battery-grade lithium carbonate sold at $37,000 per metric ton in 2022 compared to around $6,000 per metric ton in 2012, while the royalty rate has remained unchanged since 2009. Thus, the status quo boosts miners’ profits.

Local communities and Namibian parliamentarians have also accused the company of housing workers in “apartheid conditions” while failing to deliver on promises to build processing facilities within Namibia.

In November, Xinfeng announced that it plans to launch a lithium-processing plant in Namibia in the first quarter of 2024. In an email to Mongabay, a Xinfeng representative declined to comment on the allegations or share documents proving the operation’s legitimacy. Likulano also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In Zimbabwe, another activist, Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, described a similar experience of exclusion and exploitation at the Bikita mine, calling it “typical extractivism.” In January 2022, Sinomine, a Chinese company, purchased Bikita Minerals, which operates the largest lithium mine in the Southern African nation. Following the takeover, its new owners ramped up production from 3,000 to around 10,000 metric tons a month, primarily for export to China and Japan, according to a report in the Reuters.

“The communities watch mineral-laden trucks leaving every day, yet there is no investment in public goods, in health, education, or supporting alternative livelihoods,” Maguwu said. “[The company] are here only to loot. There is no connection with the priorities of the communities they operate in.”

In 2023, following media reports, the Zimbabwean government briefly shut down the mine, citing exploitative labor conditions.

Foreign mining companies aren’t the only ones exploiting the country’s natural resources; “sanctioned local elites” are also profiting, with the complicity of the state at the expense of citizens, according to Global Witness. In Zimbabwe’s Sandawana mine, more than a decade after production of emeralds ceased, a newly coveted mineral was discovered: lithium. Artisanal miners were the first to seize the opportunity, but the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) soon obtained a lease for the mine.

It was set up to allow artisanal miners, who tend to be materially poor, to formally participate in and benefit from the mineral rush. ZMF’s president, Henrietta Rushwaya, is an associate of Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, sharing ties of traditional kinship. An Al Jazeera investigation had previously linked Rushwaya with corruption and money laundering in the gold mining sector. She was convicted and fined for gold smuggling this November. The report cited the involvement of players like Rushwaya as red flags for persistent corruption in the sector.

Political elites swooping in to take advantage of lucrative opportunities is nothing new. The Global Witness report alleges the incident in Zimbabwe came at the cost of the artisanal miners, who pay to be part of the ZMF even though the body doesn’t appear to promote the interests of small miners. They’re paid lower prices for mined ore than before, even as the ZMF strikes profitable deals to export lithium. The federation didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

“Where the nation must benefit, it’s the leaders who are benefiting,” Maguwu said. “It’s daylight robbery of the people of Zimbabwe.” Not only do corrupt leaders corner profits from the trade, they also fail to promote sustainable development that would benefit a broader section of the populace, he said.

One of the ways to prevent exploitation is to shut out companies that “socialize the costs and privatize the profits,” Maguwu said. He described a situation where companies consume community water resources and pollute common water bodies during mining. The costs of these actions are borne by the communities at large, but when it comes to the profits from mineral exploitation, the companies are mainly concerned about compensating their shareholders.

“Currently, there is no competition, so the Chinese just do as they please because they are in bed with the ruling elites,” Maguwu said.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre notes that allegation of human rights violations, environmental harms, and labor abuses are as much present in mining operations linked to Canadian, U.S., U.K., Australian and European companies and investors as Chinese companies.

And, in some cases, competition between corporations can prove detrimental, with protracted battles paralyzing projects. In the DRC, two foreign companies are vying for control of the vast Manono lithium deposit, which could become Africa’s largest lithium mine. The project has been mired in corruption allegations and legal challenges for more than five years now. Australian company AVZ Minerals and Chinese mining behemoth Zijin Mining Group Ltd. are both vying for control of the concession, with a state-owned mining entity, Cominière, involved in alleged suspect dealings with both.

Though the Manono mine has yet to produce any lithium ore, the Global Witness report says the project may have generated about $28 million for shell companies incorporated in tax havens, windfall gains made through sales of mineral rights acquired below market price from government-controlled Cominière. Little of that money has reached either DRC government coffers or the communities living near the deposit.

AVZ did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment, while Zijin Mining denied allegations that it was involved in corrupt dealings with respect to the Manono project.

Despite being aware of the fraught nature of this 21^st-century mineral rush, Maguwu said he remained hopeful that encouraging competition between companies worldwide is the way to ensure better outcomes for Zimbabweans through competition over favorable contracts and standards benefiting the country, with some businesses emerging as models for others.

No matter the ownership of the companies, what both Areseb and Maguwu said would benefit their countries was domestic value addition. Zimbabwe, Namibia and other countries have banned the export of unprocessed lithium, but it remains to be seen whether this leads to the development of domestic processing facilities and related economic benefits for local communities in these producer nations.

In one encouraging sign, Zimbabwe’s mining minister said the country’s earnings from lithium exports shot up from $70 million in the first nine months of 2022 to $209 million in the same period this year. The ban on exports of unprocessed lithium came into force in December 2022. However, export earnings accrue to companies. As long as beneficial ownership remains in the hands of foreign entities, it isn’t clear how much increased export earnings will boost domestic revenues or the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans.

“There’s an increased awareness that African countries have to take a larger share of the value chain as part of a just transition,” Robertson said. “But there’s a big risk that we’ll see more of the same pattern unless real efforts are made to do things differently during this new boom.”

This story was first published on Mongabay. Read the original article here. 

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“Allowing Glencore to take control of Teck’s coal mines could be disastrous,” said Randal Macnair, a conservation coordinator for the B.C. environmental group Wildsight, in a post on the group’s website. 

Wildsight pointed to Glencore’s history as the former owner of the Anaconda Aluminum Company in Montana, now costing the U.S. government tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs. “Money for cleanup must be a top priority before any transfer of ownership takes place,” Macnair said. “Adequate funds must be held to cover the costs of reclamation as well as water quality environmental remediation so Canadian taxpayers aren’t left holding the bill.” 

Wildsight said the deal should not be approved until there is a review by the International Joint Commission (IJC), the binational agency established by the Canadian and U.S. governments to resolve trans-border water issues. 

The group was commenting on last week’s announcement of a US$8.9-billion takeover offer from Glencore – along with partners Nippon Steel of Japan and POSCO steel of South Korea – for the coal operations of Canada’s largest diversified mining company. If approved by the federal government, the deal would give Glencore control of Teck subsidiary Elk Valley Resources, which operates four sprawling open-pit coal mines in the Elk Valley of southeastern B.C. The remaining assets – primarily copper and zinc – will remain with Teck. 

A Glencore spokesperson declined to comment on Wildsight’s suggestion that the takeover should be delayed until the IJC reviews water quality issues. They pointed to a list of commitments made by the company at last week’s announcement, in particular that it will increase research and development activities in Canada by 50% to $150 million, “including on innovation in relation to water quality treatment technologies.” 

The company also says it will maintain a Canadian head office in Vancouver, provide no net reduction in jobs, boost capital expenditures by $2 billion over three years, and increase sponsorship, community and charitable programs. The spokesperson said that Glencore is working cooperatively with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state of Montana and the local community to restore the Anaconda site, which has operated since the 1950s and was acquired by Glencore in 1999. “Glencore will continue to ensure that [the site] has the resources it needs to meet its obligations.”  

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government will “follow our regulatory processes carefully” in an upcoming review of the Teck takeover under the Investment Canada Act, adding that key factors will be jobs, a Canadian headquarters, environmental concerns and the rights of Indigenous people. Freeland also pledged to consult with the B.C. government on the review.  

Teck a global coal supplier  

Teck’s Elk Valley coal mines are the second-largest suppliers of steelmaking coal (also called metallurgical coal) in the seaborne market (coal exported by ships from the producing to the consuming country). In 2022, the company sold 22 million tonnes of coal to steelmakers in China, India and other Asian countries. 

The mines are a major economic driver in southeastern B.C., with 4,000 people employed directly by Teck and an estimated 30,000 jobs indirectly supported by the company. 

The federal government is reviewing the takeover because the Investment Canada Act mandates Ottawa to review significant foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies, and to reject them if they don’t provide “net benefit” to Canada or if they pose national security concerns. Governments have used this power sparingly in the past. The courts have recently challenged Ottawa’s authority to regulate in environmental areas that are also in provincial jurisdiction. This is one of the reasons Freeland signalled that Ottawa will consult with B.C. 

Nevertheless, environmental issues are expected to dominate the year-long review, partly because of the extensive environmental damage that has already occurred in the region, but also because of an agreement reached by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this year to address cross-border water pollution from the mines. 

Significant water-pollution problems have plagued Teck since it acquired its first coal mine in the region more than 30 years ago. The key issue is with selenium, a naturally occurring substance, which runs off the massive rock formations dug out by the company to access the coal beneath. High levels of selenium cause fish to have reproductive problems and physical deformations, leading to a drop in numbers. 

Calcite, which also occurs naturally, is also a problem since it can cement rocks together in stream beds, harming fish and other habitats. “Fish populations have collapsed, municipal and other drinking water wells have been contaminated, and streambeds have been cemented with calcite with no end in sight,” Macnair said.  

Cleanup could be in the billions 

He said Teck has already spent more than $1 billion on water treatment that handles only a small portion of the company’s water pollution. The cost to clean up and treat the water flowing into the Elk River “could easily be more than the $8.9 billion purchase price and will certainly be many multiples of the $150 million commitment to water quality Glencore has announced as part of the deal,” he said. 

In Biden’s visit to Ottawa in March, he and Trudeau agreed in principle to address pollution in the Elk-Kootenay watershed by summer 2023, which has come and gone with no agreement. Subsequently, the Ktunaxa Nation in B.C. and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana proposed that the U.S. and Canadian governments refer the issue to the IJC, a request that has the backing of the U.S. State Department but is opposed by Canada. 

In May, the IJC wrote to Trudeau and Biden saying the matter is becoming urgent. The standard for safe amounts of selenium approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is 0.8 micrograms per litre of water, compared with measurements of 9.46 micrograms per litre in the Elk River in Canada, 4.99 in the trans-border Lake Koocanusa and 1.4 in the Kootenai River in Montana. 

The IJC also said the U.S. government is considering a unilateral request to refer the matter to the commission, which it would act on, but “it is in the best interests of all concerned” if both the Canadian and U.S. governments jointly refer the matter to it. 

Last month, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana set a deadline of November – this month – for a meeting of the U.S. and Canadian governments and the Ktunaxa Nation in Canada to discuss the selenium pollution issue. 

Another potential environmental issue for the federal review is the overall carbon emissions from the coal produced at the mines. According to Teck’s most recent sustainability report, the company emitted 2.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in Scope 1 (direct operating) emissions in 2022. The report also states that in 2021, 29% of these emissions were from methane (a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide that is responsible for roughly 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times). Coal mines are heavy emitters of fugitive methane as coal seams are exposed to the atmosphere. 

In addition to Scope 1 emissions, Scope 3 (end-use) emissions by the company’s steelmaker customers were far higher, at 65 million tonnes. In information released about the deal, the company didn’t cite any plans to deal with the Scope 3 releases, saying only that it will pledge to become net-zero in all three scopes by 2050. Given that it doesn’t control how its coal is consumed by its customers, there’s no clear net-zero path to Scope 3 emissions.  

So while Teck may benefit by ridding itself of coal assets that have fallen out of favour with wary investors so that it can focus on the climate-friendly critical minerals business, the hidden cost of its operations may continue through heavy carbon emissions and polluted waterways under its new owner. That is, unless governments, environmentalists and Indigenous Peoples intervene.    

Eugene Ellmen is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now Responsible Investment Association). He writes on sustainable business and finance. 

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But do not be fooled: geopolitical tectonic shifts are happening here, on the axis of the so-called lithium triangle, where roughly 60% of the green energy transition’s most coveted resource is stored.

Lithium has never been more in demand. The precious metal that powers batteries – everything from cellphones and laptops to solar panels and electric vehicles – is now woven into the tapestry of moves and countermoves by the world’s largest powers, as they acquire supplies and set up production lines.

By some estimates, global demand for lithium will grow 40-fold by 2040, mostly for EVs and renewable-energy storage. As a result, the world’s eyes are fixed on the protagonists of the lithium triangle: Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, whose high-altitude salt-flat brines are estimated to contain 52 million tonnes of lithium.

China, where most of the raw materials for batteries are processed, has already staked a dominant claim in all three countries, investing US$2.7 billion in Argentina alone, where it will produce more than a quarter of that country’s lithium by 2030. Western companies are also playing a growing role, while the United States’ historic climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is sure to spur more action.

As the “white gold” rush ramps up, each lithium-triangle country offers a case study in how, and perhaps how not, to regulate a coveted mineral critical to the green transition, with high stakes all around.

“In theory, we’re doing this for a better environment and a better world, and – in theory – the whole value chain should have that goal in mind,” says Patricia Vásquez, an energy expert and global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “That’s what the energy transition is all about.”

And yet, growing resistance on the ground warns of a clean energy transition that is masking neocolonial practices of extraction and leaving local communities by the wayside.

Lithium, three ways

As far as supply is concerned, there is lots of it. But not all lithium is created equal. The highest quality comes from hard rock, brine or clay. Until now, Australia has been the top lithium producer through its vast hard-rock deposits, followed by Chile, China and Argentina. The lithium in the lithium triangle is found in brine, while Mexico has clay deposits that have not yet been commercially developed. A note about terminology: resources are stockpiles of lithium that have not yet been certified for their viability, while reserves are those that are considered to be market ready.

Within the lithium triangle, Chile has the largest reserves, at 9.2-million tonnes, buried in the Atacama Desert, a mystical place in the north of the country about the size of the state of Colorado. Bolivia has the largest amount of untapped resources.

Bolivia: Playing catch-up

Between the mid-1500s and the early 1800s, a Bolivian mining town nestled into an eroded volcano was the source of 20% of the world’s silver. The precious metals from Cerro Rico – “rich mountain” – gilded Europe and bankrolled Spanish conquests but left scores of Andean people dead or destitute.

In this century, Bolivia has attempted to prevent a repeat of that foreign plundering. Under Evo Morales, a socialist who was the country’s first Indigenous president, a national lithium firm was established in 2017 to control every aspect of the value chain, including extraction, refinement, battery production and electric vehicles. Foreign companies could take part in projects, but the government would call the shots.

Vásquez says that the end result of Bolivia’s state-controlled policy is that “they have produced very little lithium, even though they have the largest resources in the world.” Large collaborations with foreign partners have faltered, and there have been technical challenges. The brine found in Bolivian salt flats has low concentrations of lithium and relatively high impurities such as magnesium, which makes it less profitable and carries other environmental costs.

But the government has stepped up its search for international partners, with President Luis Arce declaring earlier this year the “era of industrialization of Bolivian lithium” in full swing. He signed a US$1-billion agreement with three Chinese companies that will build two lithium-extraction facilities in the Uyuni and Oruro salt flats, in the country’s southwest, with a combined production capacity of 200,000 tonnes per year. In June, the government also inked agreements with a Russian state firm and another Chinese company, Citic Guoan Group.

Argentina: Open for business

Of the three countries, Argentina has been the most eager to get moving on lithium with outside investors. With tax incentives and low royalties, it is promoting an “open for business” stance that is touted by politicians at every level, and private investment has flooded in.

There are a total of 38 lithium projects in Argentina: three are operating as mines, six are under construction, and the remaining 29 are at various stages of exploration. Since 2020, lithium projects in Argentina have generated US$4.2 billion in investments, according to a report from the Wilson Center.

And while Argentina is known for its economic instability, the fact that lithium falls under the jurisdiction of provincial governments has given it the ability to create financial conditions that promise to insulate investors from some of the volatility. Argentina is expected to overtake Chile as the largest lithium producer in the region by 2030.

Chile: A new national plan

Chile is the top global producer of high-quality lithium from brines. In 2022, it accounted for 30% of all the world’s lithium production. But it’s been losing market share, generating anticipation about how it would continue to unlock this mineral resource.

Against this backdrop, Chile’s leftist president, Gabriel Boric, announced a plan this year to do mining differently, creating a new state-owned company to steer the development of lithium, a resource that has been deemed strategic since the 1970s and largely under the control of the government. Until now, Chile has granted permission to only two private lithium projects. Royalty and export prices have been on the higher end of the scale, with a small percentage – as much as 3.5% – set aside as revenue transfer to local Indigenous communities.

Under the new scheme, all new lithium contracts in Chile will be public–private partnerships under state control, and new less-contentious, water-conserving mining techniques will be favoured. While the goal is to increase lithium production by authorizing new licences, the government says it will create a protected area of salt flats that amounts to 30% of their surface area.

“We want Chile to become the world’s leading producer of lithium while protecting the biodiversity of the salt flats,” Boric said at the announcement. “This is the best chance we have at transitioning to a sustainable and developed economy.”

Troubled waters

The conventional method of getting lithium out of the salt flats involves drilling into the crust of the earth and pumping out brine into evaporation pools that are then treated with chemicals. It’s this process that is often depicted in aerial photos of giant phosphorescent squares dotting the desert landscapes of South America. The process was once promoted as inherently more sustainable than the mining of other minerals in the region, but evidence has been mounting around drained water levels in wells, rivers and wetlands, harming wildlife and local communities in a region where water is already scarce.

Mining companies have downplayed the impact of their water extraction because they say that the salty brine is not fit for human or fauna consumption and that their extraction of freshwater is minimal, but local communities that consider themselves guardians of an arid and fragile ecosystem continue to sound alarms.

“In Chile, the big critique is that there have never been proper hydrological studies to map the impact it has had on the water table, because it is so intensive on water use,” says Kirsten Francescone, assistant professor in the International Development Studies program at Trent University and former Latin America program coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.

In Argentina’s Catamarca Province, for example, small Indigenous communities in Antofagasta de la Sierra, where American mining giant Livent has been running its Fenix lithium mine for more than two decades, say a river has dried up because of overuse of water, and sheep and llamas have perished. Livent announced this year that it would expand its lithium plant, tripling production to 60,000 tonnes by 2025.

It’s often Indigenous communities that bear the brunt of the local impact because the mining occurs in territory where they live, eking out a meagre existence as farmers. Those same communities are at the forefront of protests, road blockades, lawsuits and investigations that seek to thwart lithium projects in all three countries on environmental or economic grounds.

In Bolivia in 2019, authorities cancelled a German lithium project by ACI Systems Alemania that would have secured the mineral for Germany’s electric car industry following weeks of demonstrations by residents of Potosí, who said there wasn’t enough local benefit in the deal. In Chile, Indigenous communities such as the Coyo and the Atacameña de Camar managed to block lithium mining contracts after a court ruled last year that they were not properly consulted, as is required by law. And in Argentina, a caravan of Indigenous land defenders set up camp in a plaza in front of the country’s Supreme Court, in Buenos Aires, after a violent crackdown against demonstrators opposing a law that restricted their right to protest in the northern province of Jujuy.

“We should be in the mountains with our sheep,” said Salustriana Geronimo, a grandmother, sitting inside the small makeshift hut she had crafted out of tarp. “We’re not going to allow them to just do what they want.”

Although mining companies tout the local benefits they bring to communities that are often lacking in basic infrastructure, and governments trumpet more jobs, the feeling on the ground for many is that they remain impoverished as others become wealthy. So far, being part of the green energy transition has yet to meaningfully change that.

“Mining always produces winners and losers, and mining companies feed off of those divisions,” says Francescone, who doesn’t see the fundamentals of how the industry operates changing under the lithium paradigm. “What’s different about lithium mining is the buzz and the almost false hope,” she adds. “It’s very easy to tell a story that makes people feel good about it because of what the metal does. But unfortunately, we are in a moment where more mining in general, because of the climate crisis, is going to make the ecological pressures on mining regions even more salient.”

But others insist there are ways to mitigate the damage and push toward a more equitable lithium industry. A 2022 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) laid out more than half a dozen recommendations it said “could help heal the ‘exhausted’ Puna de Atacama region without impeding the transition to a cleaner future for the planet.” In addition to strengthening environmental standards, boosting metal recycling and bringing in a moratorium on brine evaporation, it called on governments to go beyond revenue-sharing models with local and Indigenous communities: “While the existing benefit-sharing agreements in this region may offer a foundation for industry partnerships with communities, these agreements have thus far formalized conflict.” Advocates say that obtaining free, prior and informed consent for the use of land territory and resources from Indigenous Peoples (as Bolivia, Chile and Argentina all committed to doing when they ratified the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) is essential for governments and companies wanting to operate sustainably and equitably – and run into less resistance.

Chile’s new lithium strategy calls for more dialogue with Indigenous communities. The Chilean government also says it will favour projects that use a new technology that extracts lithium without relying on the traditional – and environmentally contentious – evaporation process, thus reducing the amount of water that is required in an area as arid as the Atacama Desert.

“Direct lithium extraction,” using adsorption, ion exchange and other electrochemical processes, can remove lithium ions from brine water in hours, rather than months. “It reduces the times and tightens the production, like a clock, giving you a different predictability in terms of the output,” says Victor Delbuono, an economist who specializes in natural resources with Argentine NGO Fundar. Since it may rely on solar panels, rather than the sun, in the extraction process, it also requires an additional investment in renewables, he notes.

The technology will be used by some of the new Bolivian projects and has already been incorporated into one stage of Livent’s process in Argentina. The NRDC also points to the extraction of lithium from brines at geothermal power plants, a method being developed in California, Germany and England, which proponents suggest could be more sustainable.

The efforts by the Chilean government to overhaul its approach to lithium were welcomed by a wide swath of local communities, activists, environmentalists and NGOs, who nonetheless voiced several concerns, in particular that they were not consulted about the new strategy and that some of the processes appear to emulate those used by the mining industry. A statement signed by 173 individuals, organizations and Indigenous communities also described the pursuit of EVs as a “false solution to climate change that benefits the most contaminating economies on the planet, reproducing highly demanding modes of consumption to the detriment of serious climate commitments.”

Can these countries use the green revolution to break free of a pattern that dates to colonial times – that of foreign interests extracting riches and leaving little behind? Or will the green revolution further entrench it?

Whatever the approach from each country, Delbuono, the Argentine economist, says the region’s central role will not last forever.

“We’re already working on sodium batteries,” he says. “The window is small for technology.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and associate editor at Corporate Knights

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Cobre Panamá – the country’s only active mine – has been operating in a 12-hectare area of jungle within a protected park in the coastal Donoso region, digging up 1.5% of the world’s copper. The contract has come under intense scrutiny because of the unprecedented legal powers it was slated to grant to its owner, Vancouver-headquartered First Quantum Minerals, for a mine already plagued by environmental concerns.  

With demand for copper booming amid the global energy transition, the government of Panama has pinned its hopes on expanding its mining sector, arguing that the deal, the largest private sector ever in the country, will, as President Laurentino Cortizo tweeted, “significantly improve the lives of millions of Panamanians.”   

But it has been deeply contentious. In September, following heavy protests in front of the National Assembly in Panama City and under threat of a lawsuit from the Panamanian Association of Constitutional Law, the government went back to negotiations with First Quantum and removed controversial clauses related to airspace rights and forced expropriation. The new contract was approved by the Congress and signed off by the president on October 20. Protests have since expanded throughout the country, resulting in violent crackdowns by police and the suspension of all classes for several days because of the social unrest.

The First Quantum case is a new chapter in Panama’s combative relationship with mining. The country has massive copper reserves, including one of the world’s biggest undeveloped copper deposits in Cerro Colorado. But out of 15 approved mining projects, First Quantum is the only one that has remained operational, despite resistance from residents, who consider mining to be a threat to their water sources and local economies. “What is at stake is the territorial development model of the country,” says Raisa Banfield, president of the non-profit Panamá Sostenible and a former vice-mayor of Panama City.  

Colonial powers? 

 The approved contract gives First Quantum’s local subsidary, Minera Panama, rights to the territory in question for 20 years, with the option to renew for 20 more. In exchange for pouring US $375 million in royalties into Panamanian coffers – a 10-fold increase from the previously negotiated deal – the contract exempts the company from paying import and export taxes. 

In its previous iteration, the contract would have expanded the concession area by 5,000 hectares; forced the state to approve concessions of future mines to the company’s affiliates without a public tender; allowed processing, refining and other essential mining activities outside the concession zone; and forced the government to expropriate private lands at First Quantum’s behest. Those clauses have been removed.  

The mine’s first contract was signed in 1997 under then-owner Petaquilla Gold and was declared unconstitutional in 2017 by the Supreme Court. First Quantum acquired the mine in 2013.  But even without a contract, operations have continued. “Cobre Panamá remains operational, with over 7,000 active employees,” says Keith Green, First Quantum’s manager in Panama. 

Lawyer Publio Cortés, a former Panama vice-minister of finance, says that “the company was operating totally illegally.” Cortés, an opponent of the new contract, accused First Quantum of betting on a strategy of fait accompli since 2017. “It is a fact that the contract created a colonial enclave,” he says. “This brings back an unpleasant memory for Panamanians, because for almost a century we had a colonial enclave of the United States of America in the territories adjacent to the Panama Canal.”  

Transparency issues  

The hermetic negotiations between Panama’s government and First Quantum have been criticized for their lack of transparency.  

Under the Escazú Agreement for environmental justice, which Panama cosigned in September 2018, with 14 other Latin American, governments are required to hold binding public participation sessions as part of their decision-making processes on projects that have the potential to be environmentally damaging, as well as ensure easy access to information about those projects. The Panamanian government says they have complied with the agreement, but critics disagree.  

“There wasn’t any public information during negotiations until the release of the contract,” says investigative journalist Rekha Chandiramani.  

An online public consultation was held in April, but participants had to make a decision about the 55-page contract on the spot. The consultation was non-binding, meaning it would have no impact on the final decision. “Who participates in something when you know beforehand it’s going to be a waste of time?,” asked Chandiramani.  

Has the mine fared well in Panama? 

Proponents of the mine tout it as sustainable, with Green pointing to environmental and social projects, as well as its use of “cutting edge technology.”  

“We collect and store 99% of rainwater in large ponds, taking advantage of the high rainfall in the Donoso area,” he says. “For over 10 years, we’ve invested over US$105 million in social programs for communities near to the mine. We’ve built highways, bridges and electrical networks. Our scholarship program brings opportunities to thousands of youths. We have also promoted personal gardens and helped the formation of small coffee producers.” 

Cobre Panama says it is implementing a “climate change mitigation strategy” to reduce greenhouse gases in its facility by 30% by 2025, and by 50% by 2030.  

 ”As a responsible mining company, we recognize our obligation to contribute to managing and mitigating climate change. Part of our contribution is partly through the acquisition and use of the best available technology to reduce and even eliminate – as in this case – emissions of gases,” Green said in a press release that announced the company’s acquisition of a Swedish-made drill rig that would help it reach its targets.  

But Banfield says the social responsibility attributes can’t mask the environmental footprint of the operations. “You have to destroy in order to extract mineral particles from big amounts of rock,” she says. “How can that be sustainable? You could even argue for an underground mine, but an open pit just grows like a cancer.”  

Since 2022, Panama’s Ministry of Environment has received reports of 200 irregularities related to existing operations. A nearby community reported colour changes in the water of a ravine essential for their basic needs. The water had turned “dark, white and milky.” A year earlier, more than 40 big bags filled with chemicals used to separate minerals were found near another ravine. First Quantum has reportedly been discharging waste in natural water bodies without permission from the ministry. Other irregularities include the unauthorized deforestation of more than 870 hectares ​​by the mine and failure to reforest an agreed-upon 1,300 hectares. “A finding doesn’t imply a breach or a damage to the environment or public health,” Green​ says, referring to this report.  

Of 15 open-pit metallic mining concessions in the country, Cobre Panamá is the only one currently operational. The other 14 have been suspended because of protests by local communities. Cortés, the former vice-minister, worried that approval of the other projects would carve the country up in a way that impeded other sorts of investment. “It will leave the territory of this small country like Gruyère cheese, with no development opportunities other than mining.”  

Tourism, agriculture and the Panama Canal are among Panama’s biggest money earners, all of which would be affected by open-pit mining. Environmental advocates say mining’s heavy water consumption would threaten rice production and livestock farming, essential industries already suffering from water scarcity. The same crisis is affecting the Panama Canal, which has led to a slowdown of world commerce. The contract’s previous iteration would have had natural water sources originally destined for the canal going to the mine, but the latest revisions in the contract stated that the canal would have priority access.  

The mine represents almost 5% of Panama’s gross domestic product, but critics say it has contributed little to the country fiscally. “Cobre Panamá has made over US$3.5 billion since it started operations in 2019,” says economist Felipe Argote, “yet it hasn’t paid a penny on income taxes. Had it paid what it does in Africa, it would have been over $500 million.” According to its shareholder reports for 2021 and 2022, Cobre Panamá was the only First Quantum project to not pay any income taxes. First Quantum operates eight mines around the world, but the project in Panama alone represents 38.8% of its income, according to Green. 

Is copper mining necessary in a country like Panama?  

Cortés believes Panama is too small of a territory to withstand open-pit metal mining, especially in the rainforest. And he sees the decision to proceed as setting a risky precedent.  

“The state should nationalize the mine and calculate if it’s worth producing, or if it’s too much destruction,” Argote says. Cortés and others have proposed that the debate be moved to a national referendum: “It should be defined if the country wants to be a mining country or not. The change in Panama’s development model is so transcendental that this issue should go to a referendum, as was done recently in Ecuador.”  

Many of the project’s previous opponents in Congress have now approved the revised bill, 44 to 5, with two abstentions. But public opposition has remained strong, with protests staged in front of the president’s residence and his party headquarters. Independent presidential candidate Ricardo Lombana, a centrist, posted on X: “Traitors. Let’s take the street to show them they don’t own the country.” 

If citizen pressure were to cause the cancellation of the recently approved contract, Panama may have to plead its case in international tribunals. First Quantum notified the government of its intent to initiate arbitration under the Canada-Panama Free Trade Agreement in 2022, during the contract’s negotiation process. “The company must protect the interests of its shareholders,” says Green. “There is a clear lack of knowledge of the importance of copper for the energy transition. Minerals have been a fundamental part of the development of humanity and will continue to be so in the coming years.” 

Octavio García Soto is a Panamanian-Chilean journalist.

The post Why this Canadian-owned copper mine is facing fierce opposition in Panama​​ appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With a takeover lurking in the wings, the company must now figure out how to transition out of its 20-million-tonnes-a-year coal business. 

The proposed takeover of Vancouver-based Teck, a company recognized as a sustainability leader, by Swiss mining giant Glencore PLC, a company saddled with a history of human rights, bribery and environmental problems, has attracted the attention of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The government is looking at the deal “very, very carefully,” he told Bloomberg last week.  

“We have high and stringent expectations, not just on environmental issues but on partnership with Indigenous Peoples,” he said. 

At stake in the takeover battle is control of Teck’s copper and other mineral operations that are critical for the global climate transition. Demand for copper, essential for electricity-based infrastructure such as wind turbines, solar panels and power grids, is expected to skyrocket in the shift away from fossil fuels. 

But Teck’s board rebuffed Glencore’s US$23-billion merger offer and pledged to move forward with a previously announced plan to split the company into two separate entities, one focused on its critical mineral assets and the other on its steelmaking coal field in Elk Valley, B.C. The move would have insulated Teck from the negative environmental effects of its coal arm while still allowing it to reap millions in revenue to finance expansion of its green metals business.  

Ultimately, Teck failed to receive enough shareholder support for the split in a vote last week and withdrew its proposal. Glencore then said it would be willing to consider a better takeover offer, threatening to make a hostile bid direct to investors if the board refused to negotiate.  

For now, the dispute rests with the Teck board. 

Coal mines a big CO2 emitter

The biggest issue Teck will have to grapple with, regardless of whether it stays independent of Glencore, is the future of its coalfield in the Rocky Mountains of southeastern B.C. The field is made up of four sprawling open-pit mines producing metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel. 

The coal mines make Teck the second-largest ship-based exporter of metallurgical coal in the world. In 2022, Teck produced 21.5 million tonnes of coal, generating more than $10 billion of the company’s $17.3 billion in revenue. The majority of the coal is shipped from B.C. ports to steel companies in China, India and other Asian countries.  

According to Teck’s sustainability report, the Elk Valley operations emitted 2.85 million tonnes of greenhouse gas in 2022 in direct (Scope 1 and 2) emissions (0.4% of all reported emissions in Canada). When it’s burned to make steel, the total lifecycle emissions from Teck’s coal add up to 65 million tonnes per year — the equivalent of a tenth of Canada’s total emissions. (Most of these emissions don’t officially count against Canada’s greenhouse gas inventory – under international accounting rules, they count in the countries where the coal is consumed.)

 In addition to their heavy CO2 footprint, the Elk Valley mines are under provincial orders to manage the tough environmental problem of selenium leaching into local waterways. High levels of selenium, a naturally occurring substance, have damaged fish populations by lowering their reproductive success. Selenium levels are elevated by rain and snow runoff from large piles of rock moved from mountaintops at the open-pit mines, which makes the substance difficult to control. 

Teck recently spent $1.2 billion to remove selenium from its runoff, but heavy levels remain in the region’s waterways. According to an investigation by The Narwhal, there are no viable ways to stop selenium from leaching into local waters. 

In the vote last week, Teck received more than 50% support for its proposal to split the coal and critical minerals assets, but it failed to receive the necessary votes for it to be approved. (The move required the support of two-thirds of Class A and B shareholders.) 

Under the proposed arrangement (which has now been withdrawn), the coal assets would have been turned over to a new company, Elk Valley Resources, which would have paid Teck 90% of its cash flow for up to 11 years. Under the deal, Teck would no longer be responsible for the company’s CO2 and selenium emissions, and yet it would still benefit by taking on billions of dollars in Elk Valley revenue, which would be invested in Teck’s remaining copper and critical mineral operations. 

Why investors rejected Teck Resource’s proposal

Writing before last week’s vote, Globe and Mail columnist Eric Reguly didn’t mince words, calling the proposal to split the company blatant greenwashing. 

“Teck unveiled a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too deal that makes a mockery of the environmental, social and corporate governance [ESG] strategy that had been pushing the resource industry to get rid of its dirtiest products,” he wrote. 

Teck recognizes that investors are turning away from coal because of its climate impact. Thermal coal – the kind mined by Glencore – used for electricity generation is the main culprit, but metallurgical coal is also targeted, albeit to a lesser extent, as the global steel industry begins to embrace green steelmaking. 

U.S. steelmakers already primarily use scrap rather than iron for their feedstock, which avoids the need to use coal. In Canada, Algoma and ArcelorMittal Dofasco are phasing out their coal-burning blast furnaces, while many European producers are going a step further and switching to emission-free hydrogen-based production. 

So where does this leave Teck? 

George Cheveley, portfolio manager at London-based asset manager Ninety One, told Reuters that Teck needs to develop a clear transition plan for Elk Valley. “This needs to be a credible plan as well and, whilst it can be longer term, it needs to demonstrate how they can support decarbonization.” 

The failure of the plan to divide the company may open the door to Glencore’s takeover, but it’s also clear that the government – which holds the power to reject takeover deals under the Investment Canada Act – is looking for strong environmental and Indigenous community benefits. Teck is the major employer in the Elk Valley region, with thousands of people on its direct payroll and thousands of spinoff jobs dependent on its mines. It also provides major benefits to the Ktunaxa Nation, which has an impact management agreement with Teck, one of the most comprehensive Indigenous benefit agreements in Canada.  

The major challenge that Teck now faces is how to transition out of its Elk Valley mines while also maintaining support for its local communities. It’s in uncharted territory. Phasing out an operation responsible for the bulk of a company’s profit is something that no management group wants to contemplate. 

In spite of its climate and environmental problems, Teck is considered an ESG leader in the mining industry in part because of its transparency. Now it faces the greatest ESG challenge of all – shifting from a coal company to a business focused on the climate transition. 

Eugene Ellmen is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now Responsible Investment Association). He writes on sustainable business and finance. 

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