Canada Nickel Company expects to reach a final investment decision early in 2026 on a sprawling, low-emissions nickel mine and refinery near Timmins, Ontario, subject to permit approval and some government financial support.

The nickel is found in ultramafic rock, which can absorb carbon dioxide through a chemical process that stores it in carbonate form. The Canada Nickel refinery would create a concentrated stream of the carbon dioxide that would be more efficiently captured by the rocks. It can also use biochar – a by-product of forestry material – to replace coke or coal and reduce emissions in the processing.

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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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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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Top of mind for many scientists and politicians is what ramifications deep-sea mining might have on fragile marine ecosystems, including those far from the mining site. At the heart of the debate is concern about the clouds of sediment that can be kicked up by mining equipment.

“Imagine a car driving on a dusty road, and the plume of dust that balloons behind the car,” says Henko de Stigter, a marine geologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. “This is how sediment plumes will form in the seabed.”

Scientists estimate that each full-scale deep-sea mining operation could produce up to 500 million cubic meters of discharge over a 30-year period. That’s roughly 1,000 six-meter-long shipping containers full of sediment being discharged into the deep every day, spawning from a field of mining sites spread out over an area roughly the size of Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Germany.

These sediment plumes threaten to smother life on the ocean floor and choke midwater ecosystems, sending ripples throughout marine ecosystems affecting everything from deep-sea filter-feeders to commercially important species like tuna. Yet discussions of the plumes’ potential consequences are clouded by a great deal of uncertainty over how far they will spread and how they will affect marine life.

To clarify just how murky deep-sea mining will make the water, scientists have been tagging along as companies conduct tests.

Two years ago, Global Sea Mineral Resources, a Belgian company, conducted the first trials of its nodule-collecting vehicles. Scientists working with the company found that more than 90% of the sediment plume settled out on the seafloor, while the rest lingered within two meters of the seabed near the mined area. Other studies from experiments in the central Pacific Ocean found that the sediment plumes reached as far as 300 meters away from the disturbed site, though the thickest deposition was within 100 meters. This is a shorter spread than earlier models, which predicted deep-sea mining plumes could spread up to 5 kilometers from the mining site.

Beyond the sediment kicked up by submersibles moving along the seafloor, deep-sea mining can muddy the water in another way.

As polymetallic nodules are lifted to the surface, the waste water that’s sucked up along with the nodules is discharged back into the ocean. Doug McCauley, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says this could potentially create “underwater dust storms” in upper layers of the water column. Over the course of a 20-year mining operation, this sediment could be carried by ocean currents up to 1,000 kilometers before sinking to the seabed.

Some particularly fine-grained particles could remain suspended in the water column, traveling long distances with the potential to affect a wide range of marine animals. According to another recent study, it’s these tiny particles that are the most harmful to filter-feeders like the Mediterranean mussel.

To avoid these consequences on midwater ecosystems, at least, scientists are advising would-be deep-sea miners to discharge waste water at the bottom of the ocean where mining has already created a disturbance. This would be a departure from the ISA’s messaging, which is to not specify at what depth waste water should be released.

For its own trials last December, the Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian company, says it worked hard to minimize the amount of sediment discharged in the waste water it released at a depth of 1,200 meters.

“We’ve optimized our system to leave as much sediment on the seabed as possible,” says Michael Clarke, environmental manager at TMC. Clarke says he’s skeptical of previously published research projecting vast sediment plumes. “When we were trying to measure the [midwater] plume a few hundred metres away from the outlet, we couldn’t even find the plume because it diluted so much.”

Clarke says the company is currently analyzing both baseline and impact data for its test mining, including looking at how far small particles spread and how long they remain suspended. The results will be submitted to the ISA as part of an environmental impact assessment.

As deep-sea mining inches closer and scientists ramp up their research efforts, it’s important to keep one thing clear: “I can tell you that we’re not going to discover that deep-sea mining is good for marine ecosystems,” McCauley says. “The question is, ‘How bad will it be?’”

This article by Hakai Magazine is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

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“The question is not whether we decarbonize the transportation sector, but how we decarbonize it,” the report’s lead author Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, said during a webinar discussing the research.

“What this report will get into is the fact that there are multiple electrified futures ahead of us that all get us to zero emissions but differ dramatically in how much mining they would require and how much mobility they would provide to Americans.”

Transportation is the single largest source of U.S. emissions, making its transition off fossil fuels central to the country’s decarbonization strategy. So far, President Joe Biden’s administration has pushed to cut transportation emissions by electrifying personal vehicles—a strategy that comes with its own suite of environmental and human rights crises because it will require a massive amount of lithium for battery manufacturing, the Guardian says.

“Conversations [about the dangers of mining] can lead folks to think that there’s a zero-sum trade-off: either we address the climate crisis or we protect Indigenous rights and biodiversity,” Riofrancos told Grist. “This report asks the question: is there a way to do both?”

The report finds that a decarbonization scenario that reduces car dependency and limits electric vehicle (EV) battery sizes can lower the demand for lithium between 18 and 66%. “Even if the car-centricity of the U.S. transportation system continues, limiting the size of EV batteries can cut lithium demand by as much as 42%.”

The researchers designed a material flow analysis and paired it with socioeconomic pathway modelling to determine decarbonization scenarios for U.S. transportation. They outlined four possible scenarios: one where the current transportation sector is electrified but otherwise the same, and three others that envision different scales of ambition for reducing battery sizes and implementing societal changes like improving public transit, densifying metropolitan regions, and expanding battery recycling.

“In terms of summarizing just the most effective ways for us to reduce future lithium demand while meeting our 2050 goals for decarbonization, we need to focus on reducing demand for passenger vehicles,” co-author Alissa Kendall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, told the webinar. Kendall said that will mean investing in better mobility options and densifying urban areas, while also reducing battery sizes and encouraging battery recycling.

The Biden administration’s strategy so far does not align with the report’s proposals. It emphasizes vehicle electrification and expands domestic lithium mining through the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The conversations are happening, but they’re not connected with congressional funding priorities at all,” said Riofrancos.

Can lithium mining be sustainable?

If the U.S. continues on this trajectory, the increased demand for lithium mining will be environmentally destructive and, since 79% of the country’s known lithium deposits sit within 56 kilometres of Native American reservations, would disproportionately affect Indigenous communities.

For example, mining the lithium deposits near Thacker Pass, Nevada, “will cause irreversible harm to the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, their ancestral massacre sites, water, air, medicines, and culturally important wildlife,” said Kassandra Lisenbee, outreach and just energy transition director at Great Basin Resource Watch.

Such communities are facing “complete changes to their lifestyles from these projects.”

Mining Thacker Pass will disturb roughly 5,695 acres of habitat, pull groundwater equivalent to the amount used by 15,000 U.S. households annually, and produce a lifetime total of 354 million cubic yards (270.7 million cubic metres) of clay tailings waste that could leak and contaminate the area’s soil and water, the report states.

“Just solutions should centre on directly affected communities who deserve free, prior and informed consent,” said Lisenbee. “We need to be thinking about more than carbon and protecting biodiversity and protecting our carbon sinks that are water resources.”

“We need to think about how lithium, in and of itself, can be a major driver of climate change, as well.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved the Thacker Pass mine less than one year after posting a notice of intent in January, 2020, even though similar regulatory reviews usually take three to five years, Lisenbee said. Advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against Lithium Americas Corp. to stop the mine, but it was dismissed in a recent court ruling upholding the federal approval. The company says it plans to begin construction this year.

This article is republished from The Energy Mix. Read the original article.

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I am with Peter*, an Albanian mine worker who used to come up here with his friends before the war began in 1998. Back then, Serbs and Albanians would use the pool and nearby tennis courts together, but there are no Serb mining families here now. Two decades on, the ruination in the landscape still seems unsettling – a reminder for Peter that something valuable has been lost. “I don’t know what the hell happened here,” he says.

As we walk along a winding path he points to a cluster of blue flowers, little starbursts of colour nestled in the dead bracken. “That’s a sign there are metals underneath,” he tells me. They are a quiet reminder of the ore-rich rock that continues to disrupt life in this uneasy corner of Kosovo.

Mines like Stan Terg seem to lurk in the public imagination as remote places that are dangerous, dirty, damaging, violent and destructive. They pollute streams, corrupt politicians, degrade communities and explode indigenous artefacts.

Or they are places where bad people go – those who exploit and extract at the expense of others, human and nonhuman, and are not concerned about the cost. We seem to prefer not to think about them unless we have to.

And yet, we can’t live our modern lives without mining. We may slowly be turning our backs on fossil fuels, but what about all the other geological resources with which our lives are entangled? The mined ore in our mobile phones – those palm-size assemblages of cobalt, lithium, copper, manganese and tungsten. The lead and zinc in our car batteries, the aluminium in our bicycles, the steel in our buildings, and the copper in the hidden networks of cabling that hold our worlds together.

The problem of mining is one for all of us. But what sort of problem is it?

Mining and me

My first encounter with mining came when I worked as a television news journalist for ITN in Moscow. It was 1993, and I was travelling with two colleagues across Russia doing some filming ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections. We had spent the day in a dilapidated helicopter tracking the Trans-Siberian Express as it wound its way through the birch forests below us. The day ended with an emergency landing in a snow field and a lift back to the town of Irkutsk in a truck.

That evening, we met a group of British men in a gloomy hotel bar. None of them spoke Russian or seemed to have travelled far from their beer glasses. It turned out they were mining engineers on their way to some remote operation further north, pulled to the heart of Siberia by whatever strange thing that mine promised them. Money? Promotion? Easy sex? Theirs wasn’t a world I wanted to be part of.

Little did I know. Two years later, overwhelmed after the war in Chechnya, undone by a conflict with a colleague and reeling from a failed relationship, I fell out of my journalistic life and landed in a small seaside town in Namibia with a baby daughter and a man I’d married but barely knew. He was a mining engineer who drove 60 kilometres inland each morning to the uranium mine that had operated there since 1976.

Suddenly everything about my life – where I lived, who I met, what I did, how I felt – was mediated by a vast, contentious, spiralled hole in an ancient desert that most people preferred not to think about. I was a white mining wife sucked into a strange world of bake sales, coffee mornings and housing officers who matched the quality of homes offered with the importance of our husbands’ jobs. We were not at the top of the pile.

On our first weekend, my husband’s throat was cut by three young men trying to break into the small, terraced house we had been allotted. He saved his own life by drawing on his training with the Royal Marines, holding his slashed neck together, keeping his pulse low and only collapsing when he made it into the back of the ambulance.

The police told us the men were from Angola, drawn to this area because of the uranium and the wealth it had created. You can’t live near a mine without being aware of the inequalities it encourages.

Since those early days in Namibia, we have moved from mine to mine around the world, making and remaking our lives in the US, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Serbia, then back to Canada again. With each move, I have thought more about the complexities, controversies and conflicts that surround resource extraction. Were we making our own lives at the expense of others?

Whether it’s uranium in Namibia, lead and zinc in Kosovo or copper in the Gobi desert, all geological entities become disruptive once they are mapped out and given value. Earlier in 2022, Rio Tinto – the world’s second-largest metals and mining corporation – had its exploration licences revoked by the government of Serbia after thousands of people took to the streets, demanding that the development of a lithium mine should stop on environmental grounds.

We left Belgrade in 2018, before the project became controversial, but for seven years we had been deeply involved with the complexities of mining in the Balkans. My husband led the Rio Tinto team in Serbia, and I was working on my PhD research at Stan Terg exploring the relationship between mining, conflict and peace. We would be on the wrong side of public sentiment if we lived and worked there now. That’s an uncomfortable feeling – not because it makes me think my association with mining puts me on the moral low ground, but because it’s frustrating.

No easy answers

The mining industry is changing, driven not just by international standards and external pressures but by internal forces too. I’ve met botanists, ornithologists, ecologists, archaeologists, former teachers, people who used to work for NGOs, and a host of others in the industry who are all, in their own ways, wondering how to improve things. That’s not to argue that power rests in their hands, but there is more in common between some of the people who work within mining and those who oppose it than might be imagined.

The frustration is that focusing entirely on the environmental and social harms caused by mining risks avoiding the true extent of the challenge mining presents us with, and the complex ways we are all tied up in it because of our consumer appetites.

If building a lithium mine is unacceptable in Serbia as a means to satisfy our demands, what does that mean for the lithium-rich salt flats in Chile and the Indigenous groups living there who are concerned about the impact of mining on their water sources? Or for the lithium under Mariupol in Ukraine that was attracting international attention before the war?

When Serbia’s tennis hero Novak Djokovic tweeted photos of the protests along with a declaration that we need “clean air”, I wanted to rest my forehead on my desk. He’s right, of course we need clean air. But the lithium required to achieve it must urgently come from somewhere.

The problem is in many sectors we need more mining, not less, for the transition to a zero carbon future. The World Bank has predicted that the production of graphite, lithium and cobalt will have to increase five-fold by 2050 if climate targets are to be met, and the demand for lithium-ion batteries already has analysts describing lithium as “white oil”.

In April 2022, US president Joe Biden used a cold war-era law – the 1950 Defense Production Act – to boost the production of lithium in the US, along with nickel and other minerals needed to power our electric vehicles.

Similarly, copper is integral for key large-scale decarbonisation technologies such as offshore wind projects. Working out how to source these materials has been made more urgent by the war in Ukraine, and the need to reduce dependency not only on Russian oil and gas but on its minerals and metals too.

After 26 years, I have learned that all mining operations – actual and potential – require us to pay attention to what is most difficult about our lives: how what we consume relates to the future of the planet and the lives of those we share it with. The problem of mining is not just one of how we should extract, but how we should live.

A story of optimism and attachment

The people I met at Stan Terg in 2018 told me a story about mining that was not just about dirt, degradation and pollution, but also their enduring attachment to the mine and what it promises.

Stan Terg is the oldest mine within the huge, decaying Trepča industrial complex – an ecology of mines and related infrastructure concentrated in the northern part of Kosovo. This small mine tucked away up a wooded valley, ten kilometres north-east of the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, was first developed by a British mining company in the 1920s, shortly after Serbia’s reconquest of Kosovo.

When the British travel writer Rebecca West visited here in 1937, she was enchanted by the English-style mining cottages with their unguarded front gardens and windows facing the road, reflecting the setting sun. To West, these houses expressed confidence that the mine would bring not only prosperity but also peace to this troubled region. Its Scottish general manager employed both Serbs and Albanians and was certain they would work well together. “This country,” he told West, “is getting over its past nicely.”

Nearly 90 years later, the ruins of the houses that delighted West still exist above the Stan Terg mine, but they are pitted with bullet holes. While the war between Serbia and Kosovo in the late 1990s was not (ostensibly) over natural resources, a strike by the Albanian mineworkers at Stan Terg in 1989 was part of the political upheaval that preceded the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and ultimately led to Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008.

Now this part of Kosovo is uneasily divided. Four Serb-dominated municipalities close to the border are still de facto ruled by Belgrade. The town of Kosovska Mitrovica, once the bustling, multicultural, industrial heart of this region, has been bisected – Serbs largely to the north of the river Ibar with their language, dinar currency and orientation towards Belgrade; Kosovan Albanians to the south.

But it is not just people who are divided here. Trepča’s smelter, flotation plant and three northernmost mines are also under Belgrade’s control. Settling the future of the complex is an explosive issue: a mining complex that once promised to bring people together is now pushing them apart – lending its geological heft to a conflict that has become intractable.

Yet the Kosovan-Albanian workers at Stan Terg are still optimistic that their mine can change things for the better. “I feel hope when I go down the mine,” one tells me. Another says it is a pleasure to work in the place that will one day make the economy better. A third describes the feeling he had when he returned to the mine after the war once the Serbs had left: “There was no happiness like it. It wasn’t just that I was going to get paid, but Kosovo was going to get stronger too.”

This is not an easy optimism to hold on to, however. It is contradicted by the ruination around us – the destroyed cinema, collapsing hotel and crumbling diving board – and by the mineworkers’ acknowledgement that life is not how they expected it would be. A tearful man worries that he made a mistake when he brought his family back here after the war. Another struggles to breathe because of the damage to his lungs. “The mine produces cripples,” he tells me.

Yet despite the destruction, pollution and disappointment, the mineworkers still insist that the lead and zinc rich rock beneath them is a “gift from God”, and that it will bring them all prosperity in the end.

Talking with these mineworkers, I realise that what is important here is the painful and profound process of creating worlds and hoping they will last; coping with the disappointment when they don’t; and remaining optimistic that a mine will deliver some sort of good life amid the evidence it never has – at least not for long.

A problem of world-making

Mining is not just a problem of extraction and the environmental degradation associated with it. It is also a problem of world-making. What sort of worlds do we want our geological resources to create for us? Who are they for? How long will they last? And who, and what, might suffer because of them?

It is tempting to think this problem is a local one – something that happens “over there” on the shores of an Arctic fjord, in the Namibian desert, in a taiga forest in the heart of Siberia, or in semi-recognised geopolitical entities with travel advisories like northern Kosovo.

Yet metals and minerals promise to make the world different for all of us. The lithium in our antidepressants. The stainless steel in the needles of our syringes that deliver vaccines, anaesthetics, Botox. The aluminium in our heat pumps, the copper in our wind turbines, the titanium in the Mars Exploration Rovers and the gold in the James Webb telescope. They all bring certain futures into view and allow us to feel confident about them: that we won’t be sad, that we won’t age, that we can achieve net-zero carbon and look after the planet – even that we can find an alternative world to escape to.

But they do so at a cost. The global hypodermic needles market is estimated to reach US$4.5 billion by 2030. Europe’s aluminium smelters are facing an energy crisis while China is ramping up its production based on an increase in coal production. The war in Ukraine is threatening to disrupt titanium supplies. Demand for copper is predicted to double to 50 million tonnes by 2035, but supply is unlikely to keep up and the net-zero transition might be delayed as a result.

According to Dan Yergin, global vice-chairman of the S&P business intelligence group, we can’t assume that copper and other metals and minerals “will just be there”. New geopolitical worlds are likely to emerge in the rush to acquire them.

Like the miners at Stan Terg, are we attached to an idea of the world that is not the same as the one we live in?

For now, the lithium and borates-rich rock under the Jadar valley in Serbia is being pulled in all directions. People interested in protecting the environment want it to stay in the ground. A local farmer understandably wants to preserve his land. Yet we need to unearth vast of amounts of lithium from somewhere if we are to swap our petrol cars for electric ones.

Meanwhile mining company shareholders expect their dividend cheques, politicians want to be re-elected, people need to feel they are listened to and have some control, and everyone, in their own way, wants to prosper. This geological body, like any other, is asking questions that are hard to answer. Whose future counts? And at what cost?

At the bottom of their world

Before leaving Stan Terg I travel down to the bottom of the mine, three-quarters of a kilometre underground. The mineworkers – all men – have told me I cannot properly understand their world unless I experience it.

I watch the wet walls of the mineshaft slip past as we descend, notice the drips of water on my helmet and a deep bass hum coming from somewhere I cannot place. I am travelling back in geological time, past rocks that are increasingly ancient as we descend. For we don’t just possess tiny pieces of Kosovo, Siberia or Alaska in the smartphones in our pockets, but elements of the deep past too – minute reminders that the world we create with them should be enduring.

I feel disoriented at the bottom of the mine, but the workers are intimate with this place. They tell me they feel good down here. I watch as they stride off along the tunnel, their boots splashing in the water.

For them, the rock around us is like a human body with veins of minerals and the capacity to expand and contract as if it is breathing. They listen to the noises it makes and understand what it says to them. After so many years, they know the sound of danger.

But this mine also holds their memories of the days when Serbs and Albanians worked together here before the war, and of the trust that emerged between them deep underground. “There are no ethnicities in a mine,” one worker tells me, “just miners.” Another says he’d like to see his old colleagues again, although he knows not everyone would agree with him.

There is optimism here, of sorts: “The problem started in Trepča and the solution will be found here too,” I am told. “If we learn how to develop Kosovo together, peace will happen.”

Yet for all their familiarity with this place, it still has the power to surprise them. Every day they find something ancient and unexpected sparkling in the light of their headlamps. There are thousands of breathtakingly beautiful crystals down here, and none of them are the same.

They are powerful objects, these crystals. I have a collection on my windowsill at home: palm-sized silver and white spines of quartz, pyrite and a host of other materials – disrupting what we think we know about mining, what we might expect to find at the bottom of a lead and zinc mine in the context of conflict, and how people might think and feel when they are down there. There is more to this world, they seem to say, than we might imagine.

*Research participant’s name changed to protect their anonymity

Bridget Storrie is a post-doctoral teaching fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Planting trees, however, is hard work. It takes money and planning. But a re-greening roadmap exists.

Sudbury, the largest city in Northern Ontario, transformed itself after decades of environmental devastation, brought on by the mining industry. Other communities and industries, like oil and gas, can replicate the city’s efforts to aid in global efforts to fight climate change.

A devastated landscape

For almost 100 years, Sudbury’s community and environment were blanketed in sulfur dioxide and metals released from the smelting of nickel ore. The sulfur acidified the soils, rain and lakes. The pollution triggered the complete loss of vegetation, leaving barren rolling hills of blackened rock. It was a devastated landscape.

But 40 years ago, scientists, citizens, governments and mining companies in Sudbury set out with the goal that, no matter how damaged the environment was, it was worth trying to repair it. Since then, city- and industry-led programs have planted 12 million trees and revitalized over 3,400 hectares of land. People now swim and fish in the 330 lakes that fall within the city boundaries and were once highly acidic.

Today, Sudbury has some of the cleanest air in all of Ontario. That’s hard to believe given the city once emitted 2.5 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide per year. In the 1980s, the “Sudbury” became known as a unit of pollution, against which other industrial cities were measured. It’s now become known as a unit of restoration.

Sudbury offers proof that it is possible to leave a healthier environment than the one we inherited, and proof that we can change our climate for the better.

Capturing gases

Against the realities of climate change, industrial pollution and urban expansion, stories of environmental recovery and restoration are rare. But a healthy environment doesn’t have to come at the expense of industrial activity.

While scientists developed solutions for restoring the land and water, industry re-engineered their processes to reduce and capture their emissions. Sudbury mining companies, Inco and Falconbridge (now Vale and Glencore) led the way in reducing sulfur dioxide release from their smelter. Nickel production continued to grow in spite of more stringent pollution limits.

The Sudbury situation was pivotal in negotiations between Canada and the United States that led to the signing of the 1991 U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement. The agreement, also known as the acid rain accord, helped solve the largest environmental issues at the time.

Without strong policy in North America and Europe, acid rain would have continued to threaten forests and fisheries in Canada and the U.S. Now, 30 years later, we can use the same approach with strong regulations on emissions, scientific evidence and solutions, and industrial re-alignment to capture carbon dioxide emissions and make the critical strides needed to meet climate change targets.

Meeting climate targets with mining

Sudbury hasn’t solved all of its problems. It still carries a legacy of millions of tonnes of reactive mine waste materials, which can release acids and metals that can contaminate food webs and drinking water. These have to be managed by industry to avoid impacting the environment and surrounding communities.

Vale and Glencore are working with scientists again to develop new ways of treating, covering and restoring these vast tailings ponds. They are looking for ways to turn these barrens into areas for carbon capture, to grow biofuel crops or to use the land for renewable energy installations.

In some cases, these wastes still contain low levels of metals that could not be extracted in the smelter. But we now have the means to capture these metals through low-energy technologies or using bacteria to extract metals from minerals.

The global demand for critical metals like nickel, cobalt and copper is growing to support production of electric vehicles. In the next 25 years, the world will need as much copper as was mined in the past 500 years, according to Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest metals and mining companies. Some of that demand can be met using waste.

Lessons from Sudbury

We cannot meet climate change targets without transitioning away from fossil fuels, but we cannot produce renewable energy technologies like batteries and solar panels without mining the minerals used to make them. We can’t let one set of environmental issues replace another.

But we don’t have to, and the history of Sudbury shows the way. Community, government, academia and industry can work together to face a massive challenge like climate change.

We need to focus on scientific solutions and move away from the old ways of doing things because “that’s how it’s always been done.” Net-zero and zero-waste mining is possible — and necessary. They are ultimately part of a sustainable energy future.

At the start of this UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Sudbury model is an important recipe to apply to climate change. Where we once sacrificed the environment for the sake of industrial expansion, we now need to transition to smarter industrial processes to protect the environment, wean ourselves off fossil fuels and build a more resilient global community in the face of climate change.

Nadia Mykytczuk is the interim CEO and president of MIRARCO at Laurentian University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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“Please mine more nickel,” he asked bluntly.

By October, Tesla was in talks with Vale, the world’s largest producer of the mineral, about securing sustainable nickel from its Canadian mines to power Tesla’s electric vehicle batteries. No firm definition of “environmentally sensitive” was given, but as minerals become increasingly critical to a low-carbon future, attention around how those minerals are extracted and produced is growing sharply.

Cleantech’s cleanest resources are not in short supply: wind is free and the sun shines, at no charge. Yet enormous amounts of copper, nickel and other minerals are required to harness their energy. Canada is one of the few countries in the world that can provide the materials required for lithium-ion batteries that are vital for EVs and other emerging low-carbon technologies. With companies like Tesla facing increased scrutiny around sourcing minerals from countries with serious human rights and environmental abuses, Canada is positioning itself as a reliable and responsible alternative.

“Those are the key ingredients – responsible and reliable – to be a supplier of choice to our allies around critical minerals and other minerals to fuel the transition to the next economy, the clean economy, the low-carbon economy,” says Ben Chalmers, senior vice-president of the Mining Association of Canada.

Compared to countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produces roughly 70% of the world’s cobalt under a cloud of human rights abuses and child labour, Canada looks like the ideal country of origin. Canadian mining-industry employees earn an average of more than $110,000 annually, are protected by relatively strong safety regulations and – unlike their Congolese counterparts – aren’t forced to operate in conflict zones.

The question is, can Canada offer a steady, sustainable supply of critical minerals? Federal Minister of Innovation Navdeep Bains has spoken of the need for a “mines to mobility” strategy to join the growing EV economy. Quebec has made its plans to lead the charge clear, as part of a $6.7-billion green economy push. Unveiled in November, its Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals [CSMs] 2020–2025 identifies more than 20 CSMs that are in high demand by countries looking to secure supply chains for low-carbon economies. Other mineral-rich provinces, including Newfoundland, B.C. and Ontario, also want in on the action.

However, satisfying increased demand for critical minerals holds its own set of challenges. Water preservation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity concerns and whether CSM mines can preserve Indigenous rights are all open questions that require satisfactory answers. A few examples:

• Nouveau Monde Graphite’s 2.7-kilometre open-pit graphite mine was authorized by the Quebec government in February. The mine, wedged between Mont-Tremblant National Park and Lac Taureau Regional Park, has raised concerns because of its potential production of millions of tons of acid waste, which would be permanently stored in the watershed of the tourist area. The opposition claims the Quebec government has ignored the advice of the Office of Environmental Public Hearings by authorizing the project before requesting that missing studies be completed. The government’s decree is being heavily criticized for failing to address concerns raised by the Atikamekw Nation of Manawan.

• The proposed Eagle’s Nest Mine in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire has faced years of opposition, protests and legal battles. While some First Nations in the region support the mining of nickel, palladium and copper, opposition from others who say they haven’t been adequately consulted remains strong. Scientists are also concerned about the potential impact on the area’s muskeg – one of the world’s largest sources of terrestrial carbon storage. Over a decade in the works, the project is still being evaluated with no clear end date.

So how can community needs, especially those of Indigenous communities, take a front seat in mining for the low-carbon future? The First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) recommends having Indigenous-led environmental assessments, tapping into Indigenous-led net-zero carbon policy frameworks, and boosting access to capital so that low-carbon Indigenous infrastructure projects can secure equity ownership.

At FNMPC’s Indigenous Sustainable Investment Conference in March, chair Sharleen Gale said it’s time to put the “I” in ESG. “That means ensuring Indigenous interests and worldviews are reflected in environmental, social and governance standards that are driving investments in resource projects today.”

Mining can provide huge value to Indigenous communities when equity is rightfully shared, exemplified by companies like Nuna Group, the majority-Inuit-owned group with a track record of successful construction and mining projects.

Outside of Indigenous communities, projects near historically mining-friendly communities like Cobalt, Ontario, can find that residents are more welcoming of new projects, like Fuse Cobalt’s newly announced cobalt refinery. Greener mines like Goldcorp’s Borden Gold Mine – Canada’s first all-electric mine – could find it easier still to gain community support. Though the promise that Nouveau Monde’s graphite mine will be all-electric hasn’t smoothed over community opposition, meeting ESG standards is becoming increasingly important to everyone from clean economy allies to institutional investors.

Toward sustainable mining

Scientific innovation is already fuelling greener mining and refining practices. The use of plasma technology can potentially boost the yield of precious metal ores like gold and platinum by more than 1,000% and reduce GHG emissions and costs for iron ore pellet production. Finding alternative sources for critical minerals – such as extracting lithium from geothermal plant brine – and boosting mineral recycling rates will be essential to improving the sector’s sustainability.

But work still needs to be done to ensure Canadian mines don’t fall behind on the path to responsibility. A 2019 audit by then–federal environment commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded that Environment and Climate Change Canada’s inspections of metal mines were significantly less frequent (every 3.6 years) in Ontario, the province with the highest number of mines in Canada, and that Fisheries and Oceans Canada did only spotty monitoring to see if mining companies carried out their plans to counteract harm to fish and their habitats. Said Gelfand at the time, “When environmental effects were found, there was no requirement on anybody’s part to actually have to do anything.”

The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) launched its Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) program in 2004 to drive performance improvement in environmental and social issues – the first program in the world to require site-level assessments. The TSM principles include calls for member companies to implement comprehensive energy and GHG emission management systems; obtain the “free, prior and informed consent” of directly affected Indigenous Peoples for new developments; and conduct annual assessments of the effectiveness of safety and health-management systems. MAC is working with mining associations in seven countries – most recently Norway and Spain – to adapt the TSM framework to their national contexts.

However, the program has been criticized for being too lax and lacking third-party oversight. For most metrics in MAC’s 2019 TSM Progress Report, 80 to 90% of members meet the A, AA or AAA thresholds of the TSM’s grading. “Energy and GHG Emissions Performance Targets” and “Operational Water Management” had the lowest grades, although both still saw 53 and 50% of members, respectively, achieving an A or higher grade.

MiningWatch Canada’s Jamie Kneen says the TSM standard isn’t being enforced consistently and companies must be held to a higher bar if Canada wants to become a genuinely sustainable supplier of choice. Where there is enforcement, he says, the industry-initiated standard is too close to the companies themselves. He adds that while the standard is purportedly mandatory for MAC members, only half of MAC’s mines currently report on it (MAC says many members are either pre- or mid-certification, while others are out of country, and therefore not required to report).

Increased demand for environmentally and socially responsible mining has been met by calls for stricter standards and certifications. The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) has gained momentum in the last year and recently completed its first audit of Carrizal Mining’s Zimapán Mine in Mexico, which produces lead, zinc, copper and silver. Its second audit of an Anglo American mine in Zimbabwe, which extracts platinum group metals, was released in February.

IRMA sets itself apart from other programs by not being industry-run and ensures transparency by sharing its audit information publicly. The standard is equitably governed by a diverse set of stakeholders, including affected communities, labour unions and mining companies. Though still in its infancy, the certification is already a selling point for companies – and nations – when searching for sustainable suppliers. IRMA’s member list already includes Microsoft, BMW Group, Ford and steelmaker ArcelorMittal.

MAC’s Ben Chalmers says there is ongoing cooperation and knowledge transfer between MAC and IRMA, with potential for more integration in the future. What’s clear is that ensuring Canada’s mines meet the highest standards will help position the Canadian mining industry for lucrative international contracts and partnerships.

Critical mineral autonomy

While Europe outpaced China on battery investments last year, it’s still short on minerals and is looking for reliable, sustainable partners who extract responsibly. COVID-19 has revealed the vulnerability of supply chains, making “strategic autonomy” a buzzword in Europe and elsewhere. China’s dominance in battery production has led other countries to fear it might withhold exports for its own production and political reasons. Many countries are developing their own or joint networks, among them the European Battery Alliance, which already counts Leading Edge Materials – a Canadian company developing projects within the EU – as a member. As a reliable ally, Canada may be able to establish itself as an external supplier of choice for the EU’s strategic autonomy efforts around batteries.

While recent years have seen a lag in focus on environmental issues in the U.S., President Joe Biden’s $2-trillion climate plan will no doubt look to Canada for a reliable critical mineral supply. In February, Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a statement vowing to strengthen the Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration “to target a net-zero industrial transformation, batteries for zero-emissions vehicles, and renewable energy storage.”

Supplying the green wave will require many elements to come together. The mining sector will have to get Canadian stakeholder communities on board. The Canadian government will have an important role not only in increasing incentives for low-carbon mining, but also in further tying financial benefits to sustainable mining practices. Many critical minerals, like rare earth metals and cobalt, lack the price stability and transparency of commodity minerals, making them relatively unattractive to investors looking for stable profits. Government assistance in stabilizing critical mineral prices may be valuable, as well as public procurement (such as purchasing Canadian minerals for publicly funded renewable energy projects) and supply partnerships – a strategy that has proven effective in Scandinavian countries and the EU.

Responsible mining carries costs. The competitive challenge for natural-resource exploitation cannot be ignored: countries with a history of critical mineral dominance and lax labour regulation like China or the Democratic Republic of Congo have a price advantage that is difficult to compete with under current conditions.

As Alan Young, co-director of the Materials Efficiency Research Group (MERG), says, “There is a huge opportunity to couple the imperative for clean energy and responsible mining.” He adds, “By caring for the larger context, we create a more competitive environment for us and benefit the citizens of other countries as well.” Doing so can give Canadian companies preferential access to growing markets and, as Young notes, “capital concerned with the liabilities and reputation impacts.” With institutional investors like the Climate Action 100+ (representing more than US$52 trillion in assets under management) leading the charge, Canadian mining has a tremendous opportunity to access that capital and become a go-to partner and supplier.

Maria Laura Barreto, co-director of MERG, says going beyond the status quo will be key. “Canada will be very well positioned to be one of the key suppliers of these minerals for the low-carbon future. But there is a huge risk here: just having an abundance of strategically important resources is not good enough. Canada will have to show both quality and quantity of minerals extractions to qualify for emerging responsible minerals markets.” In other words, the reserves are there, but attaining the sustained benefits of mining these minerals will require a willingness to change how we supply them.

Toby Sparwasser Soroka is a German-Canadian whose professional interests span across social entrepreneurship and disruptive technology.

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