It’s critical we come to grips with the mining of critical minerals

LOUISVILLE — The mining of critical minerals is making headlines in recent months, and so during the Presbyterian Advocacy Hour held last week on Earth Day, the Rev. Jed Koball, a Peru-based Global Ecumenical Liaison, led a panel discussion on the problems and opportunities such mining can bring to the surface. Watch the 82-minute webinar here.

Clare Balsan, advocacy associate at the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, led off the discussion by defining critical minerals as those with a high risk of supply chain disruption and serve an essential function in one or more energy technologies. Critical minerals include cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper and graphite.

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While critical minerals are seen by many as a necessary component of the green energy transition, there are environmental concerns over mining them, Balsan said. There are also human rights concerns, including child labor and dangerous working conditions, as well as the displacement of communities.

Speaking in French, Grace Muzinga of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the program director at the nonprofit La Sentinelle de Ressources Naturelles, a global partner of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, said her country has “enormous” reserves of critical minerals. DRC is the world’s leading producer of cobalt.

DRC is also “touched by abject poverty,” she said, with millions of people living on less than a dollar a day. “But we have a great wealth of underground riches,” Muzinga said. “Many corporations want to come here and fight for their own interests. They do not contribute to our communities, which are not happy to see these corporations because there is no reinvestment — and if they do reinvest, it doesn’t reach the local population.”

“We have hopes about improving working conditions in the mines and hopes about agreements that will make it mandatory to invest in local communities,” Muzinga said. “We hope the United States will truly cooperate with our government around this.”

“Communities need to be included in the negotiations,” said Muzinga, “because those who come here later to mine will have to abide by those agreements.”

Speaking in Spanish, Javier Jahncke, a human rights lawyer who organized a Peruvian node of Latin American Network of Churches and Mining, noted that solar and wind energy are widely used throughout Latin America. But once a turbine begins turning, the energy produced must be transmitted, “and that requires a lot of copper,” he said. “The energy has to be stored in large cells or batteries that require a lot of lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals,” Jahncke noted.

In addition to all the water required by the data centers that serve AI technology, weapons manufacturing — which is on the increase “given the high amount of conflicts around the world” — requires the mining of 17 types of critical minerals, according to Jahncke.

Jahncke said that electric vehicles require twice the amount of copper as gas-powered vehicles do. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, demand for copper will increase by 50%. The demand for solar panels will be up 40%, while the need for more turbines will increase by 35%. Forty percent more energy storage will be needed in the next 24 years.

The next panelist was Arthur Stamoulis, the executive director of New York Citizens Trade Coalition, which works to improve international trade policy.

“It makes sense that governments want secure critical mineral supply chains, and to ensure they aren’t monopolized by any one power,” Stamoulis said. “There are potentially very positive uses of these minerals,” including more solar panels, long-storage batteries “and other technologies that would be extremely useful for a rapid, clean energy transition.”

The way the government goes about doing that “really matters,” Stamoulis said. “Depending on how they’re written, critical mineral agreements could help countries meet shared climate, job creation and sustainable development goals. Unfortunately, those aren’t things our government is currently prioritizing.”

The current U.S. approach to developing critical minerals agreements “is all about helping big tech billionaires and other corporate special interests conduct a mineral grab that’s accelerating models of resource extraction that we’ve heard about already — policies that are harmful to workers, to communities, to the environment, and frankly are really an extension of hundreds of years of colonialism,” Stamoulis said. “And so, it’s incumbent on us in the United States and other Global North countries to use our relative freedoms and privilege to demand a new model.”

Recent General Assembly policy on justice around the mining of critical minerals is here. Stamoulis recommended this website to learn more about the topic.

On the topic of government transparency, Muzinga noted governments often regard that as “telling the public about decisions that have been made or agreements that have been signed. But transparency needs to come upstream.”

“It would be better to have more people involved before decisive agreements on critical minerals are signed,” Muzinga said. “There’s an important role everyday people can play. What you’re doing here today is a positive step. It’s allowing people to understand realities that a lot of people aren’t aware of.”

The Rev. Dr. Neddy Astudillo, a Presbyterian pastor and Venezuelan-American eco-theologian, was the final panelist to speak.

“Our faith is very simple: We are called to love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves,” Astudillo said. “What that means in regards to mining issues may vary,” depending on where one lives, Astudillo said.

“Our siblings from the Global South point out that the climate crisis facing the planet is not only an environmental problem. It’s an existential crisis that demands not only an economic and technological solution, but also a cultural transformation,” Astudillo said.

Many who live in the Global South seek debt forgiveness from nations and financial institutions in the Global North as part of the solution.

“Our faith knows about the forgiveness of debts,” Astudillo said. “The real urgency, more than the need to shift from one energy source to another, lies in how we transform our human relationships with each other and with the Earth. This urgency knocks on the doors of communities of faith, and this is where our gift of faith can make a big difference in the world.”