NEIL OVERY: Critical minerals framework is a test for commitment to climate justice

In January President Cyril Ramaphosa stated that SA’s presidency of the Group of Twenty (G20) presented an opportunity to create a “grand bargain” to ensure the global boom in critical minerals properly benefits the countries and communities that are endowed with them, and accelerates “green” industrialisation through the development of low-carbon value chains.

Given that the G20 is negotiating a draft critical minerals framework an ideal opportunity has emerged to ensure the extraction of critical minerals does not merely replicate existing value chains — regardless of who extracts them. These remain predominantly characterised by African countries exporting raw materials, resulting in them being excluded from the high-value parts of the value chain where the most income and jobs are created. The boom in critical minerals also provides an opportunity to meaningfully address the numerous environmental and social problems that characterise the mining sector on the continent.   

Sustainable developmental objectives are at the heart of the AU’s African Green Minerals Strategy, which states that the rush for critical minerals should be a “defining moment in the continent’s journey towards sustainable industrialisation, energy security and inclusive growth and sustainable development”. The main strategic goals of the African Green Minerals Strategy are to:

• Enhance Africa’s geological knowledge and infrastructure to attract investment;
• Develop African technological skills to maximise “green” opportunities;
• Create comprehensive downstream mineral value chains; and
• Ensure responsible environmental and social mineral stewardship.

The strategy locates these aims within the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area, which it hopes will spur inter-African trade and continental “green industrialisation”. Its overall vision is for “an Africa that harnesses green mineral value-chains for equitable resource-based industrialisation and electrification, creating green technologies and sustainable development to enhance the quality of life of its people”. 

Those drafting the G20 critical minerals framework know that for this vision to be realised fundamental political and economic changes need to occur, globally, regionally and nationally. Changes that should be guided by the UN secretary-general’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, which states that “resourcing the energy transition requires a new paradigm rooted in equity and justice”, observing that “the race to net zero cannot trample over the poor”. 

At the international level it is clear that institutions that govern international trade and development need to be democratised to properly represent the interests of the entire global community. The UN panel states that “existing global trade rules that hinder structural transformation need to be reformed to ensure that trade is rules-based and nondiscriminatory”.

This means the World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organisation and the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade need to be reformed, as do investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. The UN also needs to be democratised so that essential interventions such as the 2011 Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, which would do much to prevent environmental and labour abuses in the mining sector, are not continually blocked by countries resistant to reform.

The UN panel asserts that multilateral co-operation should “support value addition and fair trade through technology transfer, infrastructure provision, regional co-ordination, access to finance, scientific research & development, as well as skills and knowledge transfer via education, training and capacity building”.

Such support would help Africa overcome its infrastructural deficits (power generation, transport infrastructure), themselves largely a legacy of colonialism, which hinder its ability to engage in downstream activities. This implies that the provision of infrastructure, technology and skills to Africa from major mineral importers and higher income countries should be at the heart of the G20’s critical minerals framework. 

Other impediments to realising the progressive development trajectory of the African Green Minerals Strategy must also be properly addressed. For example, while some progress has been made, illicit financial flows from the mining sector continue to drain billions of dollars from African governments. It is also clear that the numerous due diligence and responsible sourcing initiatives (manly specifically aimed at critical minerals) that exist are not fit for purpose, as research repeatedly shows how mining companies make largely tokenistic efforts to adhere to them.

It is obvious that a new paradigm of genuinely responsible mining needs to emerge which, as a starting point, could be based on the UN’s recently released Social Development Licence to Operate. This new paradigm should include entrenching the principles of free, prior and informed consent to protect local communities. Including these principles in the G20’s critical minerals framework would signal a genuine commitment to real change.

At continental level, African states should form strategic alliances to change the power and knowledge asymmetries that characterise negotiations with potential investors. Similarly, African states must co-operate to ensure potential reductions in taxation and royalty rates to attract investment do not also lead to a “race to the bottom”.

At African state level, corruption needs to be rooted out. There is little point in critical mineral export bans and local content requirements to encourage “green” industrialisation if they are abused by venal elites, as is the case with lithium in Zimbabwe for example. For too long corrupt African elites have enjoyed the riches that flow to them alone from the export of raw materials. 

While it is deliberating its critical minerals framework the G20 should reflect on the issue of climate justice, given that critical minerals are at the heart of the global just transition. Researchers have calculated, using carbon prices from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that by 2050 the Global North will owe the Global South about $192-trillion in emissions debt because of its disproportionate use of historic and current carbon budgets.

To this we can add research that shows $242-trillion was drained from the Global South to the Global North in 1995-2015 in embodied resources, land, energy and labour via unequal exchange. It is within this context that the G20 should use the demand for Africa’s abundant critical minerals to craft a critical minerals framework that begins the process of fundamentally reshaping the extractive sector to realise the UN panel’s call for a “new paradigm of responsibility”, and Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy’s vision of “equitable resource-based industrialisation”.

How the G20’s critical minerals framework responds to this call will demonstrate how seriously all the G20 member countries are in building a more just, resilient and safer world. 

• Dr Overy, a freelance researcher, writer and photographer, is a research associate at Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town.