"Does the world need a global treaty on energy transition minerals?", 26 May 2025

"Electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies are driving booming demand for metals and minerals – including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel – which many countries now consider “critical” to their security. But will procuring those supplies harm the environment and human rights?

Across the world, from Africa and Asia to Latin America, a growing number of mining projects has been associated with nature destruction, pollution, labour abuses and conflict, while local communities often shoulder much of the cost and share little of the benefit.

As the scramble for minerals for the energy transition rises to the top of the political agenda, there are mounting calls for international cooperation to ensure production of these resources is sustainable and equitable, alongside a flurry of proposed initiatives for global standards and stronger governance.

Colombia is drumming up support for a legally binding minerals agreement based on the model of global negotiations for a plastic treaty. An alliance of NGOs wants to get the issue onto the agenda of this year’s COP30 climate talks, and experts are calling for a new materials data hub.

The United Nations, which oversees the most advanced efforts to create a global framework for energy transition minerals, insists it remains the best-placed broker for thrashing out global norms, despite a funding crisis.

This month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) joined a chorus of voices calling for more cooperation on the issue. In its latest Critical Minerals Outlook report, it warned of growing risks of disruption to mineral supply chains as the market becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, with China controlling around 70% of the refining of 19 out of 20 strategic minerals analysed by the agency.

Meanwhile, since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has taken a new approach to resource diplomacy, negotiating access to Ukraine’s mineral resources as a condition for American support and eyeing mineral-rich Greenland and Canada...

Colombia’s proposal for a global minerals treaty is motivated by the aim of rooting out extensive illegal gold mining, a source of environmental destruction and pollution that is threatening people’s health in the Amazon nation.

“[Existing] norms and standards are optional, and this isn’t good enough,” Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s vice minister for environmental policy, told a conference at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris earlier this month.

“We need to have a mandatory agreement to assess the whole value chain with transparency and traceability at the international level,” he added.

Colombia plans to put forward a resolution for countries to begin negotiations on a binding minerals treaty at the UN Environment Assembly in December. If approved, countries would then need to decide on the scope of the agreement, Cabrera Leal told Climate Home – an approach that has proved highly contentious and so far unsuccessful in talks for a plastic treaty.

But the idea has received a “good response” from some African and European nations, he added. And others agree with the principle

A high-level council of former ministers and leaders of international institutions convened by the Paris Peace Forum to reflect on mineral supply chain challenges has also called for an international agreement on resource management and the creation of a separate repository for mineral data...

Last year, UN boss António Guterres convened a panel of governments, international organisations and experts which defined seven principles to underpin the responsible, fair and sustainable extraction of energy transition minerals.

The UN is now expected to release a plan to implement those principles and appoint an advisory group to draft a global framework to make mineral supply chains more transparent, traceable and accountable...

Campaigners are also pushing for stronger links between the challenges of obtaining minerals for the clean energy transition and the UN’s climate and nature policy processes.

At UN biodiversity talks in Colombia last year, governments agreed to “avoid or, if not possible, minimise, the negative impacts of climate actions on biodiversity”, without singling out transition minerals.

Now a coalition of NGOs is urging the Brazilian COP30 presidency to put ways to tackle the environmental and social risks associated with these minerals on the agenda of the UN climate summit in Belém in November.

Campaigners want governments at COP30 to recognise the risks posed by unmanaged extraction to global climate and biodiversity goals, endorse the work of the UN’s advisory group on responsible sourcing and designate “no-go” mining zones in climate-critical ecosystems and Indigenous territories...."