COP30: “The Discussion Around Minerals Can Be Seen as a Stick in the Spokes of the Bike”

Already before COP30, 200 organisations directed themselves to negotiating parties with concrete demands on how this topic should be integrated into the COP agenda. Johanna Sydow spoke with Emily Iona Stewart from Global Witness about why minerals have to be part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement, how they could be integrated and what we can expect from this COP in a tense geopolitical setting on the matter of minerals production in relation to its impact for climate, the environment and human beings. 

Johanna Sydow: You have been working on minerals for many years. There's a lot going on in minerals at the moment. There's a UN Environmental Conference, where Columbia proposed a resolution on minerals. We have G7 where a specific transition mineral minerals framework came out. There's G20 in South Africa at the moment also focusing specifically on minerals and then there's COP30. Why do you think COP is the right place to tackle the issue of impacts of minerals extraction? 

Emily Stewart: I was lucky enough to be at the Paris COP in 2014 as part of the European Union's negotiating team. So I was there, when we started talking about putting down international laws which would govern the reduction of CO₂. And obviously the Paris Agreement explicitly states upping our amount of renewables. It's been a decade since we put that agreement in place. And in all of that time, nobody has ever addressed the kind of materiality underpinning that transition. So rightly, there's a lot of discussion about moving away from fossil fuels and what that looks like and how you manage that transition. But the COP process has never agreed or even considered the question of what we're moving towards and how you do that in a sensible and managed way and what the materiality and also the climate impacts of that looks like. 

The materiality of renewable energies demands that COP deals with minerals as well. Why do you think the timing with this COP is especially good? 

I know that people have been talking for many years about embedding justice in the mineral supply chain around these renewables, and that's a good reason why people often refer to these minerals as transition minerals. This COP is going to take place in Brazil which is a country which is very interested in exploiting its own minerals and being part of the story of our renewables future. President Lula made explicit statements about stopping deforestation and encroachment on indigenous people's lands. It felt like a lot of the topics, that are closely related to the mining, extraction and processing of minerals, would be kind of colliding with the Brazilian agenda.

So the timing felt really good to think about this being the year to try to get minerals on the agenda.

Yes. Another reason that the timing felt good, is that last year, what we saw under the presidency of Antonio Guterres was the UN's panel on energy transition minerals. It can be regarded as the first foray of the UN into really thinking on the implications of more extraction of minerals in the context of transition towards renewables. I think in many ways it can also be regarded as a success in terms of actually getting diverse actors around the table to think about these things. However, the follow up has not been so successful, because we were promised a High-Level Expert Advisory Group that would have some powers to take forward some of the actionable recommendations of that. And for various reasons, among them tricky geopolitics and funding problems for the UN, that hasn't happened. So the COP process being one of the legislative arms of the UN emerged more and more as potentially quite a strong place to institutionalize it in the UN and perhaps give it a home to try and get some of these actionable recommendations off the ground.

Two weeks ago 200 organisations directed themselves with a letter to the parties negotiating at COP30 to ask them to put the topic of minerals on the COP agenda. What was the reasoning and what did it ask for? 

Even if this kind of discussion around minerals can be seen as throwing a stick in the spokes of the bike our argument is that actually the transition has to happen, and it won't happen unless it's a just one.

The question of minerals and mining is often relegated to the development or human rights or environment community. The climate community is mostly focused on decarbonizing as quickly as possible. And even if this kind of discussion around minerals can be seen as throwing a stick in the spokes of the bike our argument is that actually the transition has to happen, and it won't happen unless it's a just one. In our letter, we wanted to highlight that it will be necessary to make sure that we don't overshoot planetary boundaries which means considering potentially no go zones for mining, where there are rich biodiversity or areas under indigenous custodianship, free prior and informed consent for the indigenous people who occupy the lands on or near these mineral deposits is an essential part of this process, and not just a nice to have.

Reports of OECD and the UN speak about eight to ten percent of global greenhouse gas emissions being produced by minerals production.

There are very serious climate implications for the processing of minerals. And that actually speaks to a point that has been present in the COP for many years – the idea of tech transfer to poorer countries which we're still not seeing. Countries like for instance Indonesia are running all of their mining operations practically exclusively off diesel generators, doubling the amount of emissions, not only from the deforestation that's happening, but also the practice itself. And then you've got to process those minerals which also potentially causes carbon emissions. 

In the letter we are not just asking to incorporate this into a just transition mechanism that we hope will be established this COP. We're asking for something called the action mechanism which would instrumentalize this, make sure that minerals are part of it and take it further into something that could be continued on a multilateral basis in future COPs.

So there is hope that in the context of the UN General Secretary Panel on Transition Minerals. COP30 can be used to push the implementation some of these recommendations. What concretely do you think will be possible to achieve or what would be an outcome at COP that would please you? 

So at the start of the year, I think I would have kept my optimism fairly low for a number of different reasons knowing from other topics like Loss and Damage how long it can take to place something on the agenda. So my greatest wish at the beginning of the year was just to get this on the map, to make a start and to make this part of a discussion at COP that people were paying attention to. 

By now you are more optimistic as you have identified several mechanisms to place the topic of minerals? 

Now I'm daring to have a little bit more optimism because a few different pathways have made themselves clear in the course of the year, and some of them even look like they might be pathways which would pay off this year already, which would really be quite remarkable. One of those is that for a long time, civil society has been pushing for a just transition mechanism under the auspices of the COP. The idea that we ensure that the climate and the energy transition is a fair one, and we think about sectors such as agriculture and of those people who work in fossil fuels, like people working in coal mines. But up until now, there wasn't a huge amount of discussion about mining for these transition minerals and how that affects different countries, development pathways, their environment, their ability in the future to energize their own grids. And so we found that inserting this theme about just and responsible mineral extraction and use into this just transition discussion seemed to be a great home for it. 

So with the just transition mechanism you have found a vehicle that was already on the road to place the topic of minerals into? 

Yes, and we have been quite warmly received for that. So I think, should the just transition mechanism become embedded this year, which looks reasonably likely because the Brazilians are advocating for it, and they really want this to be one of their big wins from the year, we expect that there should be some mention about responsible mining and mineral use in there as well. 

We've had ten years of negotiating about how we're going to do it. Now it's time to put the plans in place to implement what we've been talking about.

Are there other potential pathways?

Another one is that the Brazilians and the UN community at large have decided that they want this COP to be the one that moves us away from negotiation and into implementation. So we've had ten years of negotiating about how we're going to do it. Now it's time to put the plans in place to implement what we've been talking about. The Brazilians are talking about an implementation roadmap. And if that should come to pass, this could be another way to address minerals and mining. We've been engaging with them a lot. We've been challenging it from all angles and we are also asking the Brazilians for covering decision. They have explicitly said this year that they won't be doing covering decisions but let’s see. And then just to make sure that this thing has longevity, we've also been talking to the Committee on Implementation Measures, which is a committee set up specifically to look at unintended implications of climate policy, for instance if you are planning to quadruple renewables, but you haven't looked at the question of whether or not the mining for those minerals has actually got its own climate implications. We've had a lot of good feedback from that committee that this is something that they'll be taking forward into their future work.

We often speak about transition minerals but actually the demand for minerals is very huge also from other sectors. Is that a useful term? Do you think action now being pushed from cop could have an impact on minerals being used for other sectors?

That is a good question. When you use the term transition minerals, you ignore all of the other uses. And you kind of play into this greenwashing. Terms like critical minerals we've just been handed by high consuming countries. I try and stay quite neutral myself and just say minerals, mineral mining and to avoid using that language. I do tend to the side of optimism in that even if there are already damages done, we are in a phase where resource rich countries are very aware of the need for their resources, and they have become agents in this conversation themselves. They're not just being handed the terms any more. 

I always was attracted to the UN COP process because, even if it is not perfect, at COP every country, no matter its size or economy, has a seat at the table and has an equal voice, other than at, for example, the G7 and the G20 that are exclusive clubs. In what other setting could Vanuatu be raising awareness about their rising sea levels? And similarly, there are not so many settings where, for example, the African group of negotiators can talk so loudly about both the mineral resources they have, but also their own need for their developing energy and development pathways.

Why do you think, even in the context of consuming countries, it could be the interest to higher these standards?

We are already overshooting many significant planetary boundaries, and if we continue to mine and exploit in the same way, we'll all be in trouble.

First of all is that we are already overshooting many significant planetary boundaries, and if we continue to mine and exploit in the way that we've been doing with the fossil fuel age, then we will overshoot them and we'll all be in trouble. Whether we've built the renewables or not, everybody will be in the same boat and we'll all be in trouble. The second, more kind of short term one, that in particular industry should be looking at, is that we know that responsible practices ultimately result in de-risked supply chains. If you speak to the people who mined for minerals, as opposed to the people who've been mining for more traditional resources like petrochemicals and steel, they'll tell you that one of the big barriers to entry is investment. Finance doesn't want to go there right now because a lot of the places where minerals are located are seen as being risky. Now we know that when a mining operation comes into a context where the community is already opposed perhaps there are legal challenges, there are closures, and problems for the mining operations further on down the line. I think about the Las Bambas copper mine, for example, in Peru, which has had hundreds of days of closure, resulting in millions of dollars of loss because of the legal challenges and complaints from the community. And that's a supply chain that's already well embedded. And we're talking about new locations, new minerals. It pays to get this thing right from the outset and to make sure that you do have the community on board and involved. And of course, if the community says no, then you need to look elsewhere. You know, they say no and absolutely not. Then this isn't the resource for you basically.

High consuming countries clearly have to reduce their consumption as one central contribution to climate change mitigation and the mitigation of impacts on human rights and the environment. And do you think they should start to extract and process more minerals themselves? 

I do see of a trend of high consuming countries trying to onshore mineral supply chains themselves. I think they tend to forget that one of the reasons why we handed it all over to China is that it's really dirty. It's massively polluting. Also, we are talking quite long timelines: It would take the European Union or the US years to qualify enough people in the techniques that you need to refine these minerals. What the current producing countries and regions have is years of expertise in recycling and circularity and resource use reduction. Yes, by all means, train those people up, it's right that we don't just send all of our pollution to China. But while you're doing that, take advantage of the expertise that we have now to already reduce our reliance on all of these resources.

It will be really interesting to see what will happen at COP and what role geopolitics will play. Good luck and thanks a lot for the conversation.