Sadly, this strategy has failed to seize the moment.
The long-awaited Critical Minerals Strategy was finally published by the UK Government last month.
The plan is broadly to increase domestic production, give more state support to British companies operating abroad, sign more critical mineral trade agreements and bolster the role of the City of London in global mining.
READ: Military diverting critical materials from renewables
But the strategy fails on its own terms - specifically the stated goal to end over-reliance on foreign imports.
Lithium
If we increase our demand to the degree set out, there’s nowhere near enough metals in Cornish soil to plug the gap – besides the contestations that domestic mining will itself bring.
And when it comes to where we’ll be getting the bulk of supply, the strategy neglects to lay out a plan for the just and reciprocal partnerships with resource-rich countries needed for both a fair and feasible global governance of critical minerals.
The strategy rightly highlights the need for a circular economy of critical minerals. But stating that Britain lithium demand will “increase by 1,100 per cent”, while ignoring how this makes a mockery of one country's fair share of global reserves, shows a glaring blind spot on the need for demand reduction.
The British Geological Survey reported that world total production of lithium in 2022 was 148,900 tonnes. The International Energy Agency’s analysis of announced projects indicates that lithium supply will grow to 450,000 tonnes around 2030.
Meanwhile, the government's Critical Minerals Strategy forecasts UK lithium demand to be 113,400 tonnes in 2030.
Militarisation
This suggests the demand for lithium in 2030 will equate to 25 per cent of global supply: just one country – out of nearly two hundred nations – seeking a quarter of the world's lithium.
Surely this, rather than campaigners’ calls for an exploration of forms of degrowth, is what is idealistic and unfathomable?
The strategy announces a new ‘growth minerals’ list to accompany the existing list from a 2024 ‘criticality assessment’, to anticipate future demand of minerals for “growth-driving sectors".
Sadly, this strategy has failed to seize the moment.
There is a serious lack of transparency around the political assumptions behind which sectors the government seeks to grow – with deliberate obfuscations. For example, it says: “Due to sensitivities, demand estimates for the defence sector have been excluded.”
This is worrying, especially since Global Justice Now’s own research has shown that demand for critical minerals is being driven in large part by militarisation - despite it most commonly being associated with green technologies.
Contradiction
If the government intends, as it claims, to use the growth minerals list to “support prioritisation of resources”, the door must be opened to listening to what different stakeholders, such as civil society and the public at large, consider to be the areas of the economy that need to grow.
We would argue that a military sector should not be first in line for scarce resources. It supports a meagre 0.83 per cent of British jobs, is focused on projecting global power rather than the defence, and enriches asset managers far more than creating jobs for working class communities.
Areas of the economy that genuinely benefit people’s lives and tackle the climate crisis – like renewable energy generation and NHS medical technologies – must be the at the heart of a proactive industrial strategy. This approach can make real a vision of ‘public luxury, private sufficiency’.
Securing “supplies of critical minerals from key trading partners [and] resource-rich countries” is a big piece of the strategy, which commits to expanding free trade agreements to include critical mineral chapters and sign specific new critical mineral deals.
A fundamental contradiction is fudged. There are some warm words about supporting value addition and local benefit in resource-rich countries in these new partnerships.
Stewardship
But this lies diametrically opposed to more concrete commitments around the use of trade policy levers solely to secure the Britain's supply and “open and expand markets for UK industry and investors”.
What global south countries need is a transformation of the usual free trade arsenal so that they can pursue sustainable economic development and ensure extraction causes the least harm possible.
The strategy calls out “the impact of export controls on critical minerals”, turning a blind eye to the fact that such trade policy tools are vital to those countries historically subordinated in the global economy and their ability to protect their industrial policy space.
The government cannot balk at this if it is serious about its “mission to reset the UK’s relationship with the Global South.”
To talk of mineral extraction and not face up to the serious harms of mining shows not only a disregard for human dignity and planetary stewardship, but a lack of seriousness around supply chain stability.
Transformation
The strategy contains nods only to ‘voluntary’ and ‘guiding’ principles rather than any binding responsibilities on mining companies to limit extractive harms. Vacuous ‘ESG’ buzzwords are not enough.
With all the new commitments made around UK public finance institutions providing support to UK mining companies abroad, what we need to see is strong conditionalities imposed on how these companies operate and who gains from their presence.
What’s more, new mineral trade agreements should explicitly protect partners’ policy and regulatory space; exclude nefarious investor-state dispute settlement protections, which investors use to sue countries over policies they think harm their profits; and contain binding provisions on environmental protection, human rights and corporate responsibility.
Facing the real risks and complexities of critical mineral supply chains, this moment provides a historic opportunity to reverse decades of unequal exchange.
Sadly, this strategy has failed to seize the moment. That means it’s now up to all of us to push for meaningful transformation – and win.
This Image
Triangle of Sacrifice / Sonandes (BO): Guely Morató Loredo (BO), Víctor Mazón Gardoqui (ES). "This work bears witness to the environmental impact of lithium mining in the Andes, home to 65 per cent of global reserves. It consists of a durational installation with three sculptures carved from local minerals, monitored in real-time and exposed to a water-dropping mechanism which translates the two million liters needed per ton of lithium carbonate. Ars Electronica / Creative Commons 2.0.
This Author
Cleodie Rickard is the trade campaigner manager at Global Justice Now.
