Rapidly scaling up renewable energy to limit future warming requires a sharp increase in the supply of critical minerals like cobalt, nickel and lithium for technologies including solar panels, battery storage and electric vehicles.
Yet sourcing these minerals often comes at a steep cost for both the environment and local communities.
Now, a coalition of U.N. scientists is proposing a new way forward: a global minerals trust.
“We need to replace today’s fractured, competitive, and extractive model with one rooted in transparency, justice, and long-term resilience,” Kaveh Madani, a professor with the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and a co-author of the proposal and accompanying policy brief, said in a press release.
Broadly, a global minerals trust would treat critical green energy minerals as shared global assets “for the fair use of beneficiaries who might otherwise feel compelled to compete over them,” the scientists write in an article published in Science.
Countries would retain sovereignty and ownership of their resources, but the trust would coordinate trade to ensure a stable supply and adherence to environmental and social standards.
