A clean energy future hinges on minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements. But the race to secure them puts pressure on the places where they are mined. With some supply and processing concentrated in just a few countries, these critical raw materials (CRMs) have also become a geopolitical flashpoint.
To secure independent sources, the United States and European Union are moving supply chains to aligned regions-producing more at home, bringing industries back or moving operations to allied countries. But the rush to expand production risks repeating the extractive patterns that have long burdened communities contributing the least to climate change.
Simply shuffling where minerals are mined does not automatically make extraction more ethical or sustainable. In a commentary published in January in the journal Nature Energy, researchers propose a new framework of "just-shoring" to shift focus from competition and security to the rights and interests of those whose lands are most at risk.
"Right now, powerful, often Western, governments and firms are attempting to reshape the geographies of supply chains without changing the rules of extraction," said lead author Jessica DiCarlo, human geographer and political ecologist at the University of Utah. "If we don't rethink who benefits and who bears the costs, we risk repeating the same injustices of the fossil fuel era under a 'green' label."
Shoring up supply chains
Critical raw materials power everything from wind turbines and electric vehicles to semiconductors and advanced defense systems. But mining and processing are concentrated in a few countries, making global supply chains particularly vulnerable; China, for example, dominates mining and refining of rare earth elements.
Governments and firms typically pursue three strategies for securing independent CRM sources: On-shoring by developing new domestic operations; re-shoring by reestablishing previously offshored industries; and friend-shoring by relocating or expanding supply chains to geopolitically aligned countries. Reshuffling where CRM operations occur may yield components for green energy, but it also threatens health, air, water, biodiversity and livelihoods-with limited assessment of whether the project mitigates climate change at all.
More than half of proposed facilities are located on or near agrarian or Indigenous land. Some frameworks, like the Paris Agreement and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals recommend a shift to local resource control, but only on a voluntary basis. Just-shoring pushes beyond best practices to make accountability and transparency enforceable, giving communities a legal right to co-govern throughout the entirety of the mineral lifecycle, from initial exploration and permitting through the final stages of closure and clean-up and recycling. It is guided by three questions: Who benefits? Whose risks are amplified? How much material extraction is necessary for a just transition?
"We cannot build a low-carbon future on sacrifice zones," DiCarlo said. "Communities are told extraction is necessary for climate action, but too often they are also excluded from decision making or benefits and, instead, left to absorb the costs."
The authors argue that the rush for critical minerals could undermine the very climate goals they are meant to serve. While decarbonization is urgent, urgency cannot be an excuse for extraction that deepens inequality or damages environments.
