The rush toward renewable energy threatens to repeat the same exploitative patterns that defined Africa’s colonial past, unless global negotiators acknowledge a glaring blind spot in climate action: the human cost of mining the minerals powering the clean energy revolution.
That’s the urgent message from Ibrahima Aidara, Deputy Africa Director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, who argues COP30 represents a pivotal moment to embed justice into mineral supply chains.
For years, climate negotiations have zeroed in on emissions cuts and renewable deployment while sidestepping the uncomfortable reality of where the raw materials come from. Cobalt, lithium, copper, and rare earth elements sit at the heart of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries. Yet the assumption persisted that mineral supply was merely technical or economic, not a core climate concern. That assumption, Aidara insists, has become both outdated and dangerous.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations pulled no punches when he addressed this issue in July. António Guterres noted that critical minerals powering clean energy often come from countries with long exploitation histories, warning that history appears to be repeating itself through mistreated communities, trampled rights, and trashed environments. Without robust safeguards and equitable trade frameworks, he cautioned, the energy transition risks reproducing the injustices embedded in the fossil fuel era.
Africa sits uncomfortably at the center of this dilemma. The continent holds more than half the world’s cobalt, manganese, and platinum reserves, plus significant deposits of lithium, graphite, and rare earths. Yet over 600 million Africans still lack reliable electricity access, and less than five percent of global mineral processing happens on African soil. The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies roughly 70 percent of global cobalt, but communities see minimal benefit while dealing with child labor, unsafe working conditions, and displacement.
In Ghana, where artisanal and small-scale mining has caused water contamination and forest degradation, international firms are now prospecting for lithium in the Volta Region. Namibia and Botswana face green hydrogen and lithium projects that threaten Indigenous San communities’ land rights, often without meaningful consultation or consent. These aren’t isolated incidents. They illustrate what critics call the “port to pit” model, where raw resources get exported, leaving behind environmental damage, lost revenue, and negligible job creation.
Chile and Argentina tell similar stories. Lithium extraction in the Atacama threatens Indigenous water sources, cultural sites, and livelihoods, with communities challenging the lack of transparency and their exclusion from benefit sharing. The pattern has become depressingly familiar: resource extraction accelerates without adequate safeguards, threatening the very communities living closest to these minerals.
Aidara and other civil society leaders are pushing for concrete action at COP30. More than 150 organizations have signed an open letter urging negotiators to recognize that strengthening governance of transition mineral value chains represents a pillar of climate action, not an afterthought. Their first demand sounds simple but carries profound implications: acknowledge that mineral governance belongs squarely within climate negotiations.
The UN Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals outlined a new paradigm rooted in justice and equity, and the signatories want COP30 parties to formally endorse it. That endorsement matters because it establishes shared principles for how countries should approach mineral extraction, processing, and trade. Think of it as setting ground rules before the game gets further out of hand.
But principles alone won’t cut it. The proposed Belem Action Mechanism would create a new institutional arrangement within the UN climate framework to accelerate and support just transitions, especially in resource-rich countries. This mechanism would coordinate efforts, share knowledge, and provide technical and financial assistance. It’s designed to move beyond rhetoric into actual implementation.
The finance question looms large. Current climate funding typically flows toward large infrastructure projects, bypassing the communities bearing extraction’s heaviest burdens. Aidara argues global climate funds must condition financing on prior and informed consent from affected communities, create dedicated funding windows for Indigenous peoples and local communities, and support community-led development initiatives. Climate finance should empower those most impacted, not route around them.
African countries face both opportunity and risk as demand for critical minerals surges. The key lesson, according to Aidara, involves avoiding past extractive booms’ mistakes. That means developing clear national strategies aligned with long-term development goals, prioritizing value addition and domestic processing to escape the raw export trap, and insisting on environmental and human rights safeguards as investment preconditions.
Ghana stands at an interesting crossroads. As the country prepares to tap lithium reserves, it has a chance to design something different. Transparent contracting and community consultation could anchor projects in traditional land stewardship principles. Women and youth could gain meaningful participation in the mineral economy. Ghana’s gold mining history provides both cautionary tales and regulatory lessons, assuming policymakers pay attention.
Transparency and accountability need teeth. Aidara points to proven tools that require better implementation: mandatory disclosure laws covering payment transparency and beneficial ownership, support for initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, traceability systems tracking environmental and social impacts, encouragement of community monitoring, and promotion of open contracting with public access to mining agreements. Transparency should enable public scrutiny, legal accountability, and real consequences when abuse occurs.
The role of major powers like the United States and China deserves scrutiny. Their competition for mineral access cannot come at communities’ and ecosystems’ expense. Aidara calls for them to respect producer countries’ sovereignty, including rights to add value and regulate extraction, invest in fair partnerships rather than mere extraction deals, harmonize standards on environmental and human rights protections, back multilateral governance frameworks led by the UN, and avoid deals that undermine community rights or circumvent safeguards.
If their competition undermines justice, it will also undermine climate goals. Collaboration, not competition, must guide mineral governance’s future.
For African negotiators heading to COP30, the message rings clear: stand united, speak boldly, and lead the call for just transitions rooted in African realities. That means demanding recognition of mineral governance as central to implementing the Paris Agreement, pushing for mechanisms that ensure Africa’s voice shapes transition mineral policy, insisting on benefit sharing and local industrialization as non-negotiables, leveraging collective strength through the African Group of Negotiators and regional blocs, and ensuring Africa’s minerals serve Africa’s people first.
COP30 offers Africa an opportunity to shift the global conversation from extraction to equity. The energy transition cannot claim justice if Africa remains at the value chain’s bottom. This moment demands that negotiators translate aspiration into action, ensuring the clean energy future doesn’t replicate the extractive past.
The world needs transition minerals, but it doesn’t need them at any cost. Getting this right at COP30 means acknowledging uncomfortable truths about who pays the price for progress and who reaps the rewards. For too long, those two groups haven’t overlapped. Changing that pattern requires deliberate choices, enforceable standards, and political will.
Africa holds the cards. The question is whether global institutions will finally treat African nations as partners rather than resource pools. COP30 will reveal which future we’re choosing.
Source: newsghana.com.gh
