Global Development Institute podcast
Global Development Institute podcast
Could a Global Minerals Trust support the green transition? Interview with Saleem Ali
As the world moves towards more sustainable energy sources and infrastructure projects, demand for critical energy transition minerals is surging. Given the uneven distribution of such resources, how can we support cooperative resource management between countries while curbing heightening geopolitical tensions and potential supply chain disruptions?
In a recent paper published in Science, Saleem Ali and co-authors (including GDI's Jose Antonio Puppim De Oliveira) propose the creation of a Global Minerals Trust as a response to such challenges. In this episode of the GDI Podcast, Saleem joins Tomas Frederiksen to discuss the specifics of the proposal, including how it has been received so far and its potential implications for developing countries.
Read the paper here.
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Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Welcome to the Global Development Institute podcast. Based at the University of Manchester, we're Europe's largest research and teaching institute addressing poverty and inequality. Each episode, we'll bring you the latest thinking, insights, and debate in development study.
Speaker 2 [00:00:31] Okay, so my name is Tomas Frederiksen and I'm a Senior Lecturer at the Global Development Institute doing research on mining and development and with me today is Saleem Ali who is the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware and Chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Science. He's not just at Delaware, lots of other places, one a piece of him too, he's at Columbia, Georgetown, United Nations, University. A leading voice and very active in this field of minerals and mining and has a regular column with Forbes which makes you quite unique amongst academics so I'm delighted to have you here. Today we're talking about your recent paper, a global minerals trust could prevent inefficient and inequitable protectionist policies, which we did with a range of people including my colleague Jose Puppim de Oliveira um and this is out in uh a recent June 5th uh earlier this month uh edition of Science. So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 [00:01:49] Thank you so much, Tomas. Delighted to join you.
Speaker 2 [00:01:52] I was wondering if you could start by just explaining to us why you wrote the paper.
Speaker 3 [00:01:58] Yes, so my research is around environmental conflict resolution more broadly. And I'm always looking for opportunities to find pathways for cooperation where there are zones of conflict. And within that broad domain, a lot of my empirical work has been on the extractive industries and conflicts around abstraction. And so, you know, my goal in this paper was to try and find a pathway to resolve the ongoing geopolitical conflict between the West and China particularly, but more broadly also with other nations that do not see themselves as part of the Western alliance. So, and I'm driven by two other additional... Reasons. One is, you know, I see myself as an environmental system scientist and that's why I find geography as a very appropriate home for me because my training is both in the natural sciences and the social sciences. And as a system scientist, I've been concerned about the very reductionist approach that has been taken around critical minerals, where countries are saying, look, we are going to have self-sufficiency. On this mineral because it's important for defense or it's important for these particular technologies for the green transition and what have you, without recognizing that there are certain fundamental geological constraints around where you can open minds. And then secondly, from an economic efficiency perspective, because I am very much a pragmatist in when it comes to trying to resolve many of our resource challenges. And one of my, you know, last year I wrote a short piece in Nature where I tried to highlight that this is a problem we are facing in the whole conversation about the Green Transition is that there's this sense that we have some, you know, optimal path. And in fact, you have trade-offs constantly, and from an economic efficiency perspective, you have to look at those trade-off and figure out which areas are you willing to take more risk on, whether it's environmental risk or economic risk, to then chart your path forward. And so that has what has driven this research around what what could be a way by which we can have multilateral cooperation on minerals so that you do not have this race for new mines where you might not have good geological reserves and you actually get an outcome which is therefore more problematic. So that's what has driven it and I think that, you know, we have had enough engagement from a wide range of disciplines on this idea so that it isn't pie in the sky as you know getting published in science is not easy and we've had three peer reviews with the editor was extremely involved in the whole process to make sure that this comes out as realistic recognizing that this is a somewhat revolutionary idea because countries are often afraid of eroding any sense of state sovereignty around natural resources and so that's how this came about and. You know, we feel that it is practical and a win-win in many ways.
Speaker 2 [00:05:42] Right, so maybe could you tell us a bit more about what you propose in the paper?
Speaker 3 [00:05:47] Yes. So we propose that countries that are both suppliers of minerals and consumers of minerals cooperate to form a trust for minerals that are needed for the green transition. And we are very careful that we're focusing on those minerals which are needed for some of these green technologies. That are particularly needed for solar battery technologies and smart grids and the like. And we've also articulated how you would vet which technologies they are. For example, there is a UN entity called the Climate Technology Center Network, which could be one of the mechanisms by which you say these are the technologies which be eligible to buy manuals from the trust. By having both producers and consumers as trustees, you create an opportunity for collaboration between them and making sure that you do not have a weaponization of mental supply, which has been the concern with reference to China that has driven a lot of the anxiety in the West. And you also have a mechanism whereby And you can have a stockpile and that way when you have fluctuations in prices you still have some buffering for countries especially in the global south who have been concerned about at times not being able to sell their metals and the vagaries of prices which can lead to boom and bust cycles and all. So it also is an attraction that way for the Global South. And there's also built into the system the opportunity to have a circular economy around metals where you can actually lease metals from the stockpile rather than selling them and thereby you create an incentive for product take back. So that also is more favorable to environmentalist concerns about extractivism that you know you have admirably written about a lot that critical minerals sort of new frontier of extractivist and so on. So we want to mitigate that in a system scientists certainly that's what I would want to is we want to make sure as much as we can have circularity and making sure you have minimal impact but recognizing that there are there's no freedom there will be some trade-offs in every context. And so that's where I do differ from some of my friends in critical geography, where there is just much more a diagnostic approach, where it's like, there are these problems and this is extractivism. Like, of course, yes, it is. But ultimately, we have to solve the problem. We can't have paralysis by analysis. So we have to figure out the next step. And, you know, as someone who's trained in planning, more sort of applied geography, I'm more forward looking in that way. And that's This paper is written in that spirit.
Speaker 2 [00:08:50] Um, so for listeners who aren't kind of aware of what the problems are with critical minerals, what do you kind of see as the problems at this? This trust would solve. I mean, is it that there's not enough? Is it that there's too much? What do you kind of, how would you explain those challenges?
Speaker 3 [00:09:09] There's a fear factor about weaponization of supply, which is leading to countries in the West suggesting that they want to open new mines. And you well know from this imperative in terms of policy in Europe, for example, you have the Critical Raw Materials Act. They're like, we want to have 10% of sourcing of metals from Europe. Or you have in the US the Mineral Security Partnership saying, we need to open mines in the U.S. Without recognizing that first of all, those reserves may not be good So you have very inefficient minds if you do that. And then the other being that you have so many community conflicts that, of course, you are well familiar with in your work that you may not even be able to get a mind for the first, you know, just the litigation and all that. So you create a very inefficient system at multiple levels by trying to do this near-shoring, Fredenshoring whatever you want to call it. And you end up having more extraction, less efficiency. So if you have a minerals trust, you make sure that those places where you already have extraction, where you have downstream processing capacity in places like China or Indonesia or wherever, that those countries are providing that assurance and you do not have that fear factor then and having to open new mines. It's fine to diversify. There may well be some really good deposits where you do want to open a new mine in the West. And that's fine. But you don't want to put the cart before the horse. You want to do it because it's a good deposit, not because you want to have this marginalization, vilification, greater rift with the countries that already have that capacity.
Speaker 2 [00:10:55] One of the things you talk about in the paper is that there's a kind of load of, there's some historical precedence to this idea of a global trust. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about those.
Speaker 3 [00:11:08] Yeah, I mean, this notion of planetary trust, or trust for future generations, it goes back to the work of Georgetown Law Professor Edith Brown Weiss, and she wrote in the 80s about this idea. But it was more about making sure we have resources for the future generation, it wasn't focused on minerals. There was this sense that resources that we have for the planet in certain ways, those which we need to make our civilization sustainable. They, in some ways, transcend state sovereignty in that way, because they are needed for that creature good. And so, theoretically, the idea of a Mendel's trust is anchored in that line of thought. But then I also am very conscious as a planner and very practical, you know, kind of person who works with the UN, I know how important state sovereignty is. We know there is the UN General Assembly. Has this permanent sovereignty over natural resources that was more or less resolved through the UN General Assembly resolution. And so you want to make sure that that is respected in a way that…and the way we dealt with that is there are other mandates that came through the UN General Assembly and other multilateral mechanisms such as the Charter for Nature and so on, which I discussed in the paper, which would allow us to say, look, yes, this trust would make sure that you can't weaponize the Then you have to be able to share those resources for sale, you're not giving them for free, you are still being paid for them. It's just that you can't weaponize them. So it's very similar to the idea we've also put forward is, you know, under the Paris agreement, you have the nationally determined contributions on emissions, you now countries are allowed to have them. In some ways, here you've got a nationally determined contribution for minerals supply for the green transition. And those countries will be paid accordingly. But they can't constrained supply for political reasons. And that's what's key. Now in an ideal world, if you think about the WTO, if the WT was functioning, you wouldn't need a trust, right? Because the WTo would be, people would be saying, look, you can't constrain supply because you have to trade and so on. Now we saw in 2012 with China and the rare earths conflict where they constrained supply. That the WTO had a dispute resolution system. The US, Europe, Japan, they took China to the WTOS dispute resolution system, and China lost the case, and it actually complied. They had to allow for more supply. But, uh... We see now that the WTO's dispute resolution system is dysfunctional, it's not working plus the WT itself has been eroded quite a bit. So that's why having a trust very specifically for this purpose becomes more important.
Speaker 2 [00:14:31] So this paper was partly aimed at the recent G7 meeting and out of that G7 meeting came a critical minerals action plan which talked about standards based markets and talked about infrastructure and economic corridors and a big emphasis on finance. What do you kind of make of those moves around and critical minerals.
Speaker 3 [00:14:57] Yeah, I mean, I think the G7 right now has been configured as a very narrow alliance. Of course, Russia was excluded after the Crimean invasion. It used to be G8. And then China is not part of it because this is an alliance of democracies. But I was heartened by the fact that they did not. Mention particular countries that they see as themselves being a foil against, which has been in the rhetoric a lot. When you hear the speakers on the meeting, they will say specifically, you know, this we are worried about China, we're worried about Russia. But the communique on critical Mindus had no mention of China. And it was, in fact, the other thing which was heartening is that it mentioned the G20. And particularly the group of Global South efforts around the G20. And that showed that there is a willingness to say, look, in the long run, we will have to cooperate with a larger tent than just the G7. And there's a recognition of this reality that China has got so much dominance. And not just because of, you know, their own strategic investments, but geologically too. I mean, they have some amazing. Reserves of minerals because of their geology, just the way in which they are situated on the planet's crust. So I was heartened by that. I do think that the trust idea will likely find a better home under the G20 umbrella to be moved forward, because there you have China, you have Russia, you have Indonesia, you have Turkey, you've got Saudi Arabia, you have a lot of these other countries that a major men's room players. And so my hope is in our G20 next year, we'll be chaired by the United States of America. And let's see this could open an opportunity for creative thinking and using the idea like a trust to get cooperation rather than having rampant extractivism everywhere.
Speaker 2 [00:17:16] I think that's really interesting. Just as an aside, have you been able to test this idea out with different kind of political figures from producer and consumer countries, or is this the floating of the idea?
Speaker 3 [00:17:33] Yes, we have had conversations with the Canadian government, you know, who are hosting the G7 and we did a policy brief also with the UN University's Institute for Water Environment and Health which is based in Canada. I am also an Australian citizen and I've got good ties in Australia too and we have noted this prospect to the Australians. The European Union is very interested. In the paper, you will see we have an acknowledgment to the European Union's parliamentary research office. And there have been people that have been really helpful and supportive. And I've talked to also the energy commissioner for the European union, Jette Jorgensen, who was also the co-chair of the UN Secretary General's panel on critical minerals. They see value in this idea. But you know as with any of these efforts you need champions and we are hoping we'll get some. I've been pleased to see that they have not done the eye roll and say oh you know here is an ivory tower academic coming in with this very idealistic concept. I think they see that this is predicated in pragmatism and I think my experience with the UN has given me enough legitimacy that they will take it seriously But it is It's likely to also create some concerns among people who do want a rift between East and West and who want new mines and who just want that there should be this tension around critical minerals so there can be greater parochial investment. So I think there will be always that and we just have to keep making the argument. To those forces that this can be a win-win, ultimately. And they can have opportunities for investment in other ways without having to just focus on creating a rift between different players on the international scene.
Speaker 2 [00:19:47] I guess, you know, at the global development industry, we're interested in developing countries and how various policy initiatives and processes either hinder or help development. Can you talk us through a bit more about how you see the trust working for developing countries?
Speaker 3 [00:20:09] Yes, so both in terms of consumption and production, the trust can really support developing countries. On the production side, you would have that assurance that they are able to sell into the trust without those price fluctuations I was referring to, because they would be the stockpile mechanisms. It would be like a bank, you know, but people don't stop you from making deposits into a bag. And you can get interest on those deposits. In this case, you would actually be paid for them. So Indonesia, for example, is very interested in this idea. And we just had it presented at a major forum in Jakarta, where one of the co-authors is Indonesian. And the vice chancellor of the IPB University made a speech about it and said, This would be an opportunity there. On the demand side also, you know, as countries want to be able to buy resources to develop their own industries around critical mangoes. This would be for specifically the larger developing countries like India or Nigeria. It could be very helpful for them too.
Speaker 2 [00:21:35] You talk in the in the paper about mineral producing developing countries being able to negotiate their prices to buy back any technologies manufactured from their minerals affordably to support their own transition. What did you have in mind?
Speaker 3 [00:21:51] Yeah, I mean, so like battery technologies, for example, if a country like DRC is contributing so much cobalt towards factory technologies, and down the road, if they want to develop their own battery manufacturing industry, I think through the trust mechanism, it depends how you develop this further, you could have the resources. Uh provided for you know downstream capacity building it could be part of the negotiations for our drc saying we're going to sell into the trust but you have to make sure that you also provide us the technology transfer down the road um so right now we have no institution which would even allow for those kinds of conversations to happen at a multilateral Right now, everything is bilateral. You know, countries are making the EU with DRC. And many of those are very ephemeral. I think the other reason for having this trust concept is if it is predicated in international institutions, then you build more resilience there. You don't have an ad hoc arrangement where one government changes and the policy is thrown out. You have more likelihood that it won't be. Uh more resilient. You know of course we have the international legal system is all soft law at some level but I think here you still have more potential for having a multilateral engagement stick if you do it through something like this rather than you know just individual countries making deals.
Speaker 2 [00:23:31] So in my work, I've kind of mainly focused on the local impacts of extractive industry in the developing world and the kind of the two big issues that often come out are around land rights and water. Do you see the kind this trust idea engaging with those issues or is that kind of delegated to the national level?
Speaker 3 [00:23:58] You know, and I have done, you know, most of my earlier work was on local impacts as well, especially with indigenous people. So I'm very sensitive to those concerns. So absolutely, it can be incorporated at some level in terms of vetting which mines you source the minerals from. I don't want to create another certification system. We have too many of them. That's not the goal of the trust. We have the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. We have all the different OECD standards. We've got the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining and Metals. We have so many of these entities. So I don't want to reinvent the wheel there, but you can incorporate some vetting process to make sure that the sourcing is done from mines where there is certain level of control. But I also am conscious that those kinds of processes can be used to exclude developing countries. So you have to be, it's tricky. I think Irma has been very conscious of that. So for example, they've certified a mine in Zimbabwe, which is otherwise a country that's often a pariah in the West. But they felt that that mine was appropriate. So as long as you have initiatives which are conscious, and I have great respect for Irma, I think if it can be upscaled and then you have more. Countries and companies who are willing to get the certification through ARMA, that would be really important one that can be linked to the trust. But it needs to be upscale. Right now, it's too narrow and if you just focus on a few of them, then you wouldn't have enough sourcing of the metal, especially from China and other places. So you want to make sure there is responsible engagement, you have compliance with local laws around that. But the goal of the To make sure we don't have new extractivism, which would still help with your concerns around environmental and social impact. The other thing, of course, is we have now this horizon for deep sea mining potentially for sourcing some of the critical metals. And under the International Seabed Authority, there are regulations which are being formulated. Of course, the environmental protests against deep sea-mining have led to unilateral action by countries like the U.S. Recently. The metals from the deep sea could also be sold into the trust through the ISA or other mechanisms. I've been kind of agnostic on deep sea mining and in some cases my writings have tried to suggest that it may have some advantages and some of those advantages come from your concerns because you don't have resettlement of communities and completely appalling land rights concerns and all when you are mining in the deep sea. Especially where I'm talking about in the Clarion Clipperton zone. This is not, we're not talking about the coastal areas of PNG, which the activists keep conflating between the two. There's no relationship there. So that could be another way out. But even with deep sea mining, the only way I would see that as positive is if we have less extractivism on land. You don't want to have more. You're going to mine more in the deep sea and then and the trust can be a way to. Make sure that happens so that right now the concern is you may get deep sea mining and you still may get more terrestrial mines. But if you have a trust, which is saying, look, selectively, we're only going to buy these metals from these sources, but that means you're not going to get those other ones which are dumping tailings into the coral triangle, which it's happening with some nickel mines, then that makes sense.
Speaker 2 [00:27:40] I think that comes back to your earlier point about trade-offs, doesn't it?
Speaker 3 [00:27:46] And as a system scientist, there are tools I have used. We've done industrial ecology analysis. You can compare. You can do a life cycle analysis comparing terrestrial minerals and deep sea minerals, or mining nickel from one part of the world versus another on terrestrial sources. So let's look at the data. In some cases, the impacts will be more in one and less in the other. You can a social NCA. There are methodologies. It's not just looking at water and more. Sort of reductionist technical indicator impact. You can look at social life cycle analysis, you know, there are many tools around that.
Speaker 2 [00:28:21] Great. I was going to ask you about deep sea. I'm glad I'm glad you went in on that yourself. I think I guess just to round us off a bit, I was wondering, you know, where do you see the kind of critical minerals debate going forwards?
Speaker 3 [00:28:39] It has become this bonanza for researchers and think tanks and consultancies where they see the opportunity and a lot of it has become very repetitive and not helpful. I see the debate going into two different directions. One is There's going to be much more of a push to look for alternatives to those metals where we are seeing constraints. But there will be limits to what alternatives you can find. And so there's going be some, at some point where we'll say, look, we can move from the lithium to sodium, we could move from cobalt to lithium ion phosphate, we try to have some adjustments, but ultimately, we are limited by the periodic table. We will have to figure out where these trade-offs are going to be the most appropriate. So that will settle, I think, in a few decades. People will recognize that there are limits to innovation around that. We still have a way to go. I think we can innovate in certain areas. Vanadium is another one where I think there's a lot of potential. The second area where I see this going is. With reference to new projects, which right now are being developed. There's a lot of optimism around new projects. Portugal's opening a new mine. I did a Fulbright Fellowship in Portugal last year and with him, I have a lot interest, but a lot opposition. Scandinavia, a lot new projects going on there. You said you're doing work in Serbia, let's see if they're able to resurrect that mine project, which became a huge political hot potato across the spectrum. So that's going to kind of settle down at some point. People will realize this is what we can do and this is where opposition is so strong that we just can't do it. And that's where I think multilateralism will again dawn on people. Ultimately, we will need to find ways to cooperate on this. So that is why I am trying to be proactive and say, let's do it now rather than your head in ten different directions and after 15 years sector is realizing We can't open all these new mines. Maybe we'll get some wins. Like Germany, I think, has done a great job with the lithium extraction from geothermal brines. That's a great win-win. They're able to do it with low impact. They are also generating energy. That is wonderful. So you may find some of those, but there will be limits to it. So that's where it will need to calibrate eventually. And that's when multilateralism hopefully will take hold.
Speaker 2 [00:31:25] And just what are the kind of big questions that you're going to be grappling with in your upcoming research?
Speaker 3 [00:31:34] Well, one of my areas that I'm really, my next step of research is the materiality of artificial intelligence. I feel that this is a huge research area and the question of if we are going to upscale on artificial intelligence the way we are doing, what will be the material implications of that has not been addressed. A lot has been done on energy. But not on materials, partly because there's so much secrecy around the materials, which are used in GPUs and AI infrastructure and all. So that I see as a major new area, because it has become so ubiquitous now in terms of conversations at every level that we will make AI do this, that, and the other. Without recognizing what the material implications would be overall. So that I see as the next big area for research for me personally.
Speaker 2 [00:32:42] Sounds really interesting. And if people want to follow your research, where's the best place to find you?
Speaker 3 [00:32:51] Well, you know, LinkedIn, they can find me there. I'm on X, I'm a blue sky of late, which is a bit of an echo chamber, but it's okay for those who want to be there. And then certainly, you now, I also moderate a listserv called EcoMinerals. So people are interested in joining that. You can send me an email, you can just Google me and find my email and I'll add you to that.
Speaker 2 [00:33:18] Thank you very much, Salim Ali. This has been a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 3 [00:33:23] Thank you so much, Thomas.