The Just Transition in Practice: From Capital Markets to Critical Minerals

In this episode, we explore the intersection of finance, justice and the energy transition - and what a truly “just” approach to mining looks like in practice. We discuss the role of investors in helping to ensure the transition to net zero is not only fast, but fair - and why justice, accountability and strong institutions may be the defining ESG issues of our time.

Speakers include:

• Soledad Mills I Senior Vice President at TDi Sustainability
•  Ashley Hamilton Claxton | Head of Responsible Investment at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM)

Ashley Hamilton Claxton is a responsible investment specialist at RLAM, where she focuses on stewardship, sustainability, and long-term value creation for clients. With extensive experience in environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration, Ashley works closely with companies, policymakers and industry stakeholders to drive meaningful progress on systemic sustainability challenges.

Transcript

[00:00] Soledad Mills

Hello, and welcome to Suits & Boots, the TDi podcast series. I'm Soledad Mills, Senior Vice President at TDi Sustainability. In this episode, we'll be exploring the intersection of finance, justice, and the energy transition, and what a truly just approach to mining looks like in practice. I'm joined today by Ashley Hamilton Claxton, Head of Responsible Investment at Royal London Asset Management. A social scientist by training, Ashley has become a leading voice in the investment community on the just transition, stewardship, and the role of governance in sustainable markets. Together, we'll discuss the role of investors in helping to ensure the transition to net zero is not only fast, but fair, and why justice, accountability, and strong institutions may be the defining ESG issues of our time. Welcome, Ashley - great to have you here today.

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

Thank you, Sol.

Soledad Mills

Ashley, you've described yourself as a social scientist by training who landed in finance by accident. Can you tell us a bit about that journey, and how your grounding in social systems influences your approach to capital allocation and stewardship today?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

Yes, indeed. If you had asked me 20 years ago - 20 years plus, when I finished my master's degree - if I would be working in finance, I probably would have laughed. So I definitely landed here by accident. As I said, Canadian by birth, I now live in the UK, and I did a master's degree in political science and a bachelor's degree in political science and sociology, very much grounded in social science. I was really interested in how companies - at the time it was called social responsibility - thought about their own responsibilities to society. Back in the mid-2000s, this idea of corporate social responsibility was growing, and I found it really interesting. What I found especially interesting was the fact that shareholders sometimes also cared about what companies were doing in the world. I had assumed that all shareholders cared about was making money, so why would they care about things like human rights? I studied that and didn't think you could actually do that for a job, frankly. But through a number of events, I ended up at a small non-profit in Canada that was helping shareholders talk to companies they invested in, particularly about human rights. I started looking at the mining sector in particular, but many other sectors as well. So here I am, I guess, 20 years later. I now work for Royal London Asset Management. We are the asset management arm of Royal London - the largest mutually owned pensions and life insurance company in the UK. Mutually owned means we're owned by our members; we don't have shareholders. That gives us the benefit and good fortune of being able to think long-term. We also have a very strong social purpose as a business, which lends itself to being long-term stewards of capital and really thinking deeply about being responsible investors. So yes, it's been a very interesting journey. I now lead a team of 17 people and work in the investment function within Royal London.

Soledad Mills

Fantastic. Funnily enough, I started my career in investor engagement with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, so I was also very interested in how investment can drive change in companies. ICCR did amazing work then and still does amazing work now. I worked with them early in my career and went to visit them in New York, so that's exciting.

Soledad Mills

From an investor perspective, how do you define a just transition in operational terms beyond net-zero and decarbonisation targets? And what elements need to be in place for it to be credible and measurable in financial strategies?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

Like everyone else, we had been working on climate change going back to 2017, 2018 and 2019. But we wanted to take a slightly different approach and think about what people weren't talking about. Everyone was talking about climate science, and rightly so, but we didn't want to be just another voice in the wind on this. We wanted to make a particular difference. So we focused on what was, at the time, a relatively unknown part of the Paris Agreement - the concept of the just transition. We define a just transition as ensuring that the transition to a low-carbon economy intentionally and proactively considers and addresses the social and economic impacts and opportunities. In practice, that means we want companies we invest in to think about the impact on their employees, customers and communities as they make plans to transition, adapt or become more resilient. We focused a big portion of our climate activity - in terms of engagement and voting - on the social aspects of climate change. I'm Canadian by birth, and I grew up in Alberta in the oil and gas sector. I can absolutely tell you that the way you create climate change in Alberta is not by putting loads of people out of work or telling them the industry they work in is bad. You have to bring people along. You need economic opportunities, retraining and support. I felt strongly that not enough people were talking about this. I say this all the time: climate change is not just an environmental issue; it is fundamentally a socioeconomic issue. If you think about it that way, it changes how you approach it, and that has been really important for us.

Soledad Mills

That sounds like Royal London Asset Management has been ahead of the curve in identifying the importance of a just transition and working on it for several years, including its broader socioeconomic implications. How have you operationalised this - through stewardship priorities, voting policies, research or risk assessment tools?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

We have taken on various engagement programmes. We started with a partnership with Friends Provident Foundation and later with Border to Coast, and we focused on engagement in some of the high-impact sectors. We started with utilities. We asked utility companies to create a just transition plan, and we undertook a multi-year engagement with a UK company called SSE, a Scottish utility company. Over time, we got SSE to publish the first ever just transition plan, which was very exciting. That involved having them think deeply about what they needed to consider for the people who would enable the business model transition. That was one proof point. The second area has been voting. Last year, for example, we supported a number of shareholder proposals on the just transition, including at FedEx and Nexon. We also integrate the just transition into our assessment of companies when we are looking at whether they can transition to a low-carbon economy. We undertake deep-dive assessments of our top carbon-emitting companies - including mining companies - and part of that assessment looks at just transition factors and how social issues are being considered. That can directly feed into investment decisions. We feed the analysis back to our investment teams, and they take that into account in their decisions. We also run a number of equity tilt funds, which overweight or underweight companies based on ESG criteria. One of the factors those funds use is input from my team on whether the company can transition, and how it is performing on the just transition in particular. So it influences things in a number of ways, depending on the fund. We think it is an important part of making a rounded assessment of climate.

Soledad Mills

That's really impressive, especially in high-impact, hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as mining. How do you translate issues like free, prior and informed consent, land rights, community benefit sharing, and regional transition risks into financially material risks that investors and companies need to incorporate?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

For mining, I would say we don't really need to translate it. These social issues - justice and fairness issues - are at the absolute heart of financial risk for mining companies. Mining is a place-based activity. If there are humans in the place where you're digging, you have to consider these factors. Community unrest, employee health and safety - these are directly linked to material financial risks. A mine that gets shut down by an unhappy community, or that has a huge health and safety accident, can have very significant consequences. We've seen this in Brazil and in Panama, where mines have been shut down due to disputes with governments or local communities. I feel strongly that companies that are transparent about these risks and manage them well are much more likely to be resilient over time. They'll be better long-term investments and less prone to shocks. In the mining sector, this is not about perfection. Mining companies operate in challenging environments. They have cyclical business models. There are always health and safety risks, environmental risks and difficult relationships with communities. So what we look for is not perfection, but continuous improvement and transparency. Historically, the sector has often been quite secretive, or at least perceived that way. Perceptions in this industry are a huge driver of risk. Building a culture of transparency and continuous improvement ultimately creates more trust in a sector that is genuinely not trusted by many people.

Soledad Mills

Taking a step back and looking at broader ESG, in a recent article you described governance and the rule of law as the defining ESG issue of 2026. Why do you see institutional strength and democratic accountability as foundational to sustainable investment?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

I wrote this article recently, and I suppose it goes back to my roots in politics and sociology. One of the first jobs I did at Royal London was in corporate governance, so governance is a bit of an old love of mine. Out of the E, S and G - environmental, social and governance - governance has been the one that has often been forgotten or taken for granted over the last few years because climate has been such a dominant focus. But I really do think good governance underpins everything. A company can be doing a great deal of good work on sustainability, but if it has poor governance, that can undermine all of it. Governance underpins stability and predictability. At a systemic level, predictable institutions and legal systems that fairly enforce contracts and treat all parties fairly are the foundations of functioning markets. Sustainability absolutely needs that as a core foundation. At a more micro level, if you think about why governance matters in the mining sector, mining companies are often dealing directly with governments and often operating in politically sensitive regions. Companies in poorly governed jurisdictions can find it very difficult. So I think democracy and the rule of law are really important. It's not something we might have thought we'd need to say a few years ago, but I do think we're in a globally vulnerable place where we need to defend these basic systems and recognise that, although we've taken them for granted for many years, they are fundamental to what we're trying to achieve.

Soledad Mills

Absolutely. In the context of mining, why are governance frameworks and strong institutions so critical to achieving a just outcome?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

Justice is really about how we treat people - ensuring people have dignity, are treated fairly, and have the chance to thrive and live meaningful lives. They're simple words, but at a human level, everyone wants this for themselves and their children. In the mining sector, I often think back to the 1990s and the sweatshop debates around companies like Nike. No one wants their products to be made through child labour, unsafe working conditions or exploitation. At a human level, many people believe deeply in fairness and equity. In today's global economy, much of how things are made and where things come from can feel invisible or very complicated. But increasingly, these supply chains are becoming visible again because they are so fundamental. So in mining, good governance and strong institutions are really what will allow companies to thrive sustainably from a financial perspective. Most people do not want to see other people suffering in order to create the goods they rely on.

Soledad Mills

Royal London Asset Management is also involved in the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, an $18 trillion coalition seeking to define the role of finance in ensuring responsible mining. How does this collective power approach support your engagement with mining companies?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

I got involved in the commission about 18 months ago, partly because I had been working on mining issues for a long time, and I sit on the board of IRMA, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. I joined the commission and ended up co-chairing one of the workstreams, which produced a set of investor expectations. The commission recognised that many responsible or sustainable investors have been avoiding mining, because it is seen as a high-impact sector. Yet the transition requires us to mine far more minerals than we have ever mined in human history. So we have a real conundrum: many responsible investors are avoiding the sector, while the sector needs capital and will grow rapidly, especially because of the rush for critical minerals. The sector needs funding, but we want that funding to come from long-term responsible investors who will help drive the right behaviours at the mine site. The workstream I sat on tried to do two things: educate investors, because many don't know the mining sector well, and create greater alignment in what investors ask for. Most investors like Royal London are invested across the market, owning thousands of companies in different sectors, regions and asset classes. So this was partly an education piece and partly about ensuring that when investors engage with mining companies, they are sending consistent signals, asking for similar things, and not pulling companies in different directions. The commission has now published its report and the investor expectations on its website. Hopefully, it gives mining companies a clearer view, at least at a principles level, of what investors are looking for.

Soledad Mills

How do you integrate nature and social equity in the concept of a just transition for mining? We need far more critical minerals to meet climate goals, but extracting them can damage the very ecosystems we are trying to protect. As an investor, how do you decide when the carbon benefit of a mineral outweighs the biodiversity cost of pulling it out of the ground?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

It probably never comes down to a single neat calculation, but rather many calculations and judgements. Alongside our work on the just transition, we have also launched work on what we call just nature. The idea is similar: you could pursue better biodiversity or nature outcomes, but if that comes at the expense of local communities who rely on a forest, a fishery or another ecosystem, then that is not a good outcome either. So we are trying to integrate the social dimension into our work on nature and biodiversity, and that feeds into our engagement with the mining sector and our expectations for it. Fundamentally - and mining companies know this already - they have to balance the need to extract minerals for the climate transition with the needs of local communities and nature. There can be win-wins. For example, once a mining company is finished with a site, it may be able to create nature reserves or forests that also support economic opportunities for communities after the mine closes. Those are the kinds of outcomes we would like to see more of, and we know companies are working on them.

Soledad Mills

You serve on the board of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, one of the leading standards in mining. How can robust standards and independent verification help build trust between companies, communities and investors?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

Trust is absolutely central. Mining is a highly impactful sector with a difficult history in many jurisdictions, and many local communities are understandably distrustful - though not all, because some welcome mining and benefit from it. Last year, for example, I met Indigenous communities from Canada in London who were actively seeking more investment in their territory. But where mining companies have run into trouble, the issue has often been a lack of trust over what the company is doing, how it is performing, and what evidence exists to support those claims. Early in my career, when I travelled to Guatemala, we were talking to a gold mining company about human rights impact assessment. As shareholders at the time, it was very difficult to get independent information about what was actually happening on the ground. The company would say one thing and the communities would say another. There was no shared basis of understanding, which created mistrust and confusion. That is why independent verification and assurance can play such an important role. I joined the board of IRMA about three years ago as one of its first finance industry representatives. IRMA is governed by a genuinely multi-stakeholder board, including mining companies, purchasers, investors, communities and labour representatives. No changes are made to the standard unless all of those stakeholder groups agree. That matters enormously for trust. IRMA has developed a comprehensive mining assurance standard. It has been in place for about 10 years, and a growing number of mine sites have gone through full audits or are in the system under self-assessment or third-party audit. One of the key features of IRMA is transparency: once audits are done, the expectation is that the full report is published. That can be difficult for companies, because they are not always comfortable being fully open about their challenges. But our view is that transparency builds trust with communities, purchasers and investors. From an investor's perspective, an audited site with a transparent assurance report gives you a much clearer view of the risks, what the company is doing about them, and where improvement is needed. That makes for a far better investment conversation. We are also seeing purchasers like Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft asking suppliers to engage with systems like IRMA because they want greater assurance about where material comes from and how it was produced.

Soledad Mills

It would be great to hear about a specific example of engagement with a mining company. Last year, Royal London Asset Management used its engagement with Rio Tinto, for example, to focus on Scope 3 emissions, specifically from its steelmaker customers. What was the outcome, and how does it set a precedent for future engagements on responsible mining?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

We have been engaging with Rio Tinto over a number of years. One of the things we identified through our climate transition assessment was that Rio lacked Scope 3 targets, and we have been very focused on getting companies to put those in place. One of our fund managers also visited some of Rio's sites in Canada. Separately from the climate agenda, we have also engaged Rio for a number of years on diversity and on sexual harassment issues we saw emerge in Australia. So there has been a lot of engagement with that company. We are relatively significant holders in the UK market in some of these companies, and with many UK-listed companies we can meet management or the board directly and they are often responsive. I think we have seen Rio make progress over time. It is a good example of how engagement is rarely about just one issue. It is often a multifaceted conversation, and one that we then feed back into the investment teams who ultimately decide whether to buy or sell the shares.

Soledad Mills

Another topic Royal London Asset Management is championing is the circular economy as a driver of long-term portfolio resilience. Given that mining is traditionally linear - extract, use, discard - how are you using stewardship and engagement strategies to convince mining majors to invest in recycling and other circular practices?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

It is absolutely critical. We are going to have to mine more material than we ever have in human history, and that is not a particularly sustainable position for the world to be in. At the same time, we know there is a huge amount of waste in the system. So recycling and circularity are essential. One of the investments we have made in our global equities funds has been a company called Steel Dynamics. It is not a mining company, but it focuses on recycled steel and uses electric arc furnaces, which lowers the carbon intensity of production. These are the kinds of companies that need to grow. We also know that mining companies are making significant technological gains in recovering ore and minerals from old sites. That is not exactly the same as recycling, but it does help avoid some greenfield extraction. We have also been talking internally and with other investors about urban mining - essentially recovering mineral value from waste streams. It is an important area, though probably not as advanced yet as it should be.

Soledad Mills

As demand for transition minerals accelerates, what systemic reforms in finance, governance or standard-setting are most urgently needed to ensure we achieve not just a fast transition, but a fair one?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

I think it is really important that this race to secure critical minerals - whether for net zero or for defence - is done responsibly. We are at an interesting inflection point. Governments including Canada, the UK and the US are all talking much more openly about critical minerals. It is absolutely top of mind. This could go one of two ways: towards plundering, huge environmental harm and huge social harm, or towards working properly with communities - including Indigenous communities who may welcome mining into their territory but want it done on their terms and in a responsible way. So in terms of systemic reform, I think we need good policy as mineral development accelerates. I don't know whether we will get it, but we need it. We also need strong standards, transparency and accountability through independent verification and assurance. If we can do those things, we will be in a much better position. But I do think we are at a very important inflection point.

Soledad Mills

Interestingly, I recently saw that Canada has started a consultation on issuing a Mining Canada digital credential to allow Canadian minerals to be recognised globally, which is certainly an interesting development.

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

That is interesting. IRMA has also been looking at how to support traceability, or at least claims that a certain percentage of mined material comes from an assured site under IRMA. Downstream purchasers such as car companies want to be able to say, for example, that a certain percentage of their mineral inputs come from IRMA-audited sites. To make that possible, you need something like a credential or stamp that gives some level of assurance about where the material came from and the standard to which it was mined. In that sense, it is a little like the Fairtrade stamp on coffee or bananas. I think that kind of mechanism will become more important, because it can help drive better behaviour. Often it is the purchasers who are pushing hardest for this, because consumer-facing companies are the ones that face consumer boycotts or investor pressure.

Soledad Mills

Finally, what gives you hope that a genuinely just transition - including just mining - is actually achievable?

Ashley Hamilton Claxton

These are challenging times, but I am still hopeful. Hearing about the Canadian credential is encouraging. In Canada, many Indigenous communities are very well organised, have territorial rights, and have strong governance structures. They are making demands of the Canadian government around using IRMA and ensuring mining happens responsibly. Similar things are happening in Australia. We recently welcomed a representative from an Australian Indigenous community onto the IRMA board. Australia, like Canada, is a major mining jurisdiction. So although these are difficult times, I do think there is momentum. Purchasers want to know where material comes from. Governments may want to prove that materials are high quality and responsibly produced. If that leads to stronger systems and more responsible mining, then that is a positive sign. It will be hard work, but I do think it is achievable.

Soledad Mills

Great. Well, thank you once again to our speaker, Ashley Hamilton-Claxton, for joining us today. To our listeners, please check out the other episodes in our Suits & Boots podcast series. I'm Soledad Mills. Thank you for listening.