Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel are critical to renewable energy technologies. With this, however, are potential ecological impacts. Would you discuss environmental issues that can arise from the extraction through the distribution process?

The current thinking is that, to decouple our economies from fossils, we need to recouple with mineral extraction. In order to create a clean tech architecture including solar panels, batteries, and grids, we need minerals such as copper, lithium, graphite, and manganese. There are many different supply chains involved in this, as opposed to supply chains of the fossil fuels era, mostly composed of coal, gas, and oil.

This new era means dozens of different supply chains, requiring different types of extraction according to the reserve qualities and reserve specifications, and eventually, with the minerals assembled into clean tech. For the moment, there are a number of clean tech being created on the back of mines that have already existed for a few decades. Based on projections from the International Energy Agency and others, to meet the necessary ore volume requirements for the energy transition, there needs to be exponential growth of mining projects and the capability to process these minerals.

There is no single agreement about how many mines are necessary for what type of energy transition scenario. There are some people, particularly in Europe, who argue for demand reduction scenarios. An example of this is less extraction of lithium, but with a fairly constant extraction of copper, because it's a really difficult mineral to substitute. However, looking at projections, for example, from benchmark minerals for battery-related demand, we may be headed towards a 300-plus number of mines we need to create within the next decade or fifteen years. It is rather unclear that the finance is there for the growth of mining projects. This is a danger in and of itself that needs to be tackled very quickly so as not to derail our energy transition, which is absolutely critical for a climate-safe future. But in order to finance the right projects, we need to shed some lights on potential risks associated to mining with modern planetary, ecological, and international security stakes.

What risks are those? Let’s talk about a few of them. Traditionally, we've looked at the impact of mining from a fairly horizontal, static viewpoint. We examine the size of the open pit or the actual mine, the impact on water pumping or water pollution, and the impact on biodiversity. All of this leads to developing an outlook on the impacts of mining for the area of operation.

We are at a juncture in human and planetary history where we need to understand the energy transition against a backdrop of larger issues. Not only organizing a new energy transition, but we’re coupling that energy transition with a digital and technological revolution, which opens up a fourth industrial horizon, or revolution. The latter is at the heart of systems rivalry, which is now escalating in war in some places. The green, digital, technological and military material, and energy requirements are all very heavy, particularly when they are extracted on a planet which is already in a state of ecological overshoot and ecological exhaustion. This has implications in terms of the quantity of materials we aim to mine – the full picture of which is not clear as mentioned before. Shedding light on sectorial demand is really important today so as to prioritize and be more granular vis à vis resource allocation.

And here is another layer – it is not just how much to mine, but where exactly to mine. Some critical ecosystems around the globe simply can’t stomach any type of anthropogenic activity today. If they lose their eological integrity, they may set off tipping points or be associated to further biophysical imbalance. Those places need to be specifically identified. Otherwise, we run the risk of mining in several places across the world: in the deep seas, grasslands, rainforests, or water-stressed areas. This is going to have not just local impacts but if you take in the aggregate picture, it may actually amount to having very real impacts on the geophysics and biochemics of the planet.

This is what we're currently trying to analyze at the University of Exeter. The ecological costs of the energy transition have never been assessed. Neither the IPCC, the IPBES, nor any recognized institutional working group has ever looked into it. Our group is not only examining the footprint from a local perspective on a planet that is already in ecological sensitivity and planetary boundary overshoot but also looking at the aggregate picture of the energy transition. We are facing a situation where we need to be both fast in terms of how we accelerate towards the decarbonization era, but also be astute and agile as to how we do it from an economic, ecological, social, and political perspective.

You have expressed concern about potential conflict, instability, and security issues surrounding some states with large deposits of key minerals for renewal energy. Would you expand?

We’re dealing with a very dynamic situation because there's a lot of interest around critical minerals at the moment, lots of exploration, and new scientific discoveries about where potential or expanded reserves are located. A lot of quality deposits are located in countries of the socalled Global South, including Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia. In addition, there are areas such as the deep seas and the Arctic, which is increasingly being considered an opening area for countries that have access to it as a result of melting ice caps.

When you look at the implications of terrestrial reserves within the Global South, some countries are better positioned to handle global competition between China, Russia, the US, Europe, Middle Eastern countries, and others. For example, the current wave of investment going to Latin American countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Peru, countries that have been at the heart of an extractive set of industrial waves over the last 200 years. They have built competencies that are a bit more developed in terms of how to handle the consequences of extraction and how to partially handle some of the political and social pressures related to them.

This does not mean there are no problems. Indigenous communities are particularly concerned about the future of extraction. But, for example, if you look at Chile's decision to nationalize the copper industry decades ago and now to replicate the model for the lithium industry, its apparent that there is an ability to invest in the mining and extractive sector with a set of governance and policies designed to try to limit the pressures of industrial activities. At the very least, efforts to organize a socio-economic distribution system exist around them, however contested they may be.

Outside of countries that are substantially better equipped institutionally, you have more fragile countries. Let’s look at Madagascar. It is a country that is a bit of an aberration in terms of socioeconomic development because, in 2024, its absolute poverty levels remain at about 80% for the national average in terms of population. It has a high level of multidimensional fragility from governance, ecological, and socio-economic perspectives. The relationship to governance is very fraught with a lot of difficulties related to both levels of development but also with the way there's been capture within the government. In their 2018 election, for example, several presidential candidates were supported by Russian oligarchs. This included the current president, Mr. Rajoelina, as well as the former president. This means that when some candidates are supported by foreign forces, it flips the accountability relationship. Presidents who are elected nationals thanks to foreign influence and support are not accountable to their population, but to foreign forces that have a specific agenda in mind. Around the same time as the presidential election happened, the only national mine in Madagascar, a chromite mine called Kraoma, had two important quarries and reserves sold to Russian companies. Those companies are said to have connections with the Wagner universe, the mercenary company that has been active in other parts of Africa in providing securitized services to African political figures, exploring mineral resources etc. This company is now known to have served as direct foreign policy arm of the Kremlin, in spite of previous narratives denying links between the company and the central Russian power.

This is an interesting case because it demonstrates there are geopolitical forces actively invested within a number of extractive supply chains related to the energy and digital transition. It's not just for purely business reasons. When looking at the energy or technological transition, there is a geopolitical component concerning a potential struggle over the balance of power. That creates different dynamics from an international perspective because there are competition arcs between big geopolitical blocks, such as the US and China or Europe and Russia.

The competition can take place over a number of different things. Part of that is the supply chain from extraction to processing to export. This provides the ability to control different assets that will become particularly useful in the future as there is a transition toward a decarbonization era. Different meta-models are created in terms of what are the societal models that these different blocks of fighting for, what they are using the critical minerals for, and what is in the geopolitical proposition attached to that. In other words, critical mineral supply chains are part of a rivalry of systems and a systems of rivalry. They are both means of power competition, and they are instrumental to produce technologies that are transformative for how power will be exercised in the future. When you look at it from this lens, you realize as a result that critical mineral supply chains are a lens into a permeating geopolitical competition.

In some cases, this competition can produce or contribute to violence in countries of the Global South, which has geopolitical repercussions in return, and which has dramatic human consequences. There are some countries where pre-existing levels of fragility or conflict may run the risk of being protracted or worsened as a result of the energy transition rather than solved as part of the energy transition, or new forms of violence may be created.

Ukraine, for example, is a country that is particularly endowed with minerals. There may be some links between the natural mineral endowment of Ukraine and the war of aggression that Russia launched against it. The conflict began about six months after a strategic partnership was struck between the EU and Ukraine for the industrial transition related to the energy transition. What we're observing right now is essentially a world in the process of re-metabolization in terms of economic power, geopolitics, and international relations. This will result in a different kind of international fabric on the other side of the energy and digital transition.

A major player in rare minerals acquisition is China. Do you have any concerns that its efforts and actions could prove problematic?

Again, it's a moving picture. China originally had a natural endowment in earth reserves of very good quality. On the back of these reserves and the extraction potential, they gained knowledge across the supply chain: improving processing, improving manufacturing, and improving technologies. China is a mind-boggling force when it comes to the installation of clean tech, not just within the country, but also the export potential China has within the energy transition. So, that's not a concern. This is a great public good that China is providing the world. They had a vision years ago that has allowed them to become a first-mover in the energy transition.

However, there are concerns about what China is projecting in terms of power capacity on the back of its geoeconomic capacity. There have been cases starting in 2010 where China was in a position to, and willing to, weaponize supply chains for political gains. The first time this happened was in a dispute between China and Japan.

This behavior has continued over the last few years, although it’s important to note that China is partly responding to what it perceives as aggressive behavior coming from the US. China has restricted exports of germanium and gallium which are important for clean technologies as well as military equipment. There is a capacity for China to weaponize supply chains that are essential for critical industries from clean tech to digital to military capacities across the world. This ensures that dependencies around critical supply chains can potentially be used to quiet some criticisms over issues like Taiwan, Hong Kong, the treatment of dissidents who decided to leave China and become vocal against it, or the treatment of Uyghurs within China.

If the weaponization of supply chains by China is extrapolated over time, it creates a precedent for matters that may become increasingly strategically problematic. Economic interdependencies that were the backbone of the so-called peace dividend for decades are now being used as a chip in a rather concerning escalation of competition. This is turning into systems rivalry and there are a lot of question marks about what systems rivalry leads to in terms of international norms, human rights regimes, tech-enabled political control, or other forms of violence. Again, to qualify this point fully, China may have demonstrated cases where its attitude towards human rights is concerning, but China is not the only country doing so. This is the problem with systems rivalry – actors engage in a race to the bottom, which eventually leads to closing down spaces that are essential for the establishment of humane, balances and effective political-economic institutions. This is of great concern at a moment when climate change comes at humanity with a rage, and necessitates intelligent collective responses.

Weaponization of supply chains is also the result of competition that, over time, can rise to a strategic level and touch on types of war. Human security, international security, and international stability then suffer as a whole because of behaviors that create a race to the bottom. A degradation of the geopolitical order eventually may lead to war, human rights offenses, and grave international offenses on all sides. In the worst of cases, it may lead to returns of totalitarianism – something Europeans are unfortunately all too familiar with, and should therefore dedicate their most intense efforts to fighting.

What policies and guidelines do you recommend for balancing decarbonization efforts with possible pitfalls encountered through the process of obtaining needed renewable energy minerals?

Initial efforts should be concerned with how we conceptualize, assess, and qualify ecological costs of the energy transition-fourth industrial revolution. For the very first time, this allows us to shed some light on the fundamental tensions that exist in planetary security. The framework of planetary boundaries and the rates of climate change acceleration demand reducing energy and material consumption of the world, particularly in the Global North countries. This would work to reduce the global planetary energy imbalance and start tackling climate change and other types of ecological overshoots at the source.

If we only follow the planetary framework, we have to completely reorganize a relationship to energy and therefore, the type of economic modeling that we follow. This is technically based on the grow and expand model. Many supporting the growth model claim we're becoming more efficient year by year with energy and economic productivity. The expand model brings a different aspect, that even if we become more efficient, we actually keep on expanding spatially and, in terms of our overall consumption of energy, rather than reducing it in line with planetary boundaries. This is part of what we call the Jevons paradox: if you become more efficient at something, you use more of that something. Efficiency gains are therefore outweighed by overall use of the technology or behavior at hand.

Taking into account these planetary security aspects, if we were really serious, we would go on a trajectory to rein in global material and energyrelated economic footprints. The problem is that, within the international framework that we have, the grow and expand model is related to how the balance of power is dynamically moving over time and is somewhat maintained. Therefore, how international security, however brittle, can be created. This necessitates more extraction, more use of energy, more growth and expansion of national and domestic economies, and the global economy as a whole.

So, shedding light on this fundamental tension and the security paradigm shift that needs to happen is the very first step. That's why our group at the University of Exeter want to provide insight on the ecological cost of the fourth industrial revolution and initiate geopolitical literacy over these ecological costs.

Then, from the planetary perspective, there is the question of whether or not we can determine and legally protect regions in the world that really shouldn't be touched, mined, or expanded however great the quality of the ore is or however great the soil quality is for agricultural purposes. The lifeline of humanity depends on places such as the Congo basin, the Amazon basin, and the deep seas. Certain places in these ecosystems are too fragile to disturb, and too important to lose – this goes for all of us humans living on the planet – regardless of our nationality or belief system.

Beyond ecological and planetary security conditions, supply chains need to be diversified at extraction and processing levels. And the beautiful thing here is that supply chain reorganization with countries of the global south provide a direct link to discuss climate and ecological security, economic diversification, research and technological partnerships, energy interdependency partnerships, etc. The strategic partnerships that a number of Global North countries discuss with Global South countries are a new entry point to reinvent collective security. The energy and digital transitions are both a risk and opportunity. What’s important is to identify what risks may manifest and how, and how to establish prevention and management plans around them in a way that creates mutually reinforcing conditions for international security in a climate disrupted age, and an age of planetary risks.

The rationale behind the project we started at Exeter is to illuminate this narrative. Then we have to start reckoning with the fact that we're now entering uncharted territory when it comes to security. All countries in the world may eventually reckon with the fact that we may need to have an international negotiation over energy and material extraction. This will especially be the case if climate disruptions start destabilizing the global economy and international security system, while at the same time, clean tech deployment fail to materialize in time and with safe extracting conditions at the basecamp of supply chains.

That is a new progress line that offers a different type of scenario compared to the race to the bottom scenario, which is still a possibility. But on the other side of this race to the bottom, we have little information about what it may look like. By undertaking the fourth industrial revolution, which says that its goal is to solve the climate crisis and herald the new era in terms of economic intervention, we may very well accelerate the climate crisis below ecological services out of boundaries and provisioning for the stability of complex human civilizations. We may create extensive and unprecedented levels of human suffering in quantitative and qualitative terms. We may also create a world in which geopolitics function in a zero-sum competition game over climate niches.

This is a very dystopian future. Before we reach that, we still have a very small window of opportunity. If we start tackling the root problems and face up with the reality of security dilemmas, which have existed forever in the history of international relations, then we may start evolving into a different type of global governance system. This is about managing relationships between countries or regions, which are themselves changing but also managing those relationships and our relationship with the planet.

Olivia Lazard is a fellow at Carnegie Europe. Her research focuses on the geopolitics of climate, the transition ushered by climate change, and the risks of conflict and fragility associated to climate change and environmental collapse