The need to embed critical mineral governance in the Paris Agreement

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement (Agreement) is one of the most significant international environmental treaty laws to address climate change in history with implications for States around the world. With almost universal participation, soft-law mechanisms, and a legally binding component requiring countries to report and adhere to Nationally Determined Contribution Targets (NDCs), the Agreement is reorienting global economic activity towards low-emission development and promoting the global deployment of new energy technologies such as electric cars, batteries, and solar panels, to name a few. While the Agreement stresses, under article 10, the “importance of fully realizing technology development (...) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” it does not recognise that the manufacturing of such technologies depends on the extraction, processing, and trade of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths. Given this context, and on the premise that a swift and just response to the climate crisis is in the shared interest of humanity—and that critical minerals and their inherent risks are vital to achieving this—there is an urgent need to establish a formal link between critical mineral regulation and climate agreements.