Financing, Anticorruption and Civic Freedom: Essentials for Just and Equitable Transition Mineral Supply Chains

Excellencies, civil society leaders and friends: It was a great privilege to share the knowledge and experience of civil society as part of the UN Panel on Critical Transition Minerals.

At the Natural Resource Governance Institute our mission echoes the clarion call of the UN Panel: Justice requires change. Changing whose voice determines whether, where and how to extract. Changing for what purpose and under what terms mining occurs. Changing who benefits and the power imbalances and structural inequities that persist. In just four months, the panel initiated much needed change in three important ways.

First, the actionable recommendation to advance value addition, benefit sharing and economic diversification responded to the question we hear most often from Global South producers: how will this mining boom be different for us?

To enact this recommendation, we need resources for reform. The climate finance goal to be agreed at COP29 must include concessional finance for Global South transition mineral-producing countries to support viable value addition facilities. To address energy, infrastructure and skilled labor bottlenecks and enable economic diversification. And to ensure that the benefits of increased mineral circularity are shared equitably.

Second, the panel recognized that corruption harms both people and the planet. Our research shows that corruption undermines social and environmental protections and delays urgently needed transition mineral production—sometimes for years.

The actionable recommendation on traceability can help by enabling regulators, investors and end-users to scrutinize human rights and environmental practices, conflict of interest risks, and economic fairness across the value chain. Now, we need leadership from member states and to transform voluntary standards into binding action. The Colombian government has demonstrated such initiative in calling for an international agreement on traceability. We encourage others to follow their lead.

Lastly, the panel enshrined the centrality of human rights and multi-stakeholder participation to a new mining paradigm. As panel members, we benefitted from the collective expertise, audacity and relentless optimism of more than 300 civil society organizations.

However, civil society around the world is under threat. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law found that 87 percent of recent legal initiatives impacting civic space are restrictive. In my own country, the United States, ascendant powers have vilified and threatened the media. And here in Azerbaijan authorities have wrongfully imprisoned advocates for fair and transparent governance of natural resources. We call for their immediate and unconditional release.

The work of our panel is a start, not an end. We commit to bringing our knowledge and networks to transform mining governance. To hold us all accountable, we welcome the Secretary-General to report on the implementation of the Panel’s guidance in one year’s time at COP30. Let us together demonstrate the will and resources to put equity and justice at the heart of climate action.