UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals: Toward the Change We Need

In April 2024, the Secretary-General of the United Nations launched a Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, bringing together governments, intergovernmental and international organizations, industry and civil society to develop a set of global common and voluntary principles to safeguard environmental and social standards across the minerals value chain.

The panel reported to the Secretary-General in early September, outlining principles, actions and recommendations to address issues related to equity, transparency, investment, sustainability and human rights in the minerals sector.

During New York Climate Week 2024, NRGI co-organized a briefing with panel members on the final outcomes of the process and a conversation on the next steps to ensure greater equity and justice in mining for the energy transition.

The in-person event was co-hosted by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Oxfam and Publish What You Pay.

Highlighted remarks

Galina Angarova, SIRGE Coalition

“I'm grateful for to the UN Secretary-General for his real compassion for Indigenous peoples’ rights; this is reflected in the panel’s guidance. It contains 28 references to Indigenous peoples. Four references to free, prior and informed consent. Two references to the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. One reference to self-determination. It's a dream document, right? No. But we tried our best. Did we get everything that we wanted? No, we didn’t. We spent sleepless nights fighting for every comma, fighting for every word. It happens. But a lot of the specificities that are peculiar to our constituencies sometimes are forsaken, sacrificed for the sake of universality.”

Ditte Juul Jørgensen, European Commission

“Resource-rich countries have historically not participated in the value chain beyond extraction, which often brings environmental damage, and human rights and child labor concerns. It is an existential question not just for resource-rich developing countries, but for all of us, to help bring change to the value chain.”

Suneeta Kaimal, Natural Resource Governance Institute

“To be successful, a panel like this can't just include governments—especially not just Global North governments. Its success lies in the inclusion of low- and middle-income producing countries; of civil society; of industry; of Indigenous peoples; and of local communities. That was the starting point for the panel and in that sense, we already had a win at the beginning, just by virtue of where we started.”

Tawanda Mutasah, Oxfam

“Critical minerals are essential for the green outcomes that the world envisages and needs… At Oxfam our experience tells us that we must continue in the oil, gas and mining arena to hold governments and corporates accountable, but to also amplify and support the voices speaking out for human rights… We at Oxfam welcome this initiative by the UN Secretary-General … Provocative ideas on how to activate the panel’s guidance are needed and welcome.”

Ketakandriana Rafitoson, Publish What You Pay

“While Publish What You Pay was not on the panel, we had the opportunity through the civil society hub to express the needs of local communities and make concrete propositions and proposals. We just launched a report on value addition on the critical mineral supply chain in Africa. We know that Africa is home to 30 percent of the world's reserves of critical minerals. Yet it suffers the most from energy poverty and only two percent of those critical minerals are used within African countries to make a difference. This must change.”

Anabella Rosemberg, Climate Action Network (CAN)

“Many groups that work on human rights in mining, and on environmental justice, may have looked at the Climate Action Network’s engagement on the panel with some scepticism. The climate movement has not been very good at listening to communities on the ground. In our eagerness to push for an energy transition we have overlooked what this new model—this new energy transition—could mean for many people. We need renewable energy but that cannot reproduce the extractive model. So, we need to navigate our work around the transition with a lot of humility, and as a climate movement work toward justice in a much more determined way.”

Septian Hario Seto, Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs of Indonesia

“Sitting on the panel has been a very interesting journey for me as a government official because the panel consist of representatives from different types of organizations, and so we now have a balanced view here about how we can push forward the panel’s principles and actionable recommendations. From a government perspective, the traceability issue is important. This is your tool to monitor whether regulation can be implemented, and whether it is being followed or not.”