· 5 min read
Why governance of energy transition minerals is the unofficial main event in Belém
The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, marks a shift in the global climate agenda’s center of gravity. After years of target-setting, the focus has moved to implementation, and specifically to the material foundations of decarbonisation; the hardware. The question is no longer whether the green transition will happen, but how it will be financed, resourced, and distributed.
This renewed material focus gained momentum with COP28’s UAE Consensus, which called for tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. While this is a necessary ambition for addressing climate change, it demands an unprecedented scale-up in Critical Energy Transition Minerals (CETMs) – namely, lithium, copper, nickel, and cobalt. The governance of this extraction presents perhaps the single greatest test of whether the Paris Agreement’s commitment to a Just Transition can survive the logistics and political economy of supply chains.
Material contradictions
For resource-rich nations in the developing world, where most of these minerals are concentrated, extraction risks reproduce colonial-era patterns. Most concerning are the “pit-to-port” models, where raw materials move straight from mine to export terminal, bypassing local processing and delivering little meaningful economic benefit to host communities. This creates economic dependencies and environmental sacrifice zones rather than shared prosperity.
These “resource tunnels” are what many developing countries have termed the Just Transition’s “Achilles’ heel” in preparatory negotiations. Within the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) of the UNFCCC, resource-rich blocs have called for a dedicated dialogue on minerals. Their demands are explicit: the social and environmental costs of extraction must be formally integrated into the JTWP’s scope. The transition cannot override human rights, free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples, or biodiversity protections. Colombia has gone further, advocating for international recognition of “no-go areas” for mining to protect vulnerable ecosystems and communities.
Without such safeguards, the energy transition risks becoming an imposed burden, often accompanied by Western outrage that developing countries are “not protecting” their nature. This framing matters because it exposes the distributional politics embedded in climate action: who bears the costs, who captures the benefits, and whether existing inequalities are reinforced or challenged.
Policy momentum and institutional architecture
This discussion is gaining institutional traction. Negotiations refer to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, urging formal endorsement of its Guiding Principles to embed equity directly into supply chains. Civil society groups are pushing for new mechanisms, including a proposed “Belém Action Mechanism” to accelerate Just Transition pathways in mineral-producing countries.
This reflects a strategic pivot toward “local value addition” and “green industrialisation.” Mineral-producing nations are demanding more than raw-ore exports conveyor-belted to foreign lands — they want to leverage their resource endowments to build diversified economies via local refining, processing, and manufacturing. This kind of domestic wealth capture could transform resource dependence into industrial capacity. Could this mark the end of the infamous “resource curse” haunting parts of the Global South?
Market implications
Economically, this governance debate carries direct pricing implications. If producer countries succeed in establishing enforceable standards around local value addition and environmental safeguards, the cost structure of CETM supply chains will fundamentally shift. This isn’t simply regulatory overhead. This represents the repricing of externalities long offloaded onto communities and ecosystems far from where the benefits accrue.
Even more significantly, weak governance increases supply disruption risk through social conflict or sudden regulatory shifts. The demand for CETMs will surge, according to the Panel. Stronger governance frameworks, while raising near-term costs, may reduce long-term price volatility by providing the regulatory certainty that sustained investment requires.
The circular imperative and strategic leakage
Circularity is central to mitigating pressure on land and communities, addressed in COP30's parallel programming. The schedule includes sessions on financing circular futures for CETMs, circular mining strategies, and the IEA's discussion on inclusive supply chains. This signals institutional recognition that finance, standards, and circularity are inseparable from governance.
Even so, policymakers face a hard structural tension. Overly restrictive domestic regulations, imposed unilaterally without global coordination or concomitant demand reduction, risk creating perverse incentives. If “responsible extraction” becomes prohibitively complex or costly, industry pressure may shift to less-regulated frontiers. This strategic leakage could accelerate controversial practices — for instance, the U.S. Executive Order “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources" on deep-sea mining, pushing extraction into areas with uncertain governance and potentially catastrophic environmental consequences. The policies agreed upon in Belém must therefore be global, systemic, and robust — rigorous standards coupled with viable pathways for sustainable investment.
Beyond Belém
COP30 tests whether the global climate regime can address the distributional inequalities embedded in the green transition’s hardware. For investors, this means robust due diligence, transparent ESG standards, and financing strategies that prioritise capacity build-out in producer countries. For policymakers, failure to secure concrete language on CETM governance will leave a critical loophole that undermines climate justice and heightens geopolitical vulnerability.
The inclusion of this mineral-justice nexus signals that countries are getting serious about the nitty-gritty of climate change and its direct link to supply chains. A clear signal from Belém that linking extraction to equity is essential for building resilient supply chains capable of supporting a 1.5 °C trajectory. The path to net-zero runs through the mines of the Global South; governance will determine whether that path leads to shared prosperity or simply shifts the costs of transition onto those least responsible for the crisis.
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