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Without Climate-Smart Mining practices, the energy transition will not be truly clean. Challenges will emerge and negative impacts from mining activities will increase, affecting vulnerable communities and environments and potentially endangering progress on tackling climate change. If unchecked, the volume of mining over such a short time frame (between 2020 and 2050) would increase global emissions, water use, global waste and potentially result in conflict amongst communities. The Netherlands supports the Climate-Smart Mining Facility because it mitigates against these risks and works with public and private partners to manage natural resources responsibly, maximize the life cycle of the metals and minerals we use, and extract strategic metals and minerals in an environmentally-sensitive manner.
While this presents a global challenge, it is also an opportunity for mineral-rich developing countries and emerging economies like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), India, Colombia and Peru. For example, DRC will see a huge surge in demand for cobalt due to the production of batteries for electric vehicles: DRC currently supplies over 65% of cobalt in the global market and is expected to supply more than 73% by 2023.
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