Electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies are driving booming demand for metals and minerals – including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel – which many countries now consider “critical” to their security. But will procuring those supplies harm the environment and human rights?

Across the world, from Africa and Asia to Latin America, a growing number of mining projects has been associated with nature destruction, pollution, labour abuses and conflict, while local communities often shoulder much of the cost and share little of the benefit.

As the scramble for minerals for the energy transition rises to the top of the political agenda, there are mounting calls for international cooperation to ensure production of these resources is sustainable and equitable, alongside a flurry of proposed initiatives for global standards and stronger governance.

Explainer: Why the world is racing to mine critical minerals 

Colombia is drumming up support for a legally binding minerals agreement based on the model of global negotiations for a plastic treaty. An alliance of NGOs wants to get the issue onto the agenda of this year’s COP30 climate talks, and experts are calling for a new materials data hub.

The United Nations, which oversees the most advanced efforts to create a global framework for energy transition minerals, insists it remains the best-placed broker for thrashing out global norms, despite a funding crisis.

This month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) joined a chorus of voices calling for more cooperation on the issue. In its latest Critical Minerals Outlook report, it warned of growing risks of disruption to mineral supply chains as the market becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, with China controlling around 70% of the refining of 19 out of 20 strategic minerals analysed by the agency.

Rising copper demand fuels concern over pollution and rights abuses

Meanwhile, since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has taken a new approach to resource diplomacy, negotiating access to Ukraine’s mineral resources as a condition for American support and eyeing mineral-rich Greenland and Canada.

“It’s climate change, security, development and geopolitical elements intersecting – which I think is why there’s so much appetite and urgency around improving multilateralism to address this really complex issue,” Erica Westenberg, director of governance programmes at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Climate Home News.

Plan for an international minerals treaty

Colombia’s proposal for a global minerals treaty is motivated by the aim of rooting out extensive illegal gold mining, a source of environmental destruction and pollution that is threatening people’s health in the Amazon nation.

“[Existing] norms and standards are optional, and this isn’t good enough,” Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s vice minister for environmental policy, told a conference at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris earlier this month.

“We need to have a mandatory agreement to assess the whole value chain with transparency and traceability at the international level,” he added.

Colombia plans to put forward a resolution for countries to begin negotiations on a binding minerals treaty at the UN Environment Assembly in December. If approved, countries would then need to decide on the scope of the agreement, Cabrera Leal told Climate Home – an approach that has proved highly contentious and so far unsuccessful in talks for a plastic treaty.

But the idea has received a “good response” from some African and European nations, he added. And others agree with the principle.

A high-level council of former ministers and leaders of international institutions convened by the Paris Peace Forum to reflect on mineral supply chain challenges has also called for an international agreement on resource management and the creation of a separate repository for mineral data.

Justin Vaïsse, director general of the Paris Peace Forum, told the OECD conference it was “now time to think seriously” about these proposals.

Observers in the mining sector caution that any agreement must build on hard-learned lessons and existing best practices, including the need to ensure that affected communities and Indigenous people are at the negotiating table.

An international materials agency?

The co-chairs of the International Resource Panel (IRP), a body of policy experts established by the UN Environment Programme, meanwhile are advocating for the creation of an international materials agency.

This data hub would cover all the materials needed to deliver on global climate and development goals, including critical minerals. It would help make supply chains more transparent and track their environmental implications.

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Janez Potočnik, the IRP’s co-chair, told Climate Home the proposed agency would “complement” the IEA’s growing work on the security of mineral supplies by considering the impacts of mineral production and consumption models with a mandate that could evolve over time to include international negotiations on materials.

Potočnik said the proposal is backed by the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Economic Forum – demonstrating the private sector’s interest in more transparent data.

UN push for better standards

Last year, UN boss António Guterres convened a panel of governments, international organisations and experts which defined seven principles to underpin the responsible, fair and sustainable extraction of energy transition minerals.

The UN is now expected to release a plan to implement those principles and appoint an advisory group to draft a global framework to make mineral supply chains more transparent, traceable and accountable.

Efforts to define responsible mining are not new. But there are currently around 200 voluntary mining standards and “a lot of them are not the best standards”, said Sascha Raabe, who heads the UN Industrial Development Organization’s (UNIDO) Global Alliance for Responsible and Green Minerals. It aims to bring together governments, the priva