El Salvador ban, Nigerian lithium, Industry self-regulation | News Round-up #54

Also Trump fumbling, deep-sea mining wins and losses, Indonesia's nickel glut, and Nambia encountering the resolve of foreign firms.

Feb 06, 2025

Climate technologies require enormous amounts of metal. I’m Ian Morse, and this is Green Rocks, a newsletter that doesn’t want dirty mining to ruin clean energy.

A lot of news, so I’ll highlight some major stories at the top.

El Salvador was the first country to ban metals mining, but its legislature overturned the ban last month. The country’s president had detained early last year five mining activists who spearheaded the effort, raising fears of resurfacing extrajudicial violence against environmental defenders. Activists had been hesitant to celebrate when the ban went into effect, understanding that it was an expedient political maneuver, and that the country’s neoliberal legal structures, such as the state’s claims to the subsurface, went untouched. Polling suggests a large majority of citizens believe El Salvador is unsuitable for mining. Foreign companies mining for gold and silver have dominated El Salvador’s mining industry.

Nigerian lithium

An AP investigation found that Chinese firms were likely buying lithium ore mined by children in Nigeria.
Civil society organizations in Nigeria have decried their exclusion from negotiations between the government and a lithium company regarding a planned plant.
Nigeria’s government has arrested 32 people accused of illegally trading lithium at a market formerly known for fresh farm produce.
US and Italian firms have invested in an online marketplace for Nigeria’s lithium minerals.

New industry standard

Four mining industry bodies collaborated on the first draft of a standard meant to provide guidance for companies that choose to follow it. It went out for its first public consultation in October.
Civil society groups responded with a thorough, public analysis of the draft.
…which the industry association sought to correct with its own response, emphasizing their support for “robust dialogue and feedback.”
Inside the global fight over ‘responsible’ mining (E&E News)
The False Promise of “Responsible Mining” (Project Syndicate)
The major problems with mining industry's new certification standards (EU Observer)
A member of the standard-setting team published this commentary in Mongabay, illuminating the decades-old ethos of industry standards: companies should choose to be nice and everyone else should trust them.

Deep-sea mining

Norway’s Socialist Left party withheld approval of the budget until the government nixed its plans to open up its seabed to mining firms.
Portugal’s parliament approved the first steps toward a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
The Cook Islands government was accused of misleading citizens into believing the public is undecided on the benefits.
How, Exactly, Could Deep-Sea Mining Benefit All of Humanity? (Hakai Magazine)
The struggle at the International Seabed Authority over deep sea mineral resources (Nature)
Trump's administration is stacked with supporters of a prominent deep sea mining firm (Mining Magazine)

Trump wields minerals as weapons

The owner of the most valuable EV maker made a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration rally and told supporters at another far-right rally that multiculturalism “dilutes” German culture and values.
After inauguration and with the straw-man of an energy emergency, Trump signed an executive order to remove barriers to energy production, which was defined to include critical minerals.
Trump floated exchanging weapons to Ukraine in return for rare earth element-bearing minerals (or “rare earths and other things”) from within Ukraine’s borders.
- Untold amounts of rare earth elements are used in US-made weapons used to murder people in Palestine, which Trump said would US “take over.”
In an escalating trade battle between the US and China, China has restricted exports of tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium.
Canadian and South African officials have independently discussed directing their mineral products away from the US.
Trump’s order to greenlight the controversial Ambler Road for a mining project in Alaska seems to have left the permits in limbo, as the Army Corps of Engineers seems to have dragged its feet when Biden rejected it last year.

Indonesian Nickel

European firms Eramet and BASF scrapped plans to build a $2.6B nickel-cobalt refinery in North Maluku after it surfaced that the project threatened the lives of a remote Indigenous group.
Mining firms there are cutting off people’s access to forest products like sago, a staple starch that offers an alternative to the country’s reliance on rice, which is likely causing millions of cases of undiagnosed diabetes.
An international NGO is calling attention to “genocide” against Indigenous hunter-gatherers in remote Indonesian forests bulldozed for the nickel that lies underneath.
Parliament is again rushing through amendments to its mining law, and known provisions include issuing permits to universities and religious organizations.
Workers allege that one of Indonesia’s largest nickel producers, Jiangsu Delong, is withholding wages and harassing Chinese migrant workers.

Foreign firms flock to Namibia

Chile lithium miner SQM has partnered with South African firm Andrada Mining to develop an area they call Lithium Ridge.
A union is blaming a uranium company for the deaths of two workers.
The grand KoBold Metals, a Bezos and Gates-backed tech-fueled attempt at a junior mining company, is scouring Namibia.
An activist protesting illegal lithium mining and accusing local authorities of accepting bribes was arrested.
Local conservation groups have asked courts to block a tin mine that threatens the lives of critically endangered rhinos.
Mining firms seeking uranium, lithium, tin, rubidium, and tantalum are exploring directly over a colossal aquifer that provides pure drinking water to 50,000 people.

The Green Rocks Map

Climate goes metal in even more places

Proposed EV battery manufacturing plants are set to build more batteries than projections say are needed.
The Andean Summit of Communities Affected by Lithium Mining was held in Argentina this month, resulting in a declaration to support the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the region.
Serbia reinstated the permits for Rio Tinto’s planned lithium mine. Protests had pressured the government to rescind permits in 2022. Activists proposing an energy transition that focused on public infrastructure rather than mining received death threats soon after.
China banned exports to the US of gallium, germanium, and antimony.
An independent report has confirmed that Rio Tinto’s legacy Panguna mine in Bougainville continues to cause environmental disaster on the island.
An audit of Canada’s critical minerals strategy claims the government isn’t giving due consideration to impacts on the environment, biodiversity, and Indigenous people.
A Chinese firm is seeking to establish a bauxite mine on Indigenous lands in Suriname.
Activists in Indonesia say they see a coordinated attack against an award-winning scientist who calculated damages from tin mining reach almost $17 billion.
Chile threw out a permit application for an iron and copper mine that has long sparked controversy for threatening penguins.
Protesters in New Zealand are fighting a law that would fast-track approvals for mining firms.
Apple said it will stop sourcing ‘conflict minerals’ from central Africa.
An Ontario court dismissed a lawsuit that claimed Barrick Gold was complicit in killings at its mine in Tanzania.
Saudi Arabia has announced a $100 billion round of investment in hardrock mining, which officials claimed will target materials used in energy transitions. Ministers said it successfully extracted lithium from its oil company’s brine oilfields.
Mali’s junta and Barrick Gold are in negotiations to determine the fate of the Canadian firm’s mine and a few tons of confiscated gold. Mali has demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
Brazil’s government is planning to strengthen its mining regulator after years of complaints to increase salaries and hire more staff for the agency that oversees tailings dams.
A drafted update to China’s mining law adds first-ever ecological restoration requirements but falls short on supply chain due diligence, analysts say.
Cambodia’s recent crackdown on illegal gold mining doesn’t seem to have hit a Chinese project inside a protected forest.
Local officials in a Laos town say they are relieved that a Chinese rare earth mining company will compensate villagers for toxic discharge that poisoned a river.
Vale has been included in Brazil’s list of companies that have subjected workers to “slave-like” labor.
Months after a collapsed crane at a steel plant in Thailand killed six people, a steel plant exploded, killing one and injuring five workers.
Residents of a Sumatran village protested in front of the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia, demanding that both governments revoke support for a planned zinc mine and tailings facility that risks environmental disaster.
A Chinese cobalt and copper processing plant relocated 1500 families after accusations of pollution, despite denying the allegations.
A lithium company in Zimbabwe discharged an unknown effluent and drew untold amounts of water from a dam that supports local communities.
Local communities in Zimbabwe have lambasted a Chinese lithium company’s intrusion into ancestral lands and displacement of families as the government seeks to expand lithium across the country.
Informal miners in Colombia have accused Zijin Mining of pouring toxic waste into an artisanal mining area.

Research and Reports

New research in Nature estimates that previously uncounted emissions from nickel mining raise the carbon footprint of mines between 4 and 500 times previous measures.
Mining for critical minerals, Global Witness tallies, is tied to 111 violent incidents and protests each year on average.
A team at UMass Amherst earned a US government grant to develop methods to make plants mine nickel, and the Wall Street Journal cast it as a weapon against China.
The International Trade Union Confederation named seven firms that use their operations, supply chains, and investments to undermine democracy around the world: Amazon, Blackstone, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla, and the Vanguard Group.
In the urgency for transition minerals, it’s often forgotten that mines will have cascading impacts for generations; a new report from Heinrich Böll Stiftung illuminates these impacts.
An analysis of environmental impacts assessments and regulations found numerous flaws and limitations in Brazil’s management of tailings dams.
Global Witness updated their fantastic report on China’s reliance on Myanmar’s rare earth ore, finding that consequences for locals have only deepened.
Amnesty International ranked EV companies by their commitments to avoid raw materials sources from places that harm people. Mercedes-Benz ranked top, BYD the bottom, and none scored more than a “moderate demonstration” of alignment to international standards. A similar report is expected from Lead the Charge next month.
The China Global South Project published an interactive map with 2022 data on Chinese companies’ cobalt and copper supply chains that runs through the DRC.