In the shadows of climate change mitigation:

The politics of extraction for a just energy transition

Climate change threatens every part of the planet. It’s a global problem that requires a sustainable transition.

Contemporary efforts to tackle climate change are leading to a global surge in demand for the metals and minerals that are used in the production of renewable energy technologies.

The dark side of the renewable energy transition

Currently, increasing demand for copper, cobalt, lithium, and other transition metals is displacing and degrading some of the world’s most vulnerable populations and regions. Calls have been made for better regulation and “sustainable mining,” but the hidden costs of renewable energy technologies remain unregulated and unresolved.

This research seeks to understand processes of consolidation and contestation across five lithium bearing frontiers:

Australia, Canada, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

Timeline

This research will take place over a 5-year timeline, from 2021 to 2026.

Methods

The work includes desk-based review (ongoing), as well as in-person fieldwork. During field visits, partners engage in archival research, interviews, focus groups, and visits to major extractive sites. Site selection represents lithium pegmatite (“hard rock”) mining (i.e. Western Australia, Northern Ontario, and Northern Québec) and lithium brine evaporation (i.e. Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Western Canada).

Research Questions

Through comparative research of lithium producing regions and socio-technical landscapes, the research pursues three inter-related empirical questions and objectives:

A central aim of the research is to document the ways in which junior and major mining firms have identified and negotiated access to proposed and operational lithium extraction sites, including the national and subnational rules that have been put in place to regulate exploration, investment, community impacts, environmental impacts, and other national and subnational norms.
This will entail collecting media reporting and interviewing company, community, and government representatives.
We seek to understand the terms on which firms are establishing and deepening access to surface and subsurface rights through geological assessments, exploration permits, mining concessions, business acquisitions, joint ventures, public subsidies, and infrastructural investments.
A central aim here is to understand the ways in which local stakeholders perceive the costs and possible benefits of engaging and living with lithium extraction.
This will entail identifying the stakeholders that are promoting, resisting, and influencing lithium extraction, and documenting the political claims that have been used to justify and influence public and corporate decisions.
The research seeks to understand the ways in which the prospect of lithium mining is shaping new interests, including the articulation of new connections to land, community, and geo-spatial identity.
Using a combination of media text analysis and interviews with local politicians, government officials, businesses, communities, workers and NGOs, the research will document the political claims and discourses that stakeholders have used to support, resist or transform existing and future lithium extraction and development trajectories in the five jurisdictions.
A central aim here is to understand the conditions under which local stakeholders have been able to influence more favourable or acceptable terms of exploration and extraction, including the right to say no. Particularly important will be the formal and informal mechanisms that have been used to reduce or prohibit the harmful socio-economic and environmental impacts. Formal mechanisms include FPIC, court injunctions, environmental impact assessments and post-operation policies on closure and harm mitigation. Informal mechanisms include boycotts, blockades, demonstrations and global social media and civil society campaigns.
The research will use media text analysis and key informant interviews to identify the factors and processes that have been most influential in these contexts.