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The discovery and dispute over natural resources has been the backdrop for great historical reenactments, often altering the course of History itself, reflects Bill Laws1.
In fact, mineral raw materials have the capacity to affect international cooperation, creating geopolitical tensions or intergovernmental alliances, to be involved in major controversies linked to human rights abuses and the perpetuation of crimes against humanity, but they can, however, be so intricate in our daily lives, in our everyday objects, such as a cell phone or computer, that they place tremendous decisions on the course of humanity, in the daily choices of citizens, choices so discreet that they fit in a trouser or coat pocket – without us being aware of this at all.
The last and fourth industrial revolution, known as the Green Revolution, was born from the need to decarbonize the economy and energy, creating more efficient and cleaner energy systems, avoiding the worsening of the current climate crisis, with Portugal being “one of the most vulnerable areas in Europe to climate change”, adds Carlos Santos Silva, academic and researcher at IN+ at the Instituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa.
In 2015, the “first universal agreement in history”2, the Paris Agreement, was signed by 195 countries that committed to limiting global warming, keeping it below 2ºC, and ideally 1.5ºC, compared to pre-industrial levels – a commitment reinforced at COP263 in 2021.
In order to make the necessary efforts to meet the established global targets, the European Union has proposed a roadmap, called the European Green Deal (EGP), outlining a path for Europe to move towards a sustainable future, with the aim of “being the first continent with a climate-neutral impact”, with the priority of achieving zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.4.
Among the various areas covered by the PEE, the Energy and Digital Transition has been presented as the panacea for the current climate crisis, currently being the “very engine of Europe’s economic development” according to Carlos Santos Silva.
As in previous industrial revolutions, this one also depends on raw materials to fuel the energy and digital transition, which are a set of minerals known as rare earth metals. According to the European Commission, there are 30 rare earth metals, according to the latest list published in 2020 on critical raw materials.7 (CRMs), i.e. raw materials that are economically and strategically relevant to the European economy, the supply of which is at risk8.
Among the 30 rare metals, rare earths are the highest priority of all CRMs for European economies and the green political agenda, according to the European Raw Materials Alliance (ERMA).
“It’s a problem that we scientists, and also the industries, know very well”, reflects Ana-Maria Martinez, researcher and project coordinator at REE4EU and partner in the SecREEts project, “we are extremely dependent on metals”.
Guillaume Pitron, a French journalist and documentary filmmaker, author of the book “The War of Rare Metals” (not published in Portuguese), states that “green energies and resources harbor a dark secret”, referring to the paradoxes and negative externalities inherent in the current “green revolution”.
In fact, although renewable energies do not have a negative impact on the climate over their lifetime, since they do not emit greenhouse gases, the production of the technology needed to generate renewable energy combines a series of extremely polluting processes, including the need to extract huge quantities of rare metals.
Chinese environmental activist Ma Jun stresses that “it is no longer enough to look at green and non-polluting end products”, saying that we also need to confirm that the manufacturing process of these technologies is sustainable in terms of their social and environmental impact.
According to the US Geological Survey and the European Commission, China is the largest producer of most of the world's rare metals, and above all, of the supreme "green" metals, whose intrinsic properties surpass in performance and worldwide recognition all other rare metals: rare earths.
Rare earths are metals grouped into a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table. It is their relevance in the magnetic process that makes these minerals essential for renewable energy, enabling high-performance electric motors, with a minimum dose of rare earths emitting a magnetic field capable of generating more energy than the same amount of oil or coal (in “The Rare Metals War”).
Rare earths have electromagnetic, electronic, catalytic, optical and chemical properties that are essential for a number of industries, such as electronics, military and renewable energy, used in the production of green technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles (National Geographic Portugal, March 2022). They are also deeply embedded in our daily lives, constituting the components in our mobile phones that enable them to vibrate, being constituent parts of the hard drives of our computers and vital elements for our headphones.
New applications for these metals are found every day, with their exploration having gone beyond the limits of land and advanced into the ocean, with several countries requesting extensions of their exclusive economic zones.9
Overseas, the race to extract rare earths was also redirected to space, when in 2015, former US President Barack Obama signed the “Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act”, which guarantees any American citizen the right to own, transport, use or sell any resource from space. Although it is still a distant and, for now, utopian reality, the idea of commercial space mining and exploration has thus become a hypothesis.
In fact, Hollywood has also covered this new “gold rush” in the satirical film “Don't Look Up”, based on the asteroid 2011 UW-158, also called the “Trillion-Dollar Asteroid”.10, which passed close to Earth in 2015, attracting the attention of NASA scientists, estimating the value of its composition, 90 million tons of rare metals, at 5.000 billion euros.
In 1992, former Chinese President Deng Xiaoping, a forerunner of China’s current economic reform and development, stated: “The Middle East has the oil. China has the rare earths,” alluding to the power that these elements would come to have as the “gold of the XNUMXst century.”
Contrary to what the current paradigm seems to dictate, the largest reserves of rare earths are not found in the most active operational mines, such as those in China, but are spread across the planet in different concentrations.11
In fact, from 1952 to 1980, the largest operational rare earth mine was in the United States, in Mountain Pass, California, and France owned a chemical company in La Rochelle that purified 50% of the planet's rare earths.
The harmful environmental effects of rare earth mining began to be unbearable for local populations, who, through public pressure on local governments, managed to obtain stricter environmental regulations, forcing investment in modernizing facilities, making the processes more costly and therefore less profitable (according to the report “Rare Earth Mining in Mountain Pass”, Desert Report, March 2011).
Faced with less restrictive environmental and labor laws and standards in China, allowing for lower-cost production, both the US and France decided to abandon their global leadership position in the rare earths industry in the 2000s and relocate it to China, benefiting from more competitive prices and not directly suffering the environmental consequences inherent in rare earth mining, explains Guillaume Pitron in “The Rare Metals War”.
China, in turn, has managed to position itself strategically on the energy issue, currently becoming the main, and sometimes the only, supplier of the most strategic rare metals for the energy and digital transition, such as rare earths.
“China controls us. China knows that if they control the supply of mineral raw materials, they control the market,” says Ana-Maria Martinez.
The Chinese strategy, combined with that of the West, has allowed China to control 90% of the entire production chain of rare earth magnets and 98% of the supply of rare earths to the European Union, according to data from the European Commission.12
Today, China not only holds a global monopoly on the supply of rare earths, but also the expertise and technological know-how necessary to produce the most sophisticated technologies, crucial to the energy transition (according to NewsScientist, 2021; and “Green Conflict Minerals”, a study and report by the International Institute for Development (IISD), 2018).
According to the report “Rare Earth Magnets and Motors: A European Call for Action”, the Chinese Central Government owns most of the companies in the rare earths sector, which gives it control over the supply of these metals, leading to distortions in the market price of rare earths.
The document also adds that in December 2021, China implemented the “Export Control Law”, which implies the application of export duties13 and consequently quotas that limit the export of rare earths to the rest of the world.
This intervention in the international rare earth market has generated complaints14 to the World Trade Organization, by the USA, the European Union and Japan, accusing China of violating international trade laws by distorting prices.
Furthermore, the failure to disclose information by the Chinese government reveals, according to the “European Call for Action” report, a lack of transparency regarding the standards and social and environmental impact of the rare earth production chain, as well as the levels of governance of these resources, making the rare earth market opaque and poorly regulated.
The global dependence on China, throughout the rare earth production chain, has affected the harmony of international cooperation and the security of the sustainability of European economies, creating geopolitical tensions, with China using its rare earth monopoly as a commercial weapon against the rest of the world, in order to reaffirm its political power, as has already been happening in several episodes since 2010.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), this insecurity regarding the supply of rare earths will be accentuated by the growing global demand for them, estimating that, in order to achieve the European target of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the demand for rare earths will be 6 times greater than the current one, in 2040.
For the European Union, the political impact of regaining control over the rare earth production chain is a priority, for several reasons, but particularly because this dependence “limits our ability as a political region to exercise our voice on other matters”, says Carlos Santos Silva.
The processes of extracting and refining rare earths are immensely harmful to the environment, producing high levels of toxic waste, with high risks of radioactivity, with the refining of 1 tonne of rare earths producing 2000 tonnes of untreated toxic waste (The Guardian, 2014).
In China, rare earths tend to be mined in rural areas, with the main areas responsible for the largest percentage of rare earth mining and export being the cities of Ganzhou, in Jiangxi province, and Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, responsible for the extraction of 75% of the rare earths exported to the rest of the world, according to the South China Morning Post (The Guardian, 2014).
According to testimonies collected in the work “The War of Rare Metals”, residents of Jiangxi province claim that the land is poisoned, since the chemicals used in refining rare earths penetrate the soil, and sulfuric and hydrochloric acids pollute the nearest water sources, making it impossible for any plant to thrive.
However, the reality of Jiangxi is no match for that of Baotou.
At the entrance to the parks in Baotou city, you can find posters depicting a family with children against a green, immaculate background, with the title “Building a clean city for our country” – the perfect postcard of a dystopian reality.
The environmental destruction caused by the rare earth industry is not only reflected in toxic pollution levels, but also in the disfigurement of the landscape: Baotou, a city based at the foot of the Yin Mountains, on the north side of the magnificent Yellow River, where 65 years ago there were lush green landscapes that stretched as far as the horizon and clear, invigorating air, a place with spiritual significance for the Mongolian population, is now home to 3000 companies and factories, according to the China Daily, as well as the world's largest open-pit rare earth mine, measuring 48 km2 in length and 1000 meters deep, mines covered with thick currents of toxic air – considered one of China's greatest environmental disasters by several Chinese environmentalists (The Guardian, 2014).
20 km from the center of Baotou is the Weikuang Dam, an artificial lake of 11.5 km2 that belches torrents of thick, black water, with toxic and unbreathable air, where metallic and toxic waste from the surrounding refineries, particularly those of rare earths, is dumped.
According to the Environmental Justice Atlas report15 about Bayan Obo, occasionally the Yellow River, which provides drinking water to 155 million people, is flooded by the toxic tributaries of the Dam that contains 150 million tons of tailings.
The China Research Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2004 concluded that thorium (a radioactive metal) waste was linked to increased cancer and mortality rates among rare earth mining workers.
This is true in the villages surrounding the artificial lake, known as “Cancer Villages”, such as Dalahai, known as the “Village of Death” due to the high rates of brain cancer, lung cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases among local residents, according to the article “Protecting the Environment and Public Health from Rare Earth Mining” (2016). According to the same article, Dalahai has a concentration of thorium in its soil that is 36 times higher than that of the city of Baotou, which means that the inhabitants of these villages breathe, drink and eat the toxic and radioactive discharge from the lake, which seeps into the soil and consequently into the water table, thus contaminating everything it touches. The land is no longer capable of producing local crops, and the few livestock that are born have serious deformities, with most of them slowly dying.16
In turn, illegal mines are a major aggravating factor in the alarming levels of pollution in China, escaping even the few existing environmental and socio-labor regulations, entering a kind of “grey zone” where their actions go unnoticed under the curtain of the lack of legislation and control, report local activists in the province of Guangdong.17
Over the past few years, the Chinese Central Government has focused its efforts on banning illegal activities linked to the rare earth industry, such as illegal mines where rare earth elements are extracted, says the Los Angeles Times in 2019.
However, efforts have been thwarted by the owners of illegal mines who maintain the secrecy of the business, with the support of local authorities, by policing the extraction zones, in exchange for payment.
Illegal mining feeds the Chinese black market for rare earths, allowing the origin of these minerals to be laundered in the production chain, making it difficult to track them and thus understand the conditions of their extraction and processing, once exported abroad, as they enter the international legal market, with it being estimated that the black market for rare earths comprises 1/3 of the official supply of rare earths in China.18
Julian Hilton, Resource Management Expert, Chair of the UNECE SDG Delivery Working Group19 and consultant at the IAEA20, argues that we are living in a period of profound paradox: “we want all the benefits; we want security of supply and access; what we don’t like are the means of production and the consequences that arise from them”.
In fact, according to data from Statista22 for 2021, Europe is the world's largest producer per capita of electronic waste, with electronic waste being a secondary source rich in rare earths (according to the platform The Urban Mine).
Despite this, according to the scientific article “Electronic Waste, an environmental problem exported to developing countries: the GOOD, the BAD and the VILLAIN” (2021), less than 1% of rare earths are recycled in Europe and the European Union estimates that 50% of its total e-waste23 (about 1.5 million tons)24), from which rare earths could be recovered to minimize Europe's dependence on China and guarantee the security of its supply, is illegally exported to developing countries, such as Ghana, where the world's largest and most polluting electronic waste dump is located, and Nigeria.
Amir Lebdioui, an academic at SOAS University of London in the area of Economic Policy for Development, says that to truly assess the environmental performance of the European Union, we need to carry out a life cycle analysis.25, including indirect greenhouse gas emissions from European production chains resulting from the consumption of imported products. According to this analysis, there is an 11% increase in CO2 emissions from all member states, compared to the analysis of direct emissions, according to the article “Europe's Carbon Loophole”, from 2017.
However, Clara Boissenin, coordinator of the SecREEts project in the area of social acceptance in the rare earths sector, explains that this analysis of the life cycle of projects financed by the European Union represents a major problem for them, due to the lack of information about China, which “is either not available or is very well hidden”.
“We have major environmental challenges and extremely demanding targets just around the corner. New technologies need minerals. And where do these minerals come from? From mining. And what is mining? It’s a dirty (industry). I don’t want it in my backyard,” reflects Ana-Maria Martinez. The scientist and researcher explains that this trend has led to mining coming to a standstill in Europe over the last 50 to 60 years.
“I don’t think it’s China’s fault. It’s only our fault,” reflects Ana-Maria Martinez, on Europe’s dependence on China and the current state of the rare earths production chain, in terms of its environmental impact. Julian Hilton says the same: “The West has a habit of blaming others for the problems it itself created” – rare earths being a case in point.
Transparency and trust in the data provided by the Chinese government on its environmental performance have proven to be a problem for the international community, since the Chinese central government blocks information from reaching the outside world, covering up the reality in China. The same is true for what happens at the level of civil society. The Chinese government's repression of human rights defenders, journalists and activists, as well as restrictions on access to information and media, make it difficult to obtain accurate information about the government's policies and actions, says Human Rights Watch in 2020.
“If you have any doubts about what China expects from its society, look at Hong Kong. For me, it is a good barometer of expectations regarding what can be expected with Xi Jinping’s current power dynamics,” says Raquel Vaz-Pinto, PhD in political science, researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI) and visiting professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, referring to the increasing repression of society, suppression of the democratic regime and inherent individual freedoms in the autonomous territory of Hong Kong since the peaceful pro-democracy marches in 2019, according to the Human Rights Watch report on China (2020).
Environmental protests against state-owned rare earth companies and criticism of the government are met with repression, including prison sentences for protesters, under the pretext of “provoking conflict and creating trouble,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2019, covering protests in Guangxi province.
Due to the importance of rare earths as a strategic sector, Raquel Vaz-Pinto states “I am not very optimistic about what is happening in these cities”, referring to the repression of anti-pollution demonstrations in areas affected by the extraction and refining of rare earths.
He further adds that the level of repression during Xi Jinping's second term has increased considerably, characterized by greater control and repression, both in terms of human rights and civil rights.
The autonomous regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia are geopolitically and economically strategic regions for China, due to the abundance of natural resources, but they are also regions of conflict due to ethnic issues.
Fearing for decades the proliferation of separatist movements, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has implemented strategies aimed at ethnic homogenization, gradually replacing the ethnic minorities of the autonomous regions with the Han majority, which today represents 90% of the Chinese population and the majority of the population26 of the three regions. The strategies used have involved the use of trade routes, using railway links, not only to transport goods, but also the Han ethnic population itself.27, ethnic cultural cleansing, as is happening in Inner Mongolia, or implementing even more brutal strategies, as in the case of Xinjiang where genocide and crimes against humanity are taking place against the Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minorities, the report says.28 2021, from the US Government's Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Consulting.
The study35 The July 2020 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies – Human Rights Initiative on the concentration camps in Xinjiang and the Uighur genocide explains that forced industrial labor is seen by the Central Government as the best method for ethnic minorities to assimilate Han culture. The same study proves the submission of ethnic minorities to forced labor programs, and several Western companies were identified as importing products made from the forced labor of Uighurs, with one of the priority industries for this forced labor being the mining industry for the extraction and refining of rare earths (confirmed by Human Rights Watch in 2020 and the “Save Uighur” Project in 2021).
The Non-Profit Organization WOIPFG36, published on July 20, 2019, a report entitled “The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Prison Slave Labor Industry – The CCP’s Secret Weapon in the Trade War”.
The document explains that Chinese companies that use slave labor in Chinese prisons are mostly state-owned companies, and are used as an aggressive economic and commercial tactic to keep China at the forefront of international trade, through production at very low costs, with which the West cannot compete.
These make up a prison enterprise system37, centralized and unified management, monitored, financed and under the CCP judicial system.
The document proves the use of convicted or forced labor by the company “Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baoanzhao Agriculture, Industry, and Trade Co., Ltd”, also confirming that “through its investigation, CBP has determined that there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that Baoanzhao is a prison/forced labor facility”.
According to Annex 2.12 – “Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region”41 According to the WOIPFG report on state-owned prisons that are forced labor facilities in Inner Mongolia, the company “Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baoanzhao Agriculture, Industry, and Trade Co., Ltd” is listed in the document as the company owned by Baoanzhao Prison, located in Jalaid Banner (Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia) administered by the Justice Department of the Prison Administration of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which in turn is controlled by the CCP.
According to the data in the appendix, the said company is part of the state-owned industrial group “Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Industrial Group Co., Ltd.”, an affiliate of the Prison Administration Department of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the functional organization of the Inner Mongolia government responsible for the province's prisons, and the group owns 22 prison enterprise units.
Documentation on the Laogai42 existing by Chinese province until 1992, collected in the book “Laogai, the Chinese Gulag”, confirms that the Baoanzhao prison was already part of the CCP's reform through (forced) labor system in 1992.43
Annex 2.12 of the WOIPFG report also indicates that Baotou Prison, a key prison in Baotou Municipality – the “rare earth capital”44 – owns the company “Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baotou Industry and Trade Co.,Ltd.”, responsible for the production of electronic components – where rare earths are crucial elements – and metal processing (among other products).
Appendix VI of the report “Continuation of Repression in Inner Mongolia”, entitled “Labor Camps, Prisons and Other Detention Facilities in Inner Mongolia” up to 1992, confirms the existence of one such prison facility using forced labor, in the Bayan Obo Mining District (name: Bayun E'bo Kuang Qu; located under the administration of Baotou Municipality), dedicated to rare earth mining, confirming the use of forced labor in this industry.
In the Bayan Obo Mining District, there is the largest mine and industrial complex for the extraction of rare earths in the world (the Baogang Steel Factory), owned by the “Baotou Iron and Steel” group.45
Appendix VI also indicates the existence of the “Baotou Municipal Center for Re-education through Labor”46, which provides workers for the “Baotou Iron and Steel Group”, a state-owned company responsible for the production of rare earths in Bayan Obo.
According to Radio Free Asia, in February 2019, reports from Chinese officials were made public confirming the transfer of prisoners from the Uighur ethnic minority from “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, secretly and off-the-record, to other locations and detention centers, such as the Wutaqi and Salaqi prisons (both included in appendix 2.12 of the WOIPFG report) in Inner Mongolia and Sischuan provinces (provinces where rare earths are extracted), in order to conceal from the public and international justice the scale of the Xinjiang genocide – a relocation process that is said to have begun in October 2018, says RFA’s Uighur Service.
Today, in the midst of the Green Revolution, there is great concern about green conflict minerals, which include fuels needed for the transition to a low-carbon economy – such as rare earth metals.
Despite conflict minerals48, linked to the origin of internal conflicts and serious human rights abuses, are already subject to governance mechanisms for production chains, to guarantee their ethical and environmental safety, the same has not yet been applied to green conflict minerals, whose production chains may give rise to exacerbated tensions, resentments and conflicts linked to the extraction of minerals.
In countries where there is political instability regarding the governance of the mining sector, due to abuses of state power or illegal activities, the extraction of these minerals may be linked to violence, conflicts and human rights abuses.
In fact, according to data from the IISD report, rare earth mines in China have been considered “exploitation sites” with incidents linked to the use of child labor, exposure of workers to high levels of toxic substances and dangerous working conditions (Schlanger, 2017).
This reality is particularly worrying in the case of illegal mines (abundant in Jiangxi province) that supply black markets, incurring severe human rights abuses, since they are not subject to any legislation, threatening the safety of workers and local communities (according to the New York Times in 2010; and Quartz in 2017).
In 2010, the OECD approved the Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas to ensure transparency and ethical accountability in supply chains. However, as it is not part of the OECD, China has no obligation to comply with these guidelines, nor to share information about what happens along the supply chains of rare earths.
In light of European efforts to ensure sustainable but also responsible development, Raquel Vaz-Pinto says, “the European Union has made a huge effort, unlike other areas of the world, but it is not at all enough, we need to do more and better in the entire process, whether in environmental matters or in human rights”.
Given the scenario presented, it becomes necessary to track the production chains linked to rare earths, in order to prevent greenwashing processes and collusion with human rights abuses.
However, the tracking process is complex due to the diversity of stages in the mineral production chain, making it difficult to ensure that companies are truly transparent and green, as well as to control undeclared minerals that are introduced into the international market by smugglers, says Guillaume Pitron in “The War of Rare Metals”. The situation is aggravated when the major supplier is China, from where it is extremely difficult for the Chinese government to obtain official data, reveals Ana-Maria Martinez.
Vítor Correia, Secretary General of the International Raw Materials Observatory (INTRAW), states that, in view of the growing demand for minerals, “we need a transcontinental agreement; a European one is not enough, because there is no country in the world that has all the raw materials that its industry needs”. Not even China. However, he adds that international cooperation is being called into question by the growing nationalism with which each country seeks to solve resource management problems.
Julian Hilton adds that if “we continue down the path of resource nationalism, we will face terrible difficulties in terms of conflicts”, so the path must go through international cooperation and holding those responsible accountable, applying a series of tools that enable the tracking of production chains, and that aim to guarantee the right and duty, not only of Western consumers, but of the entire world population, to reinforce the guarantee of sustainable and ethical production chains, fighting against conflicts that arise from the exploitation of minerals – tools such as Blockchain technologies, which are currently being developed by UN working groups.
The current energy transition based on rare earth metals has had repercussions at a geopolitical level, with the restructuring of political and commercial partnerships with oil-exporting countries, such as the United States and the Persian Gulf countries. In the case of the European Union, a reduced dependence on Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in terms of fossil fuel imports would mean an increase in the energy sovereignty of its member states.
In fact, Thierry Breton49, Commissioner for the European Internal Market and responsible for drafting the “European Call for action” for the rare earths industry, speaks of the need for the European Union to acquire “strategic autonomy” through alliances, such as with Canada and Australia, without harming mining in Europe.
The report “Rare Earth Magnets and Motors: A European Call for Action”, created in 2021 by ERMA and the ERMA Cluster “Rare Earth Magnets and Motors”, in partnership with the European Union and EIT Raw Materials, reflects on the serious environmental problem present in the way rare earth mining is carried out in China, highlighting Europe's potential as a world leader in the sustainable production of rare earth materials, with the main objective of this “European Call for Action” being to transform Europe into a world leader in the supply of rare earths and rare earth magnets.
One of the solutions found for this is the application of the concept of circular economy.50 the production of rare earths, through waste management and the creation of a market for secondary raw materials, in this case rare earths, focusing on the recovery of rare earths from secondary sources.
According to the “European Call for Action”, these measures include the need to ensure that end-of-life products, i.e. electronic waste containing rare earths, do not leave Europe, by introducing regulations and standards that facilitate the reprocessing and recycling of these products.
Guillaume Pitron, in “The Rare Metals War”, in view of the implementation of rare earth recycling techniques, offers a glimpse of the future: “a world in which the mining powerhouses are not the countries with the richest mineral deposits, but those with the most abundant waste deposits”, pointing to the geopolitical reorganization, according not to the mineral production chains, but to their recycling.
ERMA’s key work is to address this European dependence on the Chinese supply chain by identifying a set of projects in the European Union that meet the need for rare earths supply, either through domestic supply or recycling. ERMA has identified 14 projects that could form the foundation of the European rare earths industry, capable of covering 20% of the demand for rare earths by 2030. The projects, which are the target of European investment, are linked to the promotion of the circular economy, namely through the recovery and recycling of rare earths from different secondary sources, such as electronic waste, and using different techniques, such as urban mining.51 – “a kind of fantastic solution, because at the same time as it deals with waste, it finds the raw materials that are needed”, says Vítor Correia.
Among these projects, we can find REE4EU, a project funded by the European Union, dedicated to the recovery of rare earth magnets from end-of-life products, considered by the European Commission as the most advanced rare earth recycling project in the European Union, according to the report of the Joint Research Centre.52 in 2020.
REE4EU offers a technological alternative from European sources for companies to obtain rare earths from recycled waste, ensuring that the production chain of these companies is sustainable and ethical.
Unlike many other projects, this one manages to close the complete cycle of recycling permanent magnets, without generating waste, since they use the residual material to produce a new product, managing to produce magnets with the recycled materials, with exactly the same properties as the initial products. “Our environmental footprint is very good, and our technology is competitive compared to Chinese prices, which is why we were awarded the award for efficient solution by the Solar Impulse Foundation”, says Ana-Maria Martinez.
Another highly relevant project in the area, funded by the European Union, is SecREEts (Securing European Rare Earth Elements), which focuses on the reuse of rare earths from industrial materials in the fertilizer industry, with the aim of developing and securing the entire production chain of neodymium permanent magnets in Europe, without the need for mining, explains Clara Boissenin.
In turn, N9VE, a project born in Portugal, develops technology related to algae to separate, concentrate and recover critical technological elements, mainly rare earths, with environmental sustainability as its main operating guide, says José Pinheiro-Torres, founder and CEO of the startup N9VE.
Numerous projects directly or indirectly related to rare earth recycling have been funded in the European Union. Several of these projects have already been completed, some culminating in patents, companies or other investment opportunities.53
Despite the potential of rare earth recycling projects, the technologies behind many of these projects are not yet economically viable or scalable to industrial levels to compete with the Chinese market, says the IISD’s 2018 report on “Green Conflict Minerals.”
Several of the researchers interviewed, linked to rare earth recovery and recycling projects, also indicate that the time between citizens and industries placing electronic waste for recycling is high, delaying the recycling process and thus creating obstacles to the sustainability of the rare earth industry in the European Union (according to EURACTIV in 2019).
Regarding operational obstacles, José Pinheiro-Torres refers to bureaucratic slowness as an impediment to the rhythmic development of projects and the idealism of the PEE, which presents a series of measures, ideals and values that elevate the spirit, lacking the implementation of the plan through investments and concrete measures. Maria da Graça Carvalho affirms the same in Público, in 2021, stating that the great challenge of the PEE is not in the document itself, “Europe has never had difficulty in outlining good strategies. Where it sometimes falls short of expectations is in their implementation”.
With the progressive closure of mines in European territory over the last few decades, Europe has gone from producing around 60% of the world's heavy metals in 1850 to 3%, according to the ICMM.54
Given the exponential demand for rare metals and the current and future needs for rare earths, considering the current supply capacity of the European Union, it is necessary to rethink the sources of supply of rare earths, since the European Union will not be able to survive solely on the market for secondary rare earth raw materials, without opening mines, explains Ana-Maria Martinez.
According to the “European Call for Action” for rare earth magnets and motors, Europe holds significant reserves of rare earths, however, it suffers from a lack of mining infrastructure, with these mines not being operational, and the average start-up time for a commercial mining project being 16 years.55
Regarding the fear of pollution inherent in the mining industry, mining techniques have undergone great progress in recent decades, making it possible to mitigate the “environmental impact”, explains António Mateus, Geologist at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon56. The “European Call for Action” itself sets out how the increasing use of renewable energy in the mining and refining of rare earths could significantly reduce the environmental impact of the extraction of primary raw materials.
However, the lack of information or misinformation regarding these techniques and what opening a mine involves generates negative reactions and difficulty in acceptance by civil society when it comes to opening mines near their places of residence.
The “Greenland Project” in Kvanefjeld, Greenland – “the European Union’s hope for rare earth mining”, says Ana-Maria Martinez – was the largest rare earth mining project in Europe, having been cancelled by government decision due to social discontent and public pressure (Reuters, 2021).
Clara Boissenin, who works in the area of social acceptance of rare earths, explains the importance of explaining to citizens the need to open mines and what it means not to do so in Europe. “The relocation of dirty industries has helped to keep Western consumers in the dark about the environmental costs of our way of life,” says Guillaume Pitron, calling for the urgent need for the West, and in this case the European Union, to assume the costs of production linked to the rare earth industry, since producing in Europe, according to high environmental and social standards, would make it possible to mitigate the damage caused by the rare earth industry in China.
MEP Lídia Pereira, with whom I spoke a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, mentioned the importance of rethinking the energy mix and restructuring energy sources at a European level, calling for the need for, for example, France to open up to the consumption of Portuguese renewable energy, also given the difficulty of storing renewable energy and the need to export surplus energy.
In light of recent events worldwide, given the sanctions imposed by several countries on Russia, particularly regarding energy imports of oil, natural gas and coal, this rethinking of the structure of energy supply at European level becomes an issue of even greater relevance, since several European countries are immensely dependent on Russian energy sources, thus demonstrating the need to diversify energy sources in order to guarantee energy subsistence, given the current global climate.
“The sanctions we have applied to Russia, as we have seen, entail costs for countries and families, as is the case with natural gas, whose prices have risen sharply, revealing, in terms of energy policy management, the poor choices that Europe has made in terms of energy over the years,” says Lídia Pereira.
However, the inclusion of nuclear energy in the European energy mix, one of the main obstacles to its widespread acceptance being the treatment of radioactive waste, is still met with great doubt.
Carlos Santos Silva explains how Europe has been investing in the development of nuclear fusion energy for around 30 years, so that, in order to “reach the goals of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, we will have to go through nuclear energy, otherwise the transition will not be sustainable and we will not be able to achieve the goals”.
According to Vítor Correia, for the energy transition to be feasible, two conditions are necessary: “an energy mix that excludes nothing and a consumer-centered approach, in which all people are available to reduce their consumption metabolism”.
In fact, the sustainability of a product is not free, and as seen, the extraction and processing of rare earths leaves an environmental footprint, and European consumers should and can be in a position where they are able to make informed purchasing decisions through instruments that help them guarantee the transparency of production chains and compliance with environmental and social standards, instruments that have been developed (says the “European Call for Action”).
Vítor Correia, who defends the idea that consumers are the best army against the climate crisis, human rights abuses and environmental attacks inherent in certain practices of exploitation of our planet's resources, explains why he supports his thesis: the consumer's choice to buy or boycott has the power to redirect markets and their practices.
“Telling people that we will feel the effects of climate change firsthand, because in these countries extraction is not done in the best way, and we are the ones who buy the products they extract, that is, they are extracting for us”, can help change people's attitudes, says Vítor Correia.
Francisco Veiga Simão, a researcher linked to the Circular Economy area and co-founder of the Energy and Climate Forum, speaks of the importance of investing not only in the Circular Economy, but in circular thinking: “moving from the economic concept of circular economy to circular thinking and action, as individuals in society”.
The realization of this is reflected in a phrase by Lavoisier: “In nature, nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed” – “this is what we have to apply in our lives”, he says. During our conversation, Clara Boissenin introduces the need to consume less, “for me, the main lever is to reduce our need for these elements (rare earths), either by replacing them with other minerals – which is not always possible – or by reducing our energy consumption”.
Carlos Santos Silva puts the current situation differently, “if we don’t rethink and reduce our consumption levels, we will lose this energy transition war; the planet can’t handle it.”
Julian Hilton, when asked about the risk and criticality of rare earths, said to me the following: “the concept of criticality depends a lot on your critical needs”, so that, at this moment, in the face of the global panorama, “the most critical of materials are our brains” – we thus find ourselves in a time of making choices, choices that fit in a trouser or coat pocket, choices that have an impact on the destiny of specific individuals, choices that have an impact on our common home – the planet, on our specific lives, and on the present and future history of humanity.
Inner Mongolia and ethnic cleansing
Chinese and Mongolians, including those from Inner Mongolia, have different perceptions of history. According to a doctoral thesis entitled “Ethnic Nationalist Challenge to the Multi-Ethnic State: Inner Mongolia and China” (2000), the modern Chinese nation can be seen as an entity built on certain invented or manipulated historical and cultural roots, involving the interpretation of historical facts, national heroes, ethnic relations throughout history, and the invention of traditions, in order to create evidence that proves a sense of unity and common Chinese identity, homogenizing cultural and ethnic differences, forging the concept of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu), thus creating a “rational” mechanism that allows for combined efforts for economic development where there is no room for the notion of social progress, culminating in the elimination of all ethnicities and national differences (obstacles to economic progress), imposing a single identity, the Han. For Beijing, “economic unity and progress are much more of a priority than democratic principles”, says Tim Marshall.29
Like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia is also a geopolitically strategic area for the Chinese economy, holding 45% of the world's supply of rare earths (in 2019, according to the Bayan Obo report in the EJA).
The report “Continuing repression in Inner Mongolia”30 1992, by the Human Rights Watch/Asia group, reports on the campaign of repression and persecution, initiated in May 1991 by the Chinese Central Government31, against the Mongolian ethnic group in Inner Mongolia, namely intellectuals linked to movements for the regeneration of Mongolian identity and culture, destroyed over decades, and political dissidents, particularly against pro-democracy citizens.
Document No. 13, a confidential CCP document made available in the Human Rights Watch/Asia report, confirms the directives for the repressive campaign in Inner Mongolia, listing organizations deemed illegal and individual targets of the CCP, labeled as “political radicals,” testimonies in the report confirm.
The 1992 pattern appears to be repeating itself today: “we have seen very strong signs of a greater level of control by Beijing in Inner Mongolia,” explains Raquel Vaz-Pinto.
On September 3, 2020, a law was enacted in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, replacing the teaching of three core subjects in schools, previously taught in the local language, Mongolian, with Mandarin (The Observers, 2021).
In September 2021, Inner Mongolia's Ministry of Education announced the implementation of stricter new rules, removing Mongolian history and culture textbooks from primary and secondary schools, the South China Morning Post reports.
Critics of these policies point to them as “the latest blow in a decades-long campaign aimed at erasing Mongolian culture” (in Intellinews, 2021).
The new laws have sparked long-standing fears of ethnic suppression and large demonstrations in several cities in Inner Mongolia – the largest ethnic Mongolian protest movement in the last decade, according to the Financial Times – which have been met with heavy repression by authorities and threats from the government, says the Los Angeles Times in 2020.
The Chinese central government has been increasing its repression in Inner Mongolia, using familiar tactics against ethnic minorities as they threaten “social stability,” including surveillance of suspects, financial threats and dismissals, arrests, social credit blacklisting, and media control, a witness who attended a protest in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, told the Los Angeles Times (also reported by The Economic Times in 2020).
Fear of cultural suppression has generated a common consciousness among the people of Inner Mongolia: “We could be the next Uighurs” (in The Observers).
Mongolian activists claim to have no knowledge of concentration camps or mass imprisonments, but they have witnessed strong signs of forced assimilation, the marginalization of the Mongolian language, the destruction of cultural symbols and monuments, and the introduction of patriotism classes, where students have to prove that they accept Chinese nationality and culture and the ideology of the communist party (according to The Observers, in 2021).
Having managed to obtain a document that contains the content taught in these “patriotism classes”, several phrases from Xi Jinping about Xinjiang can be seen included, as an example not to follow, if they do not want the same fate, “making it clear, theoretically, that we could be the next Uighurs”, says Engehebatu Togochog, President of the Human Rights Center of Southern Mongolia32, headquartered in New York.
Regarding the restriction of freedom of expression and dissemination of information, which has led to the blocking of several communication channels in Inner Mongolia, the constant propaganda of Chinese national culture, in cartoons and advertisements, all in Mandarin, threatens the total loss of the next generation's relationship with Mongolian culture, says Togochog.
According to an April 2020 report on Bitter Winter, a media outlet dedicated to human rights and religious freedom, as protests mounted over school reforms in Inner Mongolia, the CCP launched the “Xie Jiao Propaganda Prevention Month” campaign.33”, claiming that banned religious groups in China were threatening the stability of the region. According to Bitter Winter, these campaigns against Xie Jiao, a term used to categorize banned religious movements in China, such as Falun Gong, have been used by the CCP for decades as justification for exercising control and repression.
The official US government document from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, entitled “Public Views on Human Rights Practices in China”, from 2002, reports that Falun Gong practitioners were subjected to the greatest atrocities, actively incited by the CCP and its leaders, with the aim of eliminating the Falun Gong belief: from the sexual abuse of women; torture for weeks (sometimes to death), such as imprisonment of prisoners in cages smaller than the individuals’ bodies; exposure of prisoners, without clothing, to subzero temperatures outside; and repeated sessions of physical abuse.
The aforementioned document focuses on an important testimony from a political exile from Inner Mongolia, named Oyunbilig, who went to the USA in 1995, 3 years after the publication of the Human Rights Watch/Asia report, which exposes the campaign of repression in Inner Mongolia until 1992, indicating a perpetuation of this panorama of oppression until 2002.
Following the testimony given by Oyunbilig, he states that for half a century, the Mongols of Inner Mongolia suffered the mass death of innocent citizens, the destruction of religious establishments, and forced cultural assimilation, which brought Mongolian culture and tradition to the brink of extinction, as well as the destruction of pasturelands, for the exploitation of the region's mineral resources, in the interests of the Chinese Central Government.
The new regulations in Inner Mongolia, which began to be implemented in 2020, are thus part of a broader ethnic policy that began three decades ago, and which gained momentum in a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 3, which called for a “new phase” of ethnic work, with accelerated employment, education policies, inter-ethnic mixing and a “common consciousness about the Chinese nation” (according to the Los Angeles Times, 2014).
So the pattern of repression that gripped Inner Mongolia in 1992, 2002, seems to be happening today, just as the current Inner Mongolia case follows a similar pattern to Xinjiang's ethnic politics, Adrian Zenz, Director and Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who has played a leading role in analyzing leaked Chinese government documents on Beijing's concentration camp campaign in Xinjiang, quickly confirmed to me via Twitter.
“I have no doubt that this greater control is also related to the location of these rare earths, that is, greater control and a greater desire to ensure that there is no sand in the wheel that could endanger this production chain”, says Raquel Vaz-Pinto, who says she is very pessimistic about the evolution of the situation in Inner Mongolia.
In fact, in the report34 In a 2021 U.S. Government Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Consulting report, the following statement is written in a footnote: “The U.S. Government is also aware of reports documenting the expansion of concentration camps in Tibet and Inner Mongolia to arbitrarily detain other ethnic and religious minorities and documenting the use of forced labor beyond Xinjiang.”