The unjust, corporate led transition
The decision by global automotive giant Stellantis to close its Luton van factory, with the loss of over 1000 workers’ jobs, has laid bare the grave situation facing workers in the UK’s automotive industry. A storm of corporate profiteering, automation, and the shift from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs), has meant the threat of factory closures and job losses, for both workers producing vehicles and workers across the UK’s automotive supply chain.
Yet the corporate-led automotive transition is also driving injustices for workers and mine affected communities across the supply chain globally. The production of EVs requires lithium-ion batteries, which are produced in gigafactories – large, high volume battery manufacturing facilities. The UK Government states that to provide the battery capacity needed to maintain existing levels of automotive production, but shift entirely to EVs, the UK would need 200 GWh of battery manufacturing capacity by 2040, approximately 10 gigafactories.
Lithium-ion batteries require huge quantities of minerals including lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper. According to the latest statistics none of these minerals are mined in the UK, meaning despite some plans for domestic mining UK manufacturers are overwhelmingly dependent on imports from other countries. 10 lithium-ion battery gigafactories would vastly increase the UK’s demand for these minerals, and mean the UK would be consuming a disproportionate and inequitable share of the world’s resources. This would lead to severe impacts for mine affected communities and workers globally.
The UK would, by 2040, every year require nearly a fifth of the world’s mined lithium, 6% of the world’s nickel, and 15% of the world’s cobalt.
The huge expansions of mining that would be needed to meet skyrocketing UK mineral demands would be felt overwhelmingly by workers and communities in the Global South. Many of the world’s biggest mining companies are British, listed on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in London, and are at the heart of driving these injustices.
Lithium
85% of the world’s lithium reserves are located on Indigenous lands, primarily in the ‘lithium triangle’ between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Lithium extraction in the region is driving water scarcity and threatening the livelihoods and cultural practices of Indigenous communities. This has led to mass protests, as Indigenous communities resist the expansion of mines and diversion of water supplies towards mining in an already arid desert region.
In Northern Argentina, the Atacameños del Altiplano Indigenous community have been resisting Arcadium Lithium (formerly known as Livent), owned by British mining giant Rio Tinto. In 2024, an Argentine court suspended new mining licenses because of Arcadium’s failure to consult communities, and for using “huge quantities of fresh and salt water”, causing a local river to dry up.
There has been fierce resistance to lithium mining across the world, from Indigenous resistance to the Thacker Pass mine the US Government is attempting to build in Nevada, to street blockades in Serbia against Rio Tinto’s plans to build Europe’s largest lithium mine.
Read more
Yes to Life No to Mining, On the Frontlines of Lithium Extraction
The Real News, ‘You can’t mine your way out of a climate crisis’: Indigenous nations fight lithium gold rush at Thacker Pass
Nickel
Over half the world’s production of nickel takes place in Indonesia, with mining having expanded more than six-fold since 2010. Nickel-based industrial parks are being established in forested areas, accelerating and expanding deforestation as local communities have their lands seized. Environmental defenders are being criminalised, while mine workers face ‘brutal exploitation’, with low-pay, long hours, poor health and safety standards, and the eradication of trade unions.
In Halmahera, North Maluku, the Hongana Manyawa people, uncontacted Indigenous hunter-gatherers, are ‘facing rampant human rights violations to their land, territories, natural resources, self-determination… and their right to a healthy environment due to mining’. Mining companies are operating on at least 40% of their lands, with Survival International recently warning that “mining poses an immediate threat of the devastating population collapse of the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa, that is, a genocide.”
Despite these abuses, the UK Government signed a memorandum of understanding with Indonesia to establish a Strategic Critical Mineral Partnership, in an attempt to expand the UK’s supply of nickel to satisfy growing EV battery manufacturing demand. British mining companies are also involved, with a British consortium including mining giant Glencore investing $9 billion in Indonesia’s mining sector.
Read more
Yes to Life No to Mining, Resistance to the Dirty Face of the Green Transition
Action for Ecology and People’s Emancipation (AEER), A New Challenge for the Environment in Indonesia: A Focus on Nickel as a Raw Material of Electric Vehicle Batteries
Copper
Electric vehicles use four times more copper than ICE vehicles, and mining companies are using the decarbonisation of the automotive industry as an excuse to push for eye watering expansions in copper mining globally. The chair of Rio Tinto, a British multinational mining giant, has claimed the world will need 700 million tonnes of copper by 2050, ‘as much copper as humans have produced in a hundred thousand years of our history’.
Rio Tinto’s copper mines are driving traditional herders off their lands in Mongolia, losing access to water and pastures needed to sustain their livelihoods, while their Resolution Copper mine in Arizona would destroy Oak Flat, a Native American sacred site and ecological haven. Resolution Copper would use the same amount of water as a city of 150,000 people in a city facing its worst drought in 1,200 years.
Anglo American, another British multinational mining company, is rapidly expanding its copper mining in Latin America, irreversibly destroying glaciers in Chile and putting the water security of more than 7 million people at risk. Communities and indigenous peoples across Peru, Chile, Brazil and Colombia have united to oppose the company, denouncing ‘socio-environmental conflicts from the intensive extraction of minerals’ and affirming their resistance to ‘fight for environmental justice’ and ‘protect the life that Anglo American is destroying’.
Read more
London Mining Network, Should do better: Anglo American’s mining operations and affected communities in Latin America
London Mining Network, Mind the Gap: Rio Tinto versus Reality
Cobalt
74% of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore is one of the biggest industrial beneficiaries of the country’s mineral wealth, through its subsidiary Katanga Mining, which profits from two majority-owned ventures with Gécamines, the DRC’s state mining company in Kamoto and Mutanda.
The expansion of industrial cobalt mining in the DRC has led to the forced eviction of entire communities and egregious human rights abuses, with Glencore linked to more allegations of abuses than any other company operating in the country. Home demolitions, forced evictions and displacement, as well as targeted violence against environmental and land defenders, are commonplace.
Meanwhile, Glencore has been forced to pay $180 million to the DRC for corruption scandals involving Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, whose cut-price mining licenses are reported to have cost the government more than $3.7 billion, almost six times the combined budgets the country spends on health and education.
Read more
Amnesty International, Industrial mining of cobalt and copper for rechargeable batteries is leading to grievous human rights abuses
A just, worker-led transition
There is another way to deliver the decarbonisation of the transport sector that is so urgently needed. By investing rapidly in scaling up public transport and active forms of travel, the UK can create a diversified transportation system which reduces reliance on private vehicles. While electrified public transport still requires batteries and minerals, public transport EVs are much more efficient and require far lower quantities of minerals per rider.
By investing in battery recycling, and car remanufacturing infrastructure, the UK can also reduce the need for new mining to create lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles, moving towards a circular economy model. Not only would this reduce the need for new mining, but it would create thousands of manufacturing jobs.
Research from the United States shows that, by investing in public transport, reducing the size of vehicles that are produced, and scaling up battery recycling infrastructure, potential increases in lithium demand can be reduced by 92%. Similar reductions could be expected in the UK. The research also demonstrates that a diversified transport system, with less private vehicles but an expansion of mobility options – including public transport and safe streets – would produce a net increase of 2.4 million jobs.
A transition in the interests of people not profit can only come from, and be designed by, workers themselves. Worker-led transition plans outline how production could be transitioned, and the training and reskilling necessary for workers to ensure they are able to maintain jobs on equal terms and conditions. From grassroots automotive workers in the UAW trade union in the United States organising for supply chain justice, to GKN workers in Italy who fought for plans to transition from producing luxury cars to solar panels and cargo bikes, we know this is possible.
As workers in the UK resist corporate attacks and job losses, it is crucial that the climate movement stands with them in solidarity. We cannot accept the loss of secure, decently paid jobs under the guise of decarbonisation. At the same time, it is crucial that trade unions in the UK and across the Global North build solidarity with workers and communities on the frontlines of resistance to the expansion of mining for battery minerals globally. Transition plans must minimise mineral demands, through prioritising public transit over EV production and scaling up recycling infrastructure, and deliver supply chain justice.
What can you do?
- Join London Mining Network and stand in solidarity with workers and communities resisting British mining companies. Sign up to our mailing list for information on how to get involved.
- Join a Trade Union. If you are a Unite member, join the Unite Grassroots Climate Justice Caucus.
- Invite us to speak at a branch, campaign or community meeting to raise awareness of the injustices faced by mine affected communities and discuss organising for supply chain justice. Contact: justtransition@londonminingnetwork.org
Download PDF with source data used for the graphs.