Catalyzing climate and environmental solutions

Acting Together for a Responsible Critical Minerals Sector

At the 5th edition of the Paris Peace Forum, actors from all over the world launched the "Acting Together for a Responsible Critical Minerals Sector" initiative to enable the energy transition and achieve net zero. International organizations, companies and business alliances, NGOs, foundations and high-level dignitaries agreed on the need to remove obstacles to collaboration to ensure sustainable access to and use of critical minerals. This will be done through concrete commitments to address existing and upcoming geopolitical, ecological and social concerns about the value chains of these key minerals.

Call to Action

With the energy transition needed to achieve net zero, the supply of critical minerals, which are essential to develop renewable energies, electric cars, and battery storage, has never been so crucial. However, competition for these key minerals concentrated in few locations has intensified, leading to a risk of tensions exacerbated by recent crises. All stakeholders across the critical minerals value chains (producers, consumers, political bodies, etc.), in both consuming and producing countries, will be increasingly impacted by these tensions. This is why the Paris Peace Forum, together with signatories (see below), is launching a new initiative to take critical minerals governance a step further.

We call upon all actors sharing our objectives to join us today by signing this Call to Action – from private companies to governments, multilateral institutions, and civil society organizations.

Together:

We want to ensure the ecological transition is possible, we know this requires sustainable access to and use of critical minerals.

We see a need to collectively address existing and upcoming geopolitical, ecological, and social concerns around these minerals supply chains from extraction to processing, reuse, and recycling.

We commit to removing obstacles to collaboration across sectors, types of actors and continents, working closely with those in producing countries on responsible production of and shared benefits from these minerals.

We look forward to making progress on our five priorities below over the next year and to presenting concrete results of our collaboration at the next Paris Peace Forum in November 2023:

Strengthening relevant norms and standards on responsible extraction and value chains working towards their harmonization and effective implementation, in concert with all actors in the value chain, including in producing countries, to make supply more reliable and responsible.
Fostering cooperation within and between States to limit future concerns around access to these minerals, including by cooperating, sharing views and information globally on current and upcoming domestic policies, global supply chains and minerals flows.
Raising awareness of the public and policy makers regarding the importance of critical minerals to achieve net zero and the risks of competitive geopolitical dynamics to our shared agenda.
Making the best use of extracted minerals to mitigate increases in future demand and reduce emissions linked to these minerals including through investments and policies aimed at achieving better design, reuse, and recycling, and supporting the development of breakthrough innovations at different points of their supply and demand chains.
Unlocking finance necessary to promote innovation and joint projects, including de-risking investments in the supply chains or the research and development of new industrial approaches.

List of supporters (the endorsements are individual):

Razan Al Mubarak, President, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Carole Cable, Chair, Women in Mining (WIM) - UK
Assheton Carter, Executive Director, Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA)
John W.H. Denton, Secretary General, International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
Rohitesh Dhawan, President and CEO, International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM)
Bennett Freeman, Advisory Board Chair, Conflict Risk Network ; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Sarah Gordon, Co-founder, Responsible Raw Materials
Angel Gurria, Economist and Diplomat
Mo Ibrahim, President, Mo Ibrahim Foundation
Ilham Kadri, CEO, Solvay ; Chairman, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Pascal Lamy, President, Paris Peace Forum (PPF)
Balbine Pascaline Makani Omgba, President, Women in Mining (WIM) - Africa
Ann Mettler, Vice President, Breakthrough Energy
Shunichi Miyanaga, Chairman of the Board, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
Alan Parker, President, Brunswick Group
Diego Pavia, Managing Director, EIT InnoEnergy
Janez Potocnik, Co-Chair, International Resource Panel (IRP)
Bernd Schäfer, CEO, EIT RawMaterials
Maros Sefcovic, Vice President, European Commission
Philippe Varin, President, World Materials Forum (WMF)

For more information or to support the "Acting Together for a Responsible Critical Minerals Sector" itiniative: criticalminerals@parispeaceforum.org