The electric vehicle transition: A blessing or a curse for improving extractive industries and mineral supply chains?

Concern is growing that new mineral demand pressures associated with transport electrification will exacerbate existing supply chain sustainability and resiliency risks and escalate global environmental injustices. In response, private and public actors in the extractive sector have signaled that they are retooling mineral production, sourcing and stewardship governance systems, practices, and processes to meet the sustainability demands of the electric vehicle (EV) transition. Currently, however, the specific components of many of these initiatives remain less well known, with little scholarly review of their potential to address the longstanding systemic deficiencies in mineral supply chains. Instead, research and policy conversations are oriented largely towards what can be described as a demand-reduction approach, focused on minimizing the intensity of metal mining as a strategy for ensuring the sustainability imperatives of the transition. This Perspective argues that 1) the EV transition offers a critical impetus for tackling head-on longstanding systemic deficiencies in responsible global mineral production, sourcing, and stewardship 2) addressing the deficiencies will also better position mineral demand-reduction measures to yield their intended sustainability outcomes and 3) historically, new initiatives introduced to reform the extractive sector rarely address the root problems that first gave impetus to the initiatives. Accordingly, questions about retooling existing mineral procurement governance systems, practices and processes should be an integral part of EV transition research. It recommends moving research, policy, action, and investment towards prioritizing addressing persisting systemic deficiencies in global mineral supply chains as part of strategies for ensuring ethical transport decarbonization.