The shift away from fossil fuels depends on a fast-growing supply of “transition minerals” such as nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium and zinc, which go into batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure. The energy transition is usually presented as a sustainability story, but mining and processing these minerals often moves environmental and social harm onto communities in the Global South. This lecture uses field-based case studies to look at that other side of the transition.
The central case is nickel extraction and battery-grade processing in Indonesia. Indonesia has become the world’s leading nickel producer through industrial parks built at great speed. The lecture covers the consequences: deforestation, pollution of coastal waters and fisheries, reliance on captive coal power, health risks for nearby communities, and pressure on Indigenous and local land rights. Three further cases broaden the analysis:
- Peru: zinc mining and its long-term health legacy.
- Chile: lithium extraction and processing, and the competition for water in fragile salt-flat ecosystems.
- Democratic Republic of Congo: cobalt and copper mining, with its labour conditions and human rights abuses.
Across these cases, the lecture asks who bears the costs of decarbonisation and what responsibilities fall on mining companies, battery and car manufacturers, investors and importing countries. It also considers whether due diligence regulation, community monitoring and legal action can make the transition just as well as green.
About the speaker:
Flaviano Bianchini is the founder of Source International and has been an Ashoka Fellow since 2012. He specialised in Management and Valorization of Natural Resources at the University of Pisa. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Conflict Management from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies.
For years he has worked on human rights violations and health damage linked to the extractive industries. His research has contributed to:
- changes to Honduras’s mining law;
- precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Guatemala;
- laws on the welfare of the city of Cerro de Pasco in Peru.
