International trade “too important to ignore”, campaigners say following UN critical minerals report
Date: 12 September 2024
Campaigns: Trade
Responding to the UN Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals report, Cleodie Rickard, trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now said:
While it is welcome that equity is finally being seen as a driving force for climate action, there is a big blind spot on international trade in today’s publication. While rightly pointing out that current trade rules are not sufficiently accessible nor adequately tailored to ‘the needs of the employers, workers, Indigenous Peoples, and communities in developing countries’, frustratingly the panel still suggests that this same inadequate trade system ‘be retained’.
“This fails to address investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses in trade deals, leaving corporations one of the deadliest weapons in their arsenal to obstruct climate and industrial policies. Ambitious language on value addition and technology transfer for mineral-producing countries rings hollow when the panel is silent on the trade rules which bar industrial policy tools, while enforcing strict intellectual property rules. If critical mineral supply chains are to be wrenched towards justice, equity and reciprocity, the architecture of international trade is too fundamental to ignore.”
Photo credit: United Nations
