The Race for Rare Earths in the Renewables Age: Can Global Labour Take Control of Global Supply Chains?

Abstract

politics and economics commentators as a “polycrisis”. This term refers to the range of potentially catastrophic global issues facing humanity since the GFC of 20072009, especially the interplay between the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, growing geo-political tensions in the Asia-Pacific and the energy, cost-ofliving and climate crises. In this context, many nationstates and even global governance bodies are seriously pursuing concepts of “green growth” or “sustainable development”, thought generally within the framework of institutional constraints that were laid bare by the pandemic but which had been clear to the labour movement throughout several decades of its fight against neoliberalism. First and foremost, the pandemic was a wake-up call to nation-states that their political-economic choices to offshore, outsource, privatise and financialise economic growth had neither led to sustainable economic growth, nor to positive socioeconomic and health outcomes for most citizens. To many governments, this implied a re-prioritisation of the state in driving economic development. Although many on the left were early to announce the end of neoliberalism, it has in fact been characterised more accurately by the state’s backing of major global capital to drive industrial renewal and climate change mitigation, with only minor concessions to the labour movement and community groups giving the appearance of a just transition. Overall, the reorientation of the state in the economy has reflected a return to “industrial strategy”, meaning the explicit targeting of economic sectors (typically manufacturing) with industry policy to grow the domestic share of value-adding in global supply chains and “clean” or “green” industrial growth. Second, and subsequently, for many nations of the Global South, the challenge of emerging from a political economy – long defined by neoliberalism and culminating in a global pandemic for which neoliberal institutions could provide no suitable response to – is to maximise the value-adding aspects of their economy through raising the share of manufacturing in their economy. Nations including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and South Africa face opportunities to develop a different approach to economic development. At a point in time where a global race for critical minerals is heating up, and these nations all sit low on the value-adding spectrum of global value chains for lithium batteries and other renewable technologies, the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources will see major global market demand for critical minerals and other natural resources. Countries with significant reserves of these newly high-demand resources face both opportunities and threats that come from being at the top of global value chains. This shift has particularly serious implications for working people (and their unions) in the Global South. Countries like the United States of America have viewed countries of the Global South with natural resources as a mine for the extraction of critical minerals. Under this extractivist regime, most of the economic value has been transferred to the Global North, as countries in the Global South have exported raw minerals and been forced to import value-added products from the same developed nations to which they exported their natural resources. Global economic development has tied the Global South to status as a quarry for many generations. But the industrial shift to renewables currently taking place offers up hope that workers and unions in these industries can help propel their economies towards higher rungs on the global value chain, and thereby higher levels of societal and economic development. The world now stands at the crossroads between the dominance of “brown capital” and “green capital”, as major investors and governments increasingly enter the race to profit from renewable energy industrialisation. In the context of a race to secure the future resources to drive “green capitalism”, unions and workers in the Global South are presented with an opportunity to develop strategies for building fairer industrial futures for their communities. So what might the future hold for an international trade union approach to this green industrial future? The international friendships and networks that link organised labour across multiple countries hold an important key to building truly global initiatives. Where the financial and organisational structures of global capital are arranged across borders, so too must the efforts of the global labour movement connect unions in the North and in the South to make the green industrial transformation deliver fair and just outcomes. Hence, workers at all points in the supply chain have a role to play to both shape the industrial strategy of theirs and other nations through demanding their governments facilitate a green industrial transformation bringing justice to the communities long affected by fossil fuel and mineral extraction. Unions in the Global South will likely be faced with opportunities to position themselves to advocate and campaign for value-adding industries in their own countries, and the equitable distribution of critical minerals globally, rather than FOCUS | TRADE UNION INTERNATIONALISM