Extraction of raw materials could rise 60% by 2060 – and making mining ‘greener’ won’t stop the damage

By Gareth Dale, Brunel University London

The United Nations’ flagship Global Resources Outlook report is the portrait of a juggernaut. Due to be published later this month by the UN’s International Resource Panel, it highlights how global consumption of raw materials, having increased four-fold since 1970, is set to rise by a further 60% by 2060.

Already, the technosphere — the totality of human-made products, from airports to Zimmer frames — is heavier than the biosphere. From the 2020s onward, the weight of humanity’s extended body — the concrete shells that keep us sheltered, the metal wings that fly us around — have exceeded that of all life on Earth. Producing this volume of stuff is a major contributor to global heating and ocean acidification, and the rapidly accelerating extinction of plants and animals.

As the UN report spells out, the extractive activities that lie behind the concrete, metal and other materials we use are disrupting the balance of the planet’s ecosystems. The mining industry requires the annexation of large tracts of land for extraction and transportation; its energy consumption has more than tripled since the 1970s.

That upward curve is set to continue. The demand for materials is rising, the quality of ores such as copper is declining, and deeper and more remote mines require extra energy for extraction. More seams will be dug and more mountains moved to bring glittering fortunes to some while many regions, above all in developing countries, become sacrifice zones.

Critical raw materials

Attention is increasingly focused on a particular class of material. “Critical” and “strategic” raw materials are those that face supply risk either in their scarcity or their geographical concentration, and which the major powers require for their military sectors and for competitive advantage in tech industries. Right now, the race for critical materials is geopolitical: each major power wants to secure supplies in allied countries.

Critical raw materials are indispensable to the green transition too.

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