IXR media coverage, page-486

Very long article, cut n paste nightmare.
Part of below....

https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/europe-suppliers-geopolitical-race-critical-raw-materials

Take from this all said and done is:
Recycling will become of ever-increasing importance.
Step forward, Belfast....

Critical materials: a fast-tracked EU law

Enters the Critical Raw Materials Act.

**Few European laws have gone through the EU system so quickly as the soon-to-become-law CRMA, which aims to increase mining and metals recycling within the bloc and find new foreign suppliers. This fast-track reflects real concerns.**

6 November 2023

Mission critical: Europe eyes new suppliers in geopolitical race for metals

The EU is brokering deals with Africa and Latin America for critical raw materials. But it finds itself squeezed between China, Russia, and the US for the minerals essential to the green transition.

Rare earths are to the 21st century what coal was to the 19th and oil to the 20th. Our everyday electronics - and Europe's climate goals - depend on them. But China controls almost all supply chains. Can Europe free itself from this dependence?

"It is very important that Africa is not seen as a reservoir of raw materials that continues to be exploited by Westerners to create added value elsewhere." The warning comes from Celine Tshizena Pegasus, a Congolese lawyer and advocacy director at Afrewatch, a natural resources watchdog.

In July, Afrewatch and dozens of international NGOs sent an open letter to the European Commission, slamming its strategy to source critical raw materials from the Global South. Deposits of minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and rare earths are barely explored in Europe, let alone mined in the quantities required for the green transition. Yet, they're crucial for the production of electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy. Their extraction can have devastating impacts on the environment, indigenous land, and human rights.

"We, in resource-rich countries, are already experiencing the double impacts of the climate crisis," the letter read. "On one hand, via the effects of climate change itself and on the other hand from the increase in mining and renewable technologies infrastructure resulting from decarbonisation plans of rich countries."