Critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel are becoming the “petroleum of the 21st century”, a report from the UN’s water think tank has found, as the scramble for precious metals deepens poverty and sparks a public health crisis in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
A study by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) concluded that rising demand for lithium, cobalt and nickel, used in batteries and microchips, is depleting water supplies, eroding agriculture and exposing communities to toxic heavy metals.
Researchers found that an estimated 456 billion liters of water will be used to extract 240,000 tonnes of lithium in 2024, with the economic benefits and technological advances from the green energy transition and AI boom reaching largely unaffected communities.
Professor Kaveh Madani asks whether this transition can be called green or clean. Photo: United Nations University Inwe
“Critical minerals are rapidly becoming the oil of the 21st century,” said Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH and 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate.
“What we’re selling as solutions to sustainability is actively harming people somewhere in the world. So how can we call this transition green or clean?”
Growth in demand for key energy minerals has been strong in recent years, with demand for lithium expected to increase by nearly 30% in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Rare earth production nearly tripled between 2010 and 2023 as demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and powerful computer chips soared.
The report found that while EVs have the potential to reduce emissions for consumers in North America and Europe, the environmental and health costs are borne by communities far away in mining regions in Africa and Latin America.
List of important minerals and metals and their uses
In 2024, global rare earth production generated approximately 700 million tons of waste, enough to fill a 59-meter truck. Africa, which is home to approximately 30% of the world’s significant mineral reserves, has been hit hard by environmental fallout.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the world’s largest cobalt producers, mining has caused widespread contamination of rivers used for drinking, fishing and irrigation in the mining region of southeastern Lualaba province, the authors said.
Women wash ore at Kamilombe, an artisanal cobalt mine in Lualaba, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of women in this job report reproductive health issues. Photo: Washington Post/Getty
According to the report, in 2024, approximately 64% of people in the country lacked basic water access, 72% of people near mine sites reported skin diseases, and 56% of women and girls reported gynecological diseases.
“Some communities are struggling to walk more than a mile to collect water, while others are forced to abandon their urban homes and be pushed further into poverty,” said UNU-INWEH researcher Abraham Numbog, lead author of the report.
Lead author Abraham Nunbogu says mining drives poverty. Photo: United Nations University Inwe
Extraction of lithium often requires large amounts of water to be pumped and evaporated from underground salt flats, and chemical processing of other important minerals can contaminate rivers and underground reservoirs.
Latin America’s Lithium Triangle – the high-altitude salt flats that straddle Argentina, Bolivia and Chile – contains some of the world’s largest reserves of the metal. These are also some of the driest ecosystems in the world.
In Bolivia’s Uyuni region, quinoa can no longer be grown reliably in some areas, and lagoons in Chile’s Salar de Atacama, where lithium and other minerals account for 65% of the region’s water use, are drying up.
“These salt flats are the traditional territory of several indigenous peoples. Their agricultural and pastoral economies have been devastated by the intensive extraction of saltwater from the salt lakes and worsening water scarcity in what was already one of the driest ecosystems on Earth,” said José Aylwin, Lithium and Human Rights Coordinator for the ABC Project, a transnational research project tracking the social and environmental impacts of lithium mining in Argentina. Bolivia and Chile.
Lithium brine in a mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert. There, vast amounts of groundwater are pumped from underground and evaporated in extremely dry areas. Photo: Anadolu/Getty
“As the report highlights, there is an urgent need to move from voluntary compliance mechanisms to mandatory international and national due diligence standards.”
UN researchers have warned that the damage is expected to get worse as lithium production will need to increase ninefold by 2040 (IEA estimates it is eightfold) to meet climate change targets, while cobalt and nickel mining will need to double.
The authors say regulating the industry requires legally binding global standards for mineral sourcing, stricter controls on toxic waste and water pollution, and independent monitoring of water use and heavy metal pollution.
Residents of Ob Island, North Maluku, Indonesia. The pool was once a clean water source for villagers until it was contaminated by nickel mining waste. Photo: AF Pramadani/Guardian
Without an overhaul, the green transition risks repeating the patterns of fossil fuel extraction, enriching rich countries while leaving poor communities to bear the costs.
“We thought the industrial revolution was progress, but now we understand the damage it caused, so we are starting a new revolution to repair it. But once again the burden is falling on the poorest. We are just shifting the burden from the Middle East to Africa and Latin America,” Madani said.
The report paints a bleak picture of the environmental costs of the rare earth mining boom, but some communities and governments are pushing back, said Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College in Rhode Island who studies mining and the energy transition.
Protests in Argentina and Chile are challenging lithium projects in the salt flats, and Indonesia has banned exports of raw materials, including nickel ore.
“Over the past 20 years, we have seen anti-mining protests become more frequent and more extreme around the world,” she said. “Communities are calling on the government to pay more attention to mining costs.”
