The Geo-economics of the Green Transition: Strategic Competition over Lithium and Rare Earths
Abstract
The recent global green transition that has been fuelled by the pressing necessity to address the climate change and transition to a sustainable low carbon future enormously increased the strategic significance of some of the main raw materials, particularly lithium and rare earths elements (REEs). The electric vehicle (EV) batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, or energy storage systems rely on such materials as their core. Just like the pace of demand of such technologies is faster, the struggle to gain access, mine and control such vital resources is also at pace. This rivalry is now a major characteristic of international political economy which has reproached geopolitical allegiances, commerce, and national policing.
The dominance of China in the rare earths processing system and the increasing attempts of the United States and the European Union to acquire alternative sources indicate the ways regional economic interdependence has become the territory of strategic competition. Simultaneously, the Global South, which is frequently endowed with these resources, is progressively (and successfully) utilizing its mineral deposits to exercise sovereignty and demand new terms of foreign investments and to achieve sustainable development. This paper presents a geo economic framework linking states and markets in their quest of resource security in which the interlinking of environmental goals and economic competition and even geopolitical rivalries can be seen to exist. The report highlights the challenges and possibilities within the green transition and states the necessity of collaborative governance, moral sourcing, and sustainable models of development to avoid a new period of resource based inequality of opportunity and adversity.
Keywords: Green transition, Geo-economics, Lithium, Rare Earth Elements (REEs), Critical minerals, Strategic competition, Global supply chains, Environmental politics, Resource nationalism, International Political Economy (IPE)
