Countries gathered at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) this week failed to back a proposal to establish a panel of experts to look at ways to limit the environmental harm caused by mining, agreeing instead to hold more talks on tackling the issue.
A draft resolution proposed by Colombia and Oman had sought to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable amid booming demand for the minerals and metals needed to manufacture batteries, electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines as well as digital and military technologies.
It had called for the creation of an expert group to identify options for binding and non-binding international instruments to shape global action.
But amid divisions among nations and staunch opposition by some governments to any process that could eventually lead to binding instruments, country delegates meeting in Nairobi only agreed to a watered-down proposal to hold “dialogues” on “enhancing international cooperation on [the] sustainable management of minerals and metals”.
Governments also agreed to discuss how to recover minerals from waste, known as tailings, best practices for the sustainable management of minerals and metals, and strengthening the technological, financial and scientific capabilities of developing countries.
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Pedro Cortes, Colombia’s ambassador to Kenya, told an event on Wednesday that the negotiations had been “difficult” but that the agreement will enable governments to continue the discussion.
Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s former vice minister of environmental policy who initiated work on the proposal last year, told Climate Home News that the outcome was not what he had envisaged but said it was “good” in light of the “hard” geopolitics at play in Nairobi.
Colombia’s push for a minerals treaty
Colombia has called for an international minerals treaty to define rules and standards to make mineral value chains more traceable and sustainable as the world scrambles to boost supplies of materials needed for the energy transition.
For resource-rich developing countries, demand for these minerals is an opportunity to diversify their economies, spur development and create jobs. But the extraction and processing of minerals also brings the risk of environmental damage and human rights abuses.
Ambassador Cortes told an event on the sidelines of the UNEA that more stringent global oversight was needed.
“While various efforts have sought to promote the environmentally sustainable management of mining through voluntary guidelines, national legislations and industry-led initiatives, it is clear that greater international cooperation is needed at this critical moment to elevate ambition and accelerate action,” he said.
“This action will be essential to balance the growing demand for minerals required for the renewable energy transition with the imperative of ensuring environmental integrity and social sustainability,” he added.
Opposition to binding rules
But numerous governments – including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran as well as resource-rich Chile, Peru, Argentina and some African countries such as Uganda – opposed any discussion of possible binding rules on mineral value chains, several observers with access to the negotiations told Climate Home News.
While UNEA resolutions are not legally binding, they can kick off a process towards binding agreements, such as the launch of negotiations on a treaty to end plastics pollution – a process that has since stalled.
China, which dominates the processing and refining of minerals and metals, stayed largely quiet during the negotiations. But Nana Zhao, an official from the Chinese delegation, told Climate Home News that China was “satisfied” with the wording of the resolution.
The UNEA should stay focused on environmental matters and not bring in issues relating to supply chains, she added.
The opening plenary of UNEA-7 in Nairobi, Kenya (Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou)
An opening for more co-operation
Campaigners, who are calling for binding rules to prevent environmental and social harms linked to mineral extraction and processing, expressed disappointment at the agreement but welcomed the prospect of further talks on the issue.
“The initial aim was to start with negotiations for [a] binding treaty and to get countries together to start talking about joint rules,” Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of Germany’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation, told Climate Home News.
The agreement reached in Nairobi is “very weak” compared to that initial proposal but it creates the “foundation to stay in dialogue and try to find solutions and work on something constructively”, she said. “This is an opening for more co-operation”.
UN taskforce to deliver equitable supply chains
On the sidelines of the assembly, UN agencies launched a taskforce on critical energy transition minerals to coordinate UN activities in building more transparent, sustainable and equitable supply chains.
The taskforce will help deliver on recommendations by a panel of experts convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres which called for putting equity and human rights at the core of mineral value chains.
It will be chaired by the UN Environment Programme, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Development Programme, and draw on expertise across the UN system.
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Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said the sustainable management of minerals cuts across trade, environment and development.
“Multilateral cooperation and partnerships beyond the UN [are] absolutely essential for us to respond to what we can see is a driving demand and hunger for minerals and metals. But before we have a ‘race’ to this, let’s make sure we look at these aspects that can lead to injustice, environmental harms, biodiversity loss, water pollution and human rights [harms],” she added.
Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute and a member of the UN panel of experts, said the taskforce was “a timely and necessary step toward making the panel’s ambitions real”.
“It must work boldly and inclusively with communities and civil society, and it will need political commitment and financial resources – not only technical efforts – to drive a just and equitable new paradigm that safeguards people, ecosystems and economies in producer countries,” she said.
Beverly Besmanos is the national coordinator of Bantay Kita-Philippines, a coalition of NGOs advocating for transparency and accountability of the extractive industries in the Philippines. Nsama Chikwanka is the national director of Publish What You Pay Zambia. They are both members of the Resource Justice Network.
The clean-energy transition, the solution to the climate crisis, is bulldozing through the Global South, driving a surge in demand for minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium.
These transition minerals are crucial to build cleaner energy systems and help the world transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, without guardrails, the mining rush is fuelling human-rights abuses and environmental destruction.
As the seventh session of the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-7) gets underway in Nairobi this week, we need to sound the alarm and mobilise countries to stand for equity and rights in mineral governance.
Voluntary safeguards and corporate goodwill are not stopping are not stopping mining harms. National policies and laws are also falling short of what is needed.
What we need are binding global rules. What UNEA-7 can deliver is a credible pathway to deliver them.
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Since recent UN climate talks have ignored mineral governance, and domestic approaches have clearly failed to enforce consistent standards, UNEA-7 cannot afford to stall.
Countries in Nairobi must adopt Colombia’s resolution to develop international instruments for the “socially and environmentally sound management of minerals and metals” across their entire life cycle, from mining to recycling.
Crucially, they must establish an ad hoc open-ended working group with an ambitious mandate, tasked to identify gaps, develop proposals for international rules, and unequivocally keep legally binding options on the table, so that these recommendations can be presented at the next UNEA session in 2026.
Binding rules are the only way to create a level playing field, reward responsible companies, and prevent a race to the bottom where purely voluntary schemes leave honest actors undercut.
The necessity for enforceable global standards is written in the polluted waters and degraded lands of our homes, from Zambia’s Copperbelt to the nickel mines of the Philippines.
The view from the mine
In Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, two tailings dam breaches six months apart in 2025— in Kalulushi and Mwense districts — released toxic effluent into rivers. These disasters disrupted livelihoods, killed aquatic life, and exposed communities to long-term health risks and loss of economic opportunities.
Weak local safeguards and the sheer impunity of multinational companies enabled this disaster. The alleged suppression of a study into the disaster’s true scale proves that when profits are threatened, truth and life are sacrificed. We cannot rely on companies to police themselves; we need a global legal hammer to enforce accountability.
Farmer Nelson Band holds a burnt cob of maize and a sachet of drinking water handed out by the Zambian government after a major acid leak from a copper mine polluted the soil and water streams (Photo: Stafrance Zulu)
In the Philippines, a key nickel supplier for electric vehicle batteries, nickel mines in Caraga Region, Tawi-Tawi, and Palawan are stripping forests and mangroves that protect coasts. Siltation and runoff choke farms and fisheries, water turns reddish-brown, carcinogenic chromium appears in drinking supplies. Food insecurity follows.
The social toll is equally severe. Too many projects proceed without securing Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous Peoples, and land and environment defenders face harassment and violence. A global instrument must centre FPIC, defender protection, due diligence, and access to remedy as enforceable obligations to halt this cycle of abuse.
The UN is the place to broker new rules
As mining supply chains are inherently transboundary, only cooperation and consistent, open standards will yield resilient, equitable, and transparent mineral extraction. We must hold multinational enterprises, which operate across borders, to the same environmental and human rights norms worldwide.
Such legally binding rules are essential to establish equal standards for all and operating certainty for businesses.
The UN is the right body to carry this work. As the world’s highest-level decision-making body for matters related to the environment, UNEA is tasked with setting priorities for global environmental law — a mandate that needs to include mining.
We don’t need another dialogue or a light-touch technical platform.Countries must instead turn best practice and voluntary principles intoenforceable rules.
We want justice now for the communities and ecosystems being sacrificed in the name of the energy transition. By acting decisively, UNEA-7 can set a new paradigm across the full life cycle of minerals, rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice, and equity.
We urge countries to support Colombia’s initiative and adopt an ambitious resolution as a key step towards concrete, decision-ready options for a global instrument to govern mineral extraction.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran are among countries opposed to discussing options for agreeing on global norms to protect people and the planet from the impacts of mining, processing and recycling minerals needed for the clean energy transition, documents seen by Climate Home News show.
Environment officials gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, ahead of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) next week are discussing a resolution by Colombia and Oman that aims to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable at a time when growing demand is spurring resource-rich countries to court investment and boost production.
They have proposed the creation of an expert group to identify a range of binding and non-binding international instruments “for coordinated global action on the environmentally sound management of minerals and metals” from mining to recycling. The group would also look at how to handle mining waste and provide guidelines on recovering minerals from tailings responsibly.
Those instruments could range from a global minerals treaty to a non-binding declaration or set of standards on best practice. The resolution is co-sponsored by Armenia, Ecuador and Zambia.
But Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia, which is emerging as a major player in mineral supply chains, oppose launching a process that could lead to an international agreement on the issue, according to several sources and documents shared with Climate Home News.
Countries will vote on the proposal next week, during the seventh session of UNEA, the world’s top decision-making body for environmental matters.
China, which dominates the processing of 19 of 20 minerals deemed critical for the global economy, has so far stayed quiet about the proposal, but analysts said Beijing was unlikely to support any supranational initiative to govern mineral supply chains.
China’s priority is “to remain sovereign throughout the process of how these minerals are produced and traded” and to promote cooperation “on its own terms”, said Christian-Géraud Neema, an expert on Chinese engagement in Africa’s transition minerals sector and the Africa editor of the China-Global South Project.
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The US, which has been trying to counter China’s critical minerals clout, is not attending UNEA, while the EU – another major global market – is understood to broadly support the proposal.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said: “Our team in Nairobi is focused on the US-Kenya relationship and delivering results for the American people, rather than litigating endless woke climate change theater.” The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several other countries have raised objections. Chile, a top producer of copper and lithium, wants to narrow the focus of the resolution to voluntary cooperation on illegal mining.
In Africa, most countries back the Colombia-Oman proposal, but Uganda and Egypt oppose it, said Nsama Chikwanka, director of Publish What You Pay Zambia,an NGO focused on resource sovereignty.
“Race to the bottom”
Campaigners say countries should unite at UNEA to pave the way for talks on the issue, with some saying binding rules should be the eventual target.
“The investments that are coming to countries like Zambia are from multinational enterprises and national laws are inadequate to ensure that robust standards are applied. So we need something that is internationally binding,” Chikwanka said.
This comes after opposition from China and Russia thwarteda push by mineral-rich developing countries as well as the UK, the European Union and Australia to reflect the environmental and social risks associated with mining-related activities in the outcome of COP30.
“What we are seeing at the moment is a huge race to the bottom of environmental standards at the same time as the impacts of mining are already immense,” said Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of Germany’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation.
“It is the chance now to create a long-lasting space for governments to work together on this issue,” she told Climate Home News.
Farmers Nelson Banda and Elizabeth Bwalya stand in a field of maize burnt by a major acid spill at the Sino-Metals Leach Zambia copper mine in February (Photo: Stafrance Zulu)
The race to extract minerals like lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earths needed to manufacture batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other advanced digital and military technologies has led to growing cases of human rights violations, social conflict and environmental harms around the world.
In 2024 alone, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre recorded 156 allegations of human rights abuses linked to the mining of energy transition minerals.
Counter-proposals favour non-binding measures
Opposed to global discussions about possible binding tools to govern mineral supply chains, Saudi Arabia and Iran have instead suggested the creation of a technical platform that could review the impacts of mineral extraction in developing countries, explore options for support to address them, and advance voluntary cooperation on environmentally-sound practices.
Saudi Arabia is already cooperating with mineral-rich nations on its own terms by investing billions of dollars in transition minerals abroad in a bid to become a global mineral processing hub that could become a counterweight to China’s dominance.
China, meanwhile, threw its weight behind a G20 agreement on a voluntary and non-binding Critical Minerals Framework intended to ensure that mineral resources “become a driver of prosperity and sustainable development”.
At the G20 leaders’ summit in South Africa last month, which was snubbed by the US, China also launched an economic and trade initiative on minerals, aiming to secure access to minerals in exchange for cooperation on technology, capacity-building and financing.
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For Neema, of the China-Global South Project, this is an explicit attempt to counter resource diplomacy by the US, which is offering developing countries security and military support in exchange for minerals.
“Producing countries in the Global South are more likely to be attracted by this approach because they know that the likelihood of Chinese companies and banks showing up is quite high,” he said.
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