The mining of metallic raw materials is associated with many human rights, social and environmental risks. At the same time, metals are indispensable in our lives. Current future forecasts from the International Energy Agency or the EU Commission show that, despite the expansion of the circular economy, we need growing quantities of primary nutrients. The conflicts over mining, as well as the geopolitical changes that began with the rise of the Chinese economy and which escalated as a result of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, highlight the need for changes in the way we have shaped raw materials policy so far.<\/p>\n
German policymakers have put in place measures and support programmes to strengthen the diversification of sources of raw materials. From the (now discontinued) exploration promotion program to commodity partnerships and foreign trade promotion, the measures are designed unilaterally for industrial interests, partly failed and have criminally neglected ecological and social perspectives. Despite these accompanying measures, however, the actual supply has so far been left to industry, which in turn relied on the market mechanisms.<\/p>\n
However, due to geopolitical competition with China and Russia, the dependencies on China for metallic raw materials and the fragility of supply chains, the strategic stockpiling of raw materials is being re-discussed. It was the FDP that already referred to the market failure in the raw materials sector in January 2020 and requested state protectionist measures from the Federal Government. To this end, it proposed to consider a European \u2018raw materials agency as the federal umbrella of national raw materials agencies with the right to trade raw materials on global markets\u2019 and \u2018the introduction of a European \u2013 at least national \u2013 raw materials reserve\u2019.<\/p>\n
The discussion paper provides an overview of the industrial positions in Germany and takes a look at the situation abroad before examining civil society perspectives on the topic. In particular, aspects of international justice, social and environmental standards as well as questions of the democratic design of national raw material reserves play a role here.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Stockpiling considerations \u2013 Strategic reserves of raw materials The mining of metallic raw materials involves many human rights, social and environmental risks. At the same time, metals are indispensable in our lives. Current future forecasts from the International Energy Agency or the EU Commission show that, despite the expansion of the circular economy, we need growing quantities of primary nutrients. The conflicts over mining...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":80996,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[11,65,3,134,139],"post_series":[],"thema":[18],"coauthors":[59],"class_list":["post-81332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-positionen","tag-klima","tag-menschenrechte","tag-rohstoffpolitik","tag-rohstoffwende","tag-umwelt","thema-rohstoffpolitik","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95297,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81332\/revisions\/95297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81332"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=81332"},{"taxonomy":"thema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thema?post=81332"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/power-shift.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=81332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}