ICMM response to ‘Call for Inputs – Human Rights in the Life Cycle of Renewable Energy and Critical Minerals’
In April 2025, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on climate change called for input to inform the thematic report on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change to the United Nations General Assembly 80th session.
The report will seek to clarify States’ international human rights obligations - both individually and through international cooperation - as well as business responsibility to support a just transition. It will also aim to enhance the protection of everyone’s human right to a healthy environment and help prevent foreseeable negative human rights impacts of certain climate mitigation approaches.
The call for inputs sought to advance understanding of the documented positive and negative impacts on human rights associated with different sources, scales and stages of renewable energy development during a just transition. This includes the positive and negative human rights impacts of the life cycle of critical minerals.
ICMM welcomed the opportunity to provide input. In our response, we highlight that:
- The mining industry has a key role to play in enabling the just transition to a clean energy economy, as well as delivering meaningful progress on many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- The imperative to produce more minerals to meet the needs of the energy transition in no way diminishes the industry’s responsibility to mine in accordance with responsible practices. This includes a responsibility to respect human rights by undertaking robust human rights due diligence and approaches for the effective identification, prevention, mitigation and remedy of human rights risks and impacts, aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).
- Renewable energy and mining projects can improve infrastructure access for underserved communities and support widespread and long-term socio-economic development across the entire mine life cycle which, in turn, can help to fulfil the human rights of communities.
- Responsible mining standards can play a transformative role in ensuring high ESG performance, especially when complemented by an independent, third-party auditing system. One of the most significant barriers that undermines the safeguarding of human rights across the renewables supply chain (which includes critical and non-critical minerals) is that responsible mining practices are far from normative.
