The impact of mining on indigenous peoples and their territories is a long and deeply troubling story. The search for mineral resources has been a principal driver of dispossession of indigenous peoples, the confiscation of their territories, and the dislocation of their subsistence economies.
Though the indigenous population is no more than five percent of the world's total, indigenous communities occupy nearly 25 percent of the planet's surface, and their territories contain possibly 80 percent of our remaining biodiversity.
As we struggle to decarbonize the global economy, it is evident that this will require production of unprecedented quantities of a long list of minerals that are critical to the energy transition: lithium, cobalt, nickel, aluminum and copper are only the most prominent of perhaps two dozen vital minerals. The energy transition will spark a mining boom that has enormous potential environmental and social impacts.
It also has the potential to generate a whole new wave of intrusion into indigenous communities and territories. As just one example, perhaps 80 percent of the world’s lithium reserves are on indigenous territories.
But there is at least a glimmer of hope that a new model of the relationship between indigenous peoples and the mining industry might emerge – one in which indigenous interests have a say in how, where and whether development occurs, and in which indigenous peoples share in the benefits of mineral development.
This hope is based in part on important and concrete developments in the law related to indigenous peoples, and human rights. The emerging legal framework is one in which actions that affect indigenous communities, their lands, and resources cannot go forward without prior consultation between governments and indigenous peoples. One of the underpinnings of this new legal regime is a treaty: ILO Convention 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.
What is new is that the obligations under this treaty are now, thanks to a round of pathbreaking supreme court decisions in Latin American countries, being incorporated into national law, where it can be given concrete and immediate effect.
