ID: 1643
Presenting Author: Diana Carolina Arbelaez Ruiz
Session: 558 - Justice in the Chain: Human Rights and Engagement in Energy Transition
Status: pending
The presentation focuses on lithium for electric vehicle batteries, amid growing E-mobility adoption, to discuss human rights engagement and justice in the upstream E-mobility value chain.
Decarbonisation efforts and better batteries and renewable energy technology are seeing rapid electric vehicle (EV) adoption. A surge in demand for energy transition minerals like lithium, necessary for EV batteries, has resulted. Lithium production, existing and projected, remains highly concentrated in regions with shrinking civic space or risks to Indigenous rights and territories, biodiversity and water, among others. These raise concerns about cumulative impacts on host communities and environments. In urban areas, the E-mobility that lithium enables can deliver significant emissions reductions and health benefits. So, many urban centres are fostering rapid E-mobility adoption. They use incentives, land use planning, public transport and shared mobility initiatives, and are procuring large EV fleets for their public transport systems. Public awareness of upstream human rights risks, together with transparency or due diligence (DD) regulations require follow up of supplier human rights DD. However, desktop exercises can fall short in capturing the complexities of hard-to-quantify and highly localised human rights dynamics. With the lithium and E-mobility nexus as an example, this stop of the solution room invites participants to address dilemmas in engaging with the human rights risks of the upstream E-mobility value chain. Examples include taking IA and DD beyond the “paper trail” to support justice, human rights engagement amid shrinking civic space and low transparency, or connecting and supporting up and downstream actor coalitions towards a just transition.
Dr Diana Arbelaez-Ruiz studies the social and political aspects of resource extraction with emphasis on the energy transition, e-mobility, conflict and peacebuilding, and Indigenous rights.