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The Transition Minerals Tracker: 2025 Global Analysis examines human rights and environmental risks in mining eight key minerals needed for the energy transition, including copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and newly added iron ore. It records 835 allegations of abuse between 2010 and 2024, with 156 in 2024 alone, covering land rights violations, unsafe working conditions, water pollution, gender-based violence, and attacks on defenders.
South America leads with 41 percent of allegations, followed by Africa and the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. The majority of abuses are linked to a handful of companies and mines, with copper accounting for over 60 percent of all allegations. Workers and communities often suffer intersecting harms, while Indigenous Peoples face repeated violations of their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).
Key trends include systemic water pollution, disproportionate impacts on women, weaponisation of litigation against defenders, and rising conflicts causing costly project delays. Only 44 percent of implicated mines had human rights policies, leaving major accountability gaps.
The report warns that rushing extraction without rights protections will erode trust, fuel conflict, and slow the energy transition itself. It calls on companies, governments, and investors to adopt binding due diligence, uphold FPIC, ensure benefit-sharing, and reduce mineral demand through recycling and efficiency.
Overall, the Tracker stresses that a just transition requires rights-based governance of mineral supply chains, with Indigenous communities, workers, and local populations recognised as central stakeholders.
