Addressing ‘Resource security for value chains’ UNEP Senior Official addresses EU Raw Materials Week 2019

“The Resource and Raw Material strategy of the European Union will need to be coherent with European and global policies on climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution,” stated Ms Ligia Noronha, Director of the Economy Division of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the EU "Raw Materials Week" in Brussels.

On 20 November Ms Ligia Noronha had the opportunity to represent UNEP’s point of view at a high-level panel discussion on ‘Resource security for value chains’ in the context of 7th Annual High-Level Conference of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP). This article reflects the main observations and key messages delivered on this occasion by Ms Noronha.

According to the Global Resources Outlook 2019 our consumerist and throwaway modes of consumption have had devastating impacts on our planet. Resource extraction and their use have more than tripled since 1970 and over the period up to 2017 their extraction, processing, and use are responsible for 90 percent of biodiversity loss and water stress, and they account for 50 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Resource extraction is also a major source of air pollution. “At UNEP we aim to decouple growth from environmental and resource impacts.” A coherent system-wide approach is required to reduce trade-offs, she observed.

“When you think of raw material security, you need to look at the issue from human security and environmental security perspectives, but also from the competitiveness and innovation perspectives,” Ms Noronha told the audience. These perspectives all need to come together, and this is slowly happening. “The announced EU Green Deal aims to be an example of coherence and this is encouraging."

Ms Noronha pointed out that if we were to look at raw materials, their extraction has steeply increased since 1970, whilst material productivity has gone down since 2000 and is now close to stagnating. ”If material productivity is going down and the demand for raw materials is going up we are in some kind of trouble,” she noticed, adding that, as incomes grow, population rates tend to fall but consumption grows continuously. “So, unless we focus on making consumption choices responsible, supported by more efficient production practices, we will not be able to properly address the issue of trade-offs and equity of resource access,” she told the conference.

“We need to think more in terms of the footprint of the whole supply chain,” she recommended, pointing out that while the demand side of the global value chain is globalized, the supply is partially so, and still largely local. Therefore “we really need to focus on addressing the asymmetries of capacity, of knowledge and of power at the local level, because that is where the majority of the impacts occur and problems arise and need to be avoided to ensure a social license to operate,” Ms Noronha warned, “or you may end up with not getting the materials that you need.”

She referred to the issue of mine tailings and the recent failure in Brumadinho that lead to a tragic loss of lives and impacts on the environment. UNEP, the Principles of responsible Investment and the International Council of Mines and Metals have co-convened an independent review of global tailings post the Brumadinho tragedy with a view to arriving at an industry standard for mine tailings, that will take into account human as well as environmental safety.

Another way of enhancing security and reducing impacts along the raw materials supply chain would be to keep the material in use for the longest time. Ms Noronha referred to a workshop of the G7 Resource Efficiency Alliance in Paris the day before, on value retention policies. She highlighted an International Resource Panel (UNEP IRP) report entitled Re-defining Value – The Manufacturing Revolution (2018). “Adopting value retention processes results in reduced material inputs, emissions, and costs,” she explained. These processes become pillars of circularity: by refurbishing, re-manufacturing, reducing or re-mining materials, ultimately you save resources and reduce waste creation and the amount of virgin material needed. Hence, such processes can reduce costs and the environmental footprint of the industry. In this regard, in response to a question from the moderator on the G7 meeting, she added that the talks were not just about the environment, but rather about resource value retention and competitiveness and about addressing consumption needs and raw material requirements. 

Ms Noronha further noted that we should give more attention to secondary materials. For example, electronic waste could be mined for metals and new products could be manufactured using a lot of secondary materials. Furthermore, she indicated that non-metallic minerals such as sand, clay and gypsum, materials used in the construction sector, are ones for which we should also find alternatives. Due to the urbanization and construction needs, we can expect these sectors to increase their raw materials demand, yet their impact is not sufficiently studied, apart from a few studies such as the UNEP GRID (Global Resources Information Database) - Geneva study  Sand, rarer than one thinks (2014)

In response to a question related to the development of more sustainable mining globally, Ms Noronha noted that stronger governance is needed for mineral resources, an issue also highlighted at the last United Nations Environment Assembly. She reflected that in order to achieve more harmonized standards worldwide, it is essential to build capacity not only at a regional level but also at the local level. 

Therefore, we need a form of distributive governance to address the fact that the globalized value chain is both global and local at the same time. Ms Noronha was optimistic about this: there is a lot happening, like the introduction of blockchain technologies, but also increased interest from the investment community to have more responsible mining practices. 

While recommending that a European Raw Materials strategy will need to be coherent with European and global policies on climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, Ms Noronha also reflected in her final takeaway that rule enforcement needs to be primarily national and local and based on the capacity to implement regulations and standards. “Capacity, capacity, capacity,” she said, “we forget sometimes that we need to invest in implementation capacity."