Abstract
The global effort to mitigate climate change increasingly relies on widespread electrification, with lithium-ion batteries at its core and the key minerals required for their production concentrated in countries uniquely vulnerable to exploitation. Lithium-ion battery production relies heavily on cobalt, a critical mineral primarily sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which supplies approximately 70 percent of the world’s cobalt. As demand for cobalt is projected to rise sharply, the DRC has become indispensable to the global clean energy transition. Cobalt extraction in the DRC is closely linked to severe human rights abuses, including forced labor, child labor, hazardous working conditions, environmental contamination, sexual violence and forced displacement, all of which raise serious ethical and legal concerns about the sustainability of current supply chains. This article examines the intersection of natural resource governance, climate policy and human rights by analyzing how global dependence on cobalt perpetuates systemic exploitation in the DRC. Moving beyond existing scholarship, it evaluates why current governance mechanisms fail to convert ethical commitments into meaningful protections for cobalt miners. The article assesses four regulatory frameworks – domestic (DRC), international, third-party and voluntary market-based initiatives – demonstrating their collective inability to ensure transparency, accountability and enforceability across the cobalt supply chain. It concludes by briefly identifying two overarching reforms necessary to reconcile climate objectives with human rights and to advance a more equitable model of natural resource development.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ashleigh Wootton,
Cobalt's Climate Paradox: Global Ambitions for a Greener Future Rely on Blood-Stained Hands,
66
Nat. Res. J.
119
(2026).
Available at:
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol66/iss1/7
