Mining For Transition Materials in Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, the energy sector's dependence on hydroelectric and coal-fired power has rendered it incapable of meeting rising demand due to aging infrastructure, climate change impacts, and economic challenges. The country experiences chronic energy supply shortage due to outdated energy infrastructure leading to heavy reliance on fossil fuels. These problems highlights the need for innovative policies and investment in renewable energy technologies.

While insufficient funding and regulatory challenges represent major barriers to a comprehensive energy transition, Zimbabwe’s mining sector surged as one of the main global supplier of transition raw materials, lithium particularly.

In Zimbabwe, a country characterized by fragile ecosystems, conflict, and extended climate vulnerability, any change through excavations, or deforestation would escalate geopolitical and climate disruptions and consequently undermine planetary security. Here, the quests for climate justice and efforts to decarbonize are complicated by the longstanding need to accelerate economic development while adapting to the devastating effects of the changing climate.

Furthermore, those most affected by mining activities and climate change more broadly are often institutionally and intellectually excluded from academic conversations and global discourses, yet they are often portrayed as the purported beneficiaries of the interventions. This has resulted in a disconnect between dominant frames of climate change/sustainability and oral traditions and the lived realities of affected communities.

As such, questions remain who gets to decide what is just and for whom?  Furthermore who is benefitting and who is paying for this promised future? More importantly, who is included/excluded in such visions of a green and clean future?