Dr Lian Sinclair1
1The University of Sydney, Australia
Biography:
Is postdoctoral research fellow in geography at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on how corporations, governments, community groups and NGOs contest the uneven costs and benefits of extractive industries. This includes how groups embrace, adapt to or resist mining projects. Her first book Undermining Resistance: The governance of participation by multinational mining corporations (Manchester University Press, 2024) is available now. Lian's PhD was conferred from the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in 2020.
Abstract:
The boom in ‘energy transition minerals’ is disrupting corporate strategies and governance of extractive industries in a new ‘security-sustainability nexus’ (Riofrancos 2023). New configurations of multinational and domestic mining corporations, midstream suppliers, vehicle and electronics manufacturers, and NGOs are forming across intersecting global production networks. The Australian government has provided over $14bn in incentives to promote their development. At the same time, such minerals take centre stage in China-US geostrategic competition.
Rare earth metals and magnets are the most securitised of all ‘critical minerals’, because of the extreme concentration of their production in China, their centrality to defence and energy systems and the high cost of separating and refining them. However, despite billions of dollars of public debt financing, geopolitical pressure, Australian mining companies struggle to attract private equity partners and binding offtake agreements.
To understand why, we deploy a geopolitically sensitive analysis of global production networks to understand firm strategies within uncertain geopolitical economic structures. We draw on public financing arrangements from both Australian and international (USA, Japan, South Korea and Canada) governments, Foreign Investment Review Board determinations, and analysis of offtake agreement negotiations of the one operating and four most promising proposed projects in Australia. We find that while state actors are central to initiating geopolitical production networks in rare earths, the long-term success of the industry networks is doubtful without lead firm involvement.