Behind the increasing demand for cobalt are the companies that depend on rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles. Automobile companies – those using cobalt as inputs to batteries in electric vehicles – have an important role to play. It is not just Congolese government officials who are responsible for ensuring that cobalt is mined in safe and just ways. In summary, EV have direct and indirect impacts on the physical and human security of Congolese citizens. These include the use of child labor, deaths from the collapse of cobalt mines, and the environmental health risks of cobalt mining. A series of reports has shown how cobalt mining in the DR Congo is plagued by problems like human rights abuses, unsafe mining, and several other risks have been reported in the DRC cobalt mining industry. The DR Congo’s natural resource wealth has made it a classic example of the resource curse, with its mineral wealth fueling and sustaining its seemingly never-ending instability and ongoing violent armed conflicts. Rather, creating sustainable automobiles require us to focus attention and good governance efforts along the entire EV supply chain, from extraction to end-use product.Īt the raw materials input end of the supply chain for EVs, sustainability means focusing on the conditions under which cobalt is produced. Creating more sustainable automobiles requires a shift in our focus beyond the policy and popular discourses about clean, green EVs, and beyond EV’s carbon emissions. And a cobalt boom raises the risks of numerous bad outcomes in a country like the DRC with its limited ability to govern well cobalt extraction. The DRC’s cobalt reserves could make it the “ the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle age.” Despite this enormous potential, cobalt extraction in the DRC as it is carried out today comes with a hefty human, social and environmental price tag. The DRC’s cobalt reserves could make it the “ the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle age.”Ĭobalt is an essential component of the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles. A piece of a 99.9 % pure plate of cobalt.
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