Published on 11 July 2024 in Client Alerts
Despite these ambitious goals, the EU faces challenges due to its currently limited lithium supply. Europe accounts for just 0.1% of global lithium production, while the majority of refining occurs in China. Projects like Savannah Resources’ lithium mine in Portugal and Green Lithium’s refinery in the UK are steps towards increasing domestic supply and reducing dependency on external sources.
On 4 June 2024, the Financial Times published an article on this topic, entitled ‘Europe promises sustainable lithium, but production is years away’. Robert G Volterra, partner at Volterra Fietta, was interviewed by the Financial Times about international law related to lithium and rare earth mineral production. He was quoted, in the article, emphasising the importance of transparency and adherence to human rights in the critical minerals supply chain. He highlighted that while China has introduced voluntary due diligence guidelines to improve supply chain transparency, ensuring human rights should remain the responsibility of states rather than being outsourced to businesses. He stressed that critical international law obligations, such as human rights protections, must not be privatised, with states acting as the ultimate protectors and guarantors. This perspective underscores the necessity for robust regulatory frameworks to support the ethical sourcing and processing of critical minerals.
For more information, contact info@volterrafietta.com.
In the brief 60 years of space flight, humanity has sent over 60,000 space objects and 1 million pieces of smaller debris into orbit around the planet. This has created the risk of a legal and physical log-jam in space. The congestion and space-junk problems are projected to become even more acute as the space race broadens its participants.
Learn moreDuring the 29th annual session of the International Seabed Authority (“ISA”), Malta, Tuvalu, Honduras, Guatemala and Austria declared their support for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining. To date, now over thirty States have called for a halt in the exploitation of the deep seabed minerals. These calls come as the ISA struggles to adopt a final set of regulations on mining exploitation.
Learn moreOn 30 May 2024, the European Council adopted decisions enabling the European Union (“EU”) to denounce (the proper international law term for ‘withdraw from’) the Energy Charter Treaty (“ECT”).
Learn moreThe COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant gaps in the global health system, leading to immense human and economic losses. In response, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) and its member States decided to draft a comprehensive international treaty—the Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Accord.
Learn more