Can you start by giving us some background to your professional experience and your work with Swaniti Initiative?
I have dabbled in many different fields over the years, and now I like to call myself an interdisciplinary climate and energy expert. Interdisciplinary in the true sense, because I was a journalist, then an academic, and now I work in the think tank space. I was also an engineer a long time ago. Working across different fields to try and solve the climate crisis is one of the key focus areas of my work. Currently, I am with Swaniti Initiative, which is a non-profit working on climate issues globally. We work on the ground and we work at a diplomatic level, so taking a very local to global focus.
Primarily, we research, and through this, we engage with policy makers to compel them to take bold climate action. We work on four areas. The first is a methane initiative where we work in Global South countries to see if they can have ambitious methane pledges, whether there is opportunity to mitigate methane, especially in the coal, oil, and gas sectors.
The second initiative is around critical mineral development. We have partnered with two other organizations to launch the Council for Critical Mineral Development in Global South, and we are bringing together Global South countries to leverage their collective strength to ensure that they have a big role in creating value chains for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, copper, etc.
The third initiative is around a just energy transition, in which we look at how countries can phase out fossil fuels. And when they do, how do we make sure that workers, communities, and regions that host these fossil fuels also have a role in the new clean energy economy?
The last and the final initiative is around the role of state-owned companies. Globally, over half of fossil fuels are produced by state-owned companies, and we are trying to work with them on their business diversification strategy. So, how can a coal mining company, like Coal India, diversify into critical minerals and solar? How can power companies get into more cleaner sectors? That has been the large focus, and we do that through in-depth research, but, at the same time, engaging with key stakeholders.
Looking at some of the key energy transition initiatives taking place across the Global South, what impacts have you seen so far?
Let’s divide this question into two parts. The first part is all the initiatives that are happening around clean energy. I can’t think of a country that is not embracing renewables. Some faster than others, but everybody is moving towards a clean energy transition.
One big trend is the move towards clean energy, but the scale and the speed are varying across countries depending on where they are in the arc of transition. Some countries in the Global South are more ambitious because they don’t have alternate sources. They want to provide energy access. Some, while continuing to keep their fossil fuels, are also adding renewables in the mix.
The second, in that same bucket, is around critical minerals. Every big, major country wants to secure critical minerals for their clean energy transition so that they can secure their supplies, they can secure their value chains, and create jobs locally. So, on the clean energy side, there is massive deployment happening.
In some countries where fossil fuels are aging, they have governments that want to be more ambitious. In South Africa there’s a clear interest to move away from fossil fuels and deploy renewables at scale in the long run. Even in countries like India where fossil fuels are still growing, the growth has come down. Without renewables, this growth would have been even higher.
In some cases, the growth itself has come down and, in other cases, there’s a clear pathway or an end date. But all in all, one of the biggest things is that almost every country has embraced the net-zero idea. Again, the timeline may vary, but countries are moving towards that. Implementation matters, and some are better than others in terms of this, so that also makes a huge difference.
We all know that there is an immense amount of new raw materials needed to enter the global supply chain to help with this transition. Are there opportunities here in terms of exploration mining for countries in the Global South?
If you look at today’s value chains, it is predominantly dominated by China, whether it’s producing the minerals or processing them. It is dominating in the upstream, which is the mining part. It’s also dominating in the midstream, which is the processing. And it is definitely dominating in the downstream. So today, China dominates.
But the West has woken up to a very dominant China in the critical minerals value chain and, in the last few years, there’s been massive efforts to reshape some of those value chains and increase the global share. The US and the EU have both passed legislations, like the Raw Material Act, where it is really about securing value chains. Western countries are going into Africa to try and secure their own mines. In this race between the two elephants, Global South countries will be left out if they don’t come together on this very important topic.
Their collective strength is the only way for them to secure value chains, and not become mere raw material exporters for these big elephants. In that vein, Global South countries should come together and support each other in favourable trade policies, come together for exploration, and work on alternate technologies like recycling. Whether it’s coal waste to critical minerals, whether it’s other forms of rocks to critical minerals, these are great opportunities for Global South countries to work together.
At Swaniti, and with partners SE4All, Sustainable Energy for All, and University of California, Davis, we have launched an initiative called the Council for Critical Mineral Development in Global South. The whole idea is to bring together these countries, so that they can work together to be part of the value chain, which is a US$2T opportunity.
Are there opportunities growing in terms of the refining and the end-use industrial nature of the industry?
Most of the critical minerals are located in the Global South, so it makes total sense to have the refining and the processing in the country where it’s produced or nearby. But it’s not easy, because the value chains are already set. The people, the skill required to do some of that processing, the demand centres are somewhere else.
Imagine the DRC, which is producing cobalt. Now, if the DRC and a few other Global South countries come together, jointly invest in refining, they will be able to attract investments as well. They’ll be able to access capital. Imagine now they come together with other countries, or the same set of countries, also to get a skilled workforce because these are very technical processes. I’m very convinced that, at this point, if countries don’t come together in the Global South, it’s going to be very difficult for them to actually make a big intervention in getting their slice of the value chain.
Can you define a Just Transition for our readers and why it’s so important to focus our efforts on a Just Transition for the Global South.
I will start by saying that a Just Transition means very different things to different people. The traditional meaning of a Just Transition, when it started with the labour movement in the 70s in North America, was that when you close down any industry, you want to make sure that workers and communities, employment and jobs, are protected. From the 1970s to 2024, as this concept evolved and entered the climate space, people started using it in different ways.
You will have indigenous groups talking about Just Transition in terms of indigenous rights. You will have some other groups talking about Just Transition, about a very specific context and a very specific set of workers. But the way I think about it is somewhere in between, which is when you transition away from fossil fuels, like the transition to electric vehicles from internal combustion engines, you want to make sure that the whole community is taken care of, not just those individual workers who may lose employment, because dependency on these natural resources varies vastly.
They range from direct and indirect jobs, to revenue generation, taxes, to consumers of these raw materials. So you want to make sure that the whole ecosystem is taken care of as you move. This is important for two reasons. The first is political. We will not be able to transition without taking care of a large number of people and communities who may be impacted. You have so many examples around the world of countries becoming divided along political lines, where one side will support the continuation of fossil fuel industries to protect jobs, and the other saying they are going to do a Just Transition. From a political economy point of view, it’s very important to take care of workers, communities, and regions.
But there is a whole justice angle. The original idea, why a Just Transition matters, is so we don’t have an inequitable world. You’re addressing climate change, but when you do that, you don’t want to create more inequalities. There’s a very important political and justice argument of why a Just Transition matters. This work used to be very problem focused – defining what a Just Transition means, who will be impacted, when they will be impacted, where they will be impacted, how much money is required to train them.
But in the last two years, it has really shifted to solutions focused, which is thinking about how do you diversify the economy of that particular region? Large studies and frameworks are coming out that look at how to diversify. And when you diversify, what new skills are required. There are a lot of initiatives happening around skill. I think we have moved from a very problem focused argument to a more solutions focused practice, which I think is a very positive development.
