25 June 2026 · University of Sussex, UK Closing
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Critical minerals and Critical Raw Materials are central to economic development, national security, and strategic competition. Securing supply chain resilience has become a top policy priority worldwide. For the United States, CRMs are vital in maintaining its military and defenceedge as well as advanced manufacturing industries.
For the UK and the European Union, where domestic mining is limited, stable access to CRMs from third countries will determine their future role in global climate, industrial, and technological leadership. Their transition to digital economies, for instance, depends on reliable access to minerals and the ability to participate in emerging manufacturing supply chains. For China, they serve as indispensable inputs for downstream industries and have been integral to its industrial transformation. For many developing economies holding key reserves, CRMs are crucial both as export commodities and as entry points into global value chains.
The rising mineral demand has been framed as a renewed opportunity for industrialisation and development. CRMs are thus now a cornerstone of economic security and strategic power for both producers and consumers. Yet their expansion is generating two major sources of tension—between countries and within countries.
This pillar explores how mining can support industrialisation and structural transformation in mineral-producing countries. We examine:
• How to build linkages between mining and broader productive sectors such as manufacturing, services and green industries.
• Ways to acquire technological know-how, strengthen domestic capabilities and move up the value chain.
• Industrial policy tools suited to today’s critical minerals boom, including local-content measures, midstream processing incentives and innovation policies.
• Strategies to mitigate inequality and distribute the gains from mineral wealth more fairly across regions and social groups. Through collaborative work with governments, development finance institutions, firms and communities, the Lab co-designs, tests and refines practical policy instruments that can turn mineral wealth into durable productive capacities.
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Within this landscape, “Global China” has become a central force in critical minerals and manufacturing supply chains. China and the developing world hold significant reserves, while Chinese firms lead in refining, separation and processing. This pillar focuses on the geopolitics and political economy of international cooperation in the CRM sector. We analyse:
• The proliferation of standards-setting efforts, minerals partnerships and bilateral agreements • How Global China is reshaping supply chains and re-writing trade, finance and investment relations with the Global South
• How producer countries use cartels, export measures and price coordination to strengthen their bargaining power
• The potential for new cooperation frameworks including BRICS and other developing-country initiatives
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Conflicts around mining are becoming more frequent, organised and politically salient. Existing governance frameworks often fail to protect people and nature, generate broad-based value or include affected communities in decision-making. This pillar is about rebuilding territorial legitimacy around mining. We work to:
• Understand why conflicts arise and how they relate to inequality, exclusion and environmental harm • Identify institutional gaps and failures that allow unsustainable practices
• Co-design participatory practices and institutional innovations including FPIC processes, benefit-sharing mechanisms
• Test regulatory tools that link access to finance to social and environmental performance
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Business of the State: Why State Ownership Matters for Resource Governance
Jewellord T. Nem Singh · Oxford University Press, 2024
As decarbonisation accelerates, mineral-rich states in the Global South are called on to supply the critical minerals of the energy transition. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork on Chile’s Codelco and Brazil’s Petrobras, the book shows how a hybrid strategy — market-friendly policies to attract investment combined with reinvigorated state-owned enterprises — can turn resource sectors into platforms for innovation and industrial development, if SOEs are subjected to effective governance reforms.
From Extraction to Value Addition: How Capabilities and Power Shape Local Supplier Development
Anabel Marin and Jose Morales · Institute of Development Studies, 2025
Moving up the value chain is the central promise of critical minerals for producing countries — but it rarely happens automatically. This study examines how local capabilities and power relations between firms, states and lead companies determine whether domestic suppliers can capture more value from mining.
Litio argentino: oportunidades, tecnologías y políticas para desarrollar su cadena de valor
Anabel Marin, Diego Murguía and Katia Itoiz · CENIT-EEyN-UNSAM, 2024
A detailed mapping of Argentina’s lithium sector: the technologies in play, the opportunities for building a domestic value chain, and the policies needed to move beyond raw extraction in one of the world’s key lithium producers.
Lilia Stubrin, Anabel Marin and Diego Murguía · Industrial and Corporate Change, 2023
Mining is often dismissed as an enclave with few spillovers. This article documents the emergence of knowledge-intensive local suppliers around Argentina’s mines, showing the conditions under which extraction can seed innovative domestic industries.
Jewellord Nem Singh
Anabel Marín
Handbook of Resource Nationalism
Edited by Jesse Salah Ovadia, Richard G. Saunders and Jewellord T. Nem Singh · Edward Elgar, 2026
As states race to secure the minerals of the energy transition, resource nationalism has returned to the centre of global politics. This 33-chapter handbook — the first comprehensive reference on the subject — maps how mineral-producing societies assert sovereignty over their resources, across commodities from oil and gas to nickel, tin and rare earths, and what this means for strategic competition between international powers.
Beyond the twin transition: Military drivers of critical minerals’ expansion
Phil Johnstone and Anabel Marín · The Extractive Industries and Society, 2026
Critical minerals demand is usually explained by the green and digital ‘twin transition’. This article foregrounds a third, overlooked driver — military mobilisation and rearmament — showing how war preparedness has long shaped which minerals count as ‘critical’, and how today’s intensified militarisation is changing extraction and governance dynamics across supply chains, with serious implications for sustainable development.
Jewellord T. Nem Singh and Yingfeng Ji · in Handbook of Resource Nationalism, Edward Elgar, 2026
China’s dominance of rare earths is the defining case of minerals as geopolitical leverage. This chapter traces how Chinese resource nationalism has served both industrial upgrading at home and economic statecraft abroad — a dual strategy other producing countries now seek to emulate or counter.
From Dominance to Dependence: What the UK Must Learn to Build Trusted Critical Minerals Partnerships
Anabel Marin and Gabriel Palazzo · CITP Briefing Paper, 2025
The UK now depends on critical minerals produced elsewhere, yet security-of-supply initiatives alone will not build trust with producing countries. This briefing argues that credible partnerships require conflict-sensitive engagement: understanding where and why mining disputes arise, assessing conflict early, and building pathways that turn disputes into negotiated agreements.
Nem Singh
Marín
Civic power in mining conflicts: Barrier or catalyst for a just energy transition?
Anabel Marin and Gabriel Palazzo · Environmental Research Letters, 20(5), 2025
Are communities that resist mining an obstacle to the energy transition? Using an original dataset built from global news records (GDELT, 2015–2022), this article provides the first systematic global mapping of conflict and cooperation in mining regions. Resistance turns out to be widespread across rich and poor countries alike, often causing costly delays and cancellations — and the authors argue that moving beyond CSR and conventional consultation, towards genuinely democratised investment decisions, is essential for a just and viable transition.
Mining Legitimacy: Governing the Politics of Resource-Based Green Industrial Policy
Anabel Marín and Santiago Cunial · IDS Working Paper 623, 2025
Green transitions are not only technological but deeply political: they depend on minerals extracted in places where mining is increasingly contested. Drawing on evidence from Argentina and Chile, this paper shows that civic action is not merely a barrier to mining expansion but a driver of institutional innovation and participatory governance — and distils design lessons for green industrial policies that are socially legitimate as well as growth-oriented.
Jewellord T. Nem Singh and Alvin Camba · Environmental Policy and Governance, 30(5), 2020
When do global standards for corporate behaviour actually take hold in contentious sectors like mining? Tracing Philippine mining politics across the Arroyo, Aquino and Duterte governments, this article shows how domestic policy coalitions determine the partial and uneven adoption of global “responsible mining” norms.
Contesting Mineral Extraction for Transformation: Civic Power in Just Energy Transitions
Anabel Marin · IDS Bulletin 56(2), 2025
Argentina and Chile have become key suppliers of transition minerals — and sites of widespread socioenvironmental conflict. Reviewing over 180 sources and mapping 36 conflict cases, this article shows how resistance led by indigenous communities, local assemblies, NGOs and municipal governments has blocked projects, prompted legal reforms and generated bottom-up innovations — a catalyst for policy transformation, not merely a barrier.
Nem Singh
Marín
25 June 2026 · University of Sussex, UK Closing
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25 June 2026 · University of Sussex, UK The workshop ho
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25–26 June 2026 · University of Sussex, UK Industrial p
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Dr. Jewellord Nem Singh, led a workshop at University o
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Nem Singh (Jojo) is a Principal Research Fellow in Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, UK, and Lead Convenor of the Critical Minerals Policy Lab. He serves as Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded GRIP-ARM project on green industrial policy and rare metals. His expertise spans global political economy, resource nationalism, and industrial policy in developing countries.
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Dr Anabel Marín is a Research Fellow and Leader of the Business, Markets and State Cluster at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Her research examines how mineral-rich countries can turn extraction into innovation, industrial development and fairer governance, with recent work on lithium value chains, civic power in mining conflicts, and critical minerals partnerships.
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Dr Yingfeng Ji is a Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded GRIP-ARM project at the University of Sussex. She holds a PhD and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her research covers green industrial policy, China's overseas supply chains, and the political economy of critical minerals, with fieldwork in Central Asia.
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Arnie Cordero Trinidad is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Trinity College Dublin. His work on development, migration, class, and disaster risk reduction has been published in European Societies, Sociology, and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
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Joanna Morley is a Fellow of the Critical Minerals Policy Lab and holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool (ESRC-funded). Her research focuses on the political economy of energy transitions, large-scale infrastructure projects, and contested natural resource governance in extractive industries.
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