RUI: The Green Bargain: The Environmental Politics of Rare Earth Mining

Macalester College, Saint Paul MN

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This research project is a comparative analysis of three case studies that aims to better understand how experts and civil society are defining, modeling, and measuring responsible mining. The objective of the project is to assess the green bargain required to fast track rare earth mining in order to fuel the American clean energy revolution. The project will be conducted over three phases. First, the PI will review the responsible mining literature, drawing together scholarship from the fields of geography, anthropology, and STS work on responsible innovation. She will also interview rare earth industry analysts to understand how they are shaping and communicating corporate social responsibility. Second, the PI will develop case studies of three rare earth mining sites in California, Wyoming, and Minnesota. The three cases represent varied landscape types, project scales, and developers. This phase will document how responsible mining is negotiated and deliberated in project development. She will focus on the kinds of demands and concessions developers, regulators, and environmentalists are making to gain a social license to operate. In the final phase, the PI will compare the cases to understand the socioeconomic, political, and institutional configurations that present the greatest potential for a green bargain to emerge. In addition to research articles, this final stage will result in a Citizen's Guide on rare earth mining. Given the importance of rare earths to the clean energy economy, this project has the potential to broadly impact new mining policy. The research aims to move the current political impasse toward a more robust, civically engaged, discussion about how we value and protect nature, people and place in the face of critical materials supply challenges. Technical Summary This project will synergize two emerging areas of social theory: the geologic turn in geography and anthropology, and the STS interest in responsible innovation. The project aims to answer a range of micro and macro questions about the role of the green bargain in rare earths debates. At the local level, the project aims to reveal how new vulnerabilities and opportunities are being co-produced with the new energy economy. These include asking local residents: What are your concerns about rare earth mining's landscape and livelihood impacts? What does it mean for a mine to operate responsibly? The research also addresses broader STS concerns about energy policy, and the balancing of deliberative processes and outcomes. Toward furthering the responsible innovation scholarship, the research will ask: What are the appropriate upstream moments to engage communities in articulating their hopes and fears with emerging technologies? Whose responsibility is it to negotiate the green bargain and when? What kinds of local and federal regulatory mechanisms are necessary to shape and watchdog responsible mining?