Decarbonization strategies perpetuate inequalities in human rights, says study

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A University of Michigan study of a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo finds that the necessary process of decarbonization is repeating and recreating colonial inequalities.

The researchers argue that human rights abuses associated with contemporary cobalt mining, such as child labor, social displacement and structural marginalization, are new forms of old colonial practices. Their study is published in the journal Cities.

“We show how those colonial practices emerged through the creation of mining companies and through the establishment of the city of Lubumbashi. We also show that the mining boom for copper and cobalt is a new form of these old practices,” said lead author Brandon Marc Finn, an assistant research scientist at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability.

“We need these minerals for decarbonization, but I also think it’s important for us to understand and confront that in pursuing these materials, there are models of neocolonialism that play out on the ground.”

Lubumbashi is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southernmost province, Haut-Katanga. Originally named Elisabethville, Lubumbashi was founded in 1910 by Belgian colonialists. The city was established because of its proximity to natural resources, especially copper.

Finn and co-author Patrick Cobinnah of the University of Melbourne wanted to trace the roots of colonialism in Lubumbashi to tie them to contemporary practices. In poring through historical documents, the researchers found that just as in the city’s inception, mining today relies on the use of child labor—workers who mine by hand in dangerous conditions—and that wealth derived from the mining industry flows to political elites and foreign mining companies.

The use of child labor for mining is older than the city itself, the study found. Finn cites a decree from 1890, signed by Belgian King Leopold II, which gave the Belgian government officials guardianship over orphaned or allegedly abandoned children. In exchange for “maintenance, food, lodging and free medical attention,” these children were conscripted into work at the discretion of the Belgian state until they were 25 years old.

Much of this work was likely in pursuit of commodities such as mining copper from the region or extracting rubber elsewhere in the country. Belgian colonial control of the city also laid the foundation for who owned the land—in this case, a Belgian mining company that snapped up vast swaths of land. Within the city’s 20 years, the region became the fifth-largest exporter of copper in the world, helping to electrify the world.

Later in the 20th century, Lubumbashi played an important role in uranium mining, Finn says. Building on the book “Spies in the Congo” by Susan Williams, Finn links the same mining company (UMHK) that owned the copper concessions to the uranium deposits used in the Manhattan Project.

This program used Congolese uranium to produce the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Some of this uranium was dug by hand—just as many small-scale miners today dig minerals from the earth by hand or go through mining waste piles in the DRC.

Today, the city is near another material critical to global decarbonization: cobalt. Cobalt is necessary for many lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. In 2020, the southern DRC produced more than 69% of the world’s total mined cobalt. In the same year, approximately 2% of the DRC’s cobalt-mined output came from child labor.

Artisanal and small-scale miners in the Congo still sort and extract minerals by hand, Finn says. Most of the cobalt mining workforce in the DRC—estimates suggest as much as 98%—stems from labor-intensive “artisanal” mining, which produces 9–20% of the national cobalt production. Finn cites research that finds that contemporary miners and mining communities in Katanga have lower life expectancies and increased infant mortality, and higher rates of HIV, tuberculosis and respiratory disorders.

“It’s important to trace the lineage of those mining practices and socioeconomic inequalities back to the early colonial era. We need these minerals for decarbonization, but we need to fight against neocolonial arrangements that exist on the ground,” he said. “If decarbonization is to be equitable, we must contend with justice across space and time. This region has had an outsized influence on global geopolitical events.”

Finn argues that as the world considers decarbonization, we must also be concerned with the people and places that have historically been involved in the extraction of minerals for global consumption. “We can be pro-decarbonization while still urgently bringing attention to neocolonial modes of extraction and exploitation.”

“I think we need to address these kinds of bigger structural problems. It’s important to hold Congolese political elites to account,” he said. “And Swiss, South African, and Chinese mining companies that are often backed by the Chinese state are extracting at an increased pace without distributing enough wealth or skills back to local people, and I think they deserve strong critique. We should embrace decarbonization, but make sure it does not occur through neocolonialism.”