Accelerating global mineral demand, rising geopolitical tensions, and mounting environmental harm are converging into a global challenge. While the recent UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) talks confirmed that consensus on a binding global framework remains out of reach for now, this stalemate only heightens the urgency for coordinated global action.

After two weeks of fierce negotiations, governments at the UNEA7 have adopted a new resolution on the environmentally sound management of minerals and metals. While the text introduces welcomed mention of structured dialogues, a reporting mechanism and a focus on circularity and tailings recovery, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) warns that negotiators stripped the ambition needed to respond to today’s escalating mineral challenges.

The final resolution, tabled by Colombia and Oman, creates a two-year dialogue track led by UNEP, asking countries to share practices on cooperation, resource recovery and capacity building, and mandating UNEP to report back at UNEA8. This provides more operational clarity than past resolutions, which lacked mechanisms to carry work forward. However, the text explicitly states it does not establish a negotiation track and removes earlier proposals for binding instruments or any global environmental and human rights due diligence standards.

Diego Marin, Senior Policy Officer for Raw Materials and Resource Justice at the EEB, said:
“The newly agreed UNEA resolution on minerals and metals is a small step forward, as it pushes structured dialogue on circularity, tailings recovery and equity for developing countries. But let’s be clear, nothing binding came out of this. That’s the tragedy of these negotiations: we settle for what’s realistic while knowing what’s realistic is nowhere near enough. Key measures like environmental, indigenous and human rights due diligence were actively stripped from the text, a failure of ambition at the very time we should be raising the bar.”

The EEB emphasises that the world is entering a decade of unprecedented mineral demand, yet international cooperation on mining remains fragmented and voluntary. Without enforceable global rules, communities will continue facing pollution, land grabbing, unsafe tailings management, and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination and their rights, such as Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). Without global standards, producer countries will also continue to face pressure to lower environmental and social safeguards.

Mauricio Cabrera, architect of Colombia’s original proposal and its former Vice-Minister for the Environment, said:
“UNEA7 laid bare the crisis of multilateralism, where geopolitical blocs and shallow ambition stifled most progress. Yet Colombia and Oman secured a fragile win: a resolution watered down to a two-year dialogue with recommendations on cooperation, circularity, environmental safeguards and support for developing nations. Limited? Undoubtedly. But it keeps the process alive in a sector exploding with strategic urgency.”

The EEB calls on governments and UNEP to use the next two years to build real momentum ahead of UNEA8, ensuring dialogues are inclusive, centred on rights-holders, and geared toward the future negotiation of binding global rules on mineral governance. Anything less will expose communities and environments to a cycle of degradation that continues to undermine our common future.

ENDS

Notes to editors

[1] Full resolution text:   https://undocs.org/UNEP/EA.7/L.6