Mining, Land Grabs, and More: When Decarbonization Conflicts with Human Rights

Sep 22, 2022 | Sarah Fecht
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For almost any project or action, impacts are unavoidable. Not decarbonizing fast enough also has an impact: according to a study by Daniel Bressler, a PhD student in Sustainable Development at Columbia University, climate change could cause 83 million excess deaths by 2100. So the question becomes: What impacts are acceptable during decarbonization, and who decides that? How can decarbonization move forward responsibly?

According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, the renewable energy sector was the third highest contributor to attacks on human rights defenders from 2015-2020. Rather than keeping the lights on in some faraway Walmart, Peek said that local communities need to have ownership of their own energy systems.

The largest lithium deposit in the United States sits on a sacred Indigenous site called Peehee mu’huh in the Paiute language. Undeterred by legal challenges and protests from tribal members and environmental groups, Nevada’s Division of Environmental Protection issued air, water, and mining permits for the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Project in February 2022.

Communities such as these may seem like they would benefit the most from local renewable energy sources, but because of infrastructural inequalities, they may not physically be able to plug in the way affluent neighborhoods can, said Peek. In addition, the cost to individuals can be prohibitively expensive.

Some environmentalists argue that there is no time to stop and consider the rights of a small community when the fate of the world is at stake.