Beijing | Roundtable on Multilateral Cooperation on Transition Minerals

23^rd March 2026 - Center for China and Globalization, Beijing

Organized by the Paris Peace Forum, the Finance Center for South-South Cooperation (FCSSC) and the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) on the sidelines of the China Development Forum, the roundtable "Multilateral Cooperation on Transition Minerals" brought together representatives of business, civil society, think tanks, philanthropy and international institutions for an exchange on whether meaningful cooperation on transition minerals can be preserved in a context of mounting geopolitical tension.

The roundtable highlighted a broad convergence around one central concern: as transition minerals become ever more strategic to the energy transition, industrial policy and national security, the risk of fragmentation is rising at a pace that could ultimately undermine collective climate objectives. In his opening remarks, Pascal Lamy, Vice-President of the Paris Peace Forum, set the tone by stressing that minerals are no longer just an industrial or environmental issue, but are now closely tied to security, competition and strategic autonomy. Echoed by several participants, he highlighted that current efforts to secure supply chains are politically understandable, but that if they lead to competing blocs, parallel standards and increasingly politicized market structures, they may produce higher costs, greater inefficiencies and a slower clean energy transition. Justin Vaïsse, Director General of the Paris Peace Forum, placed this concern within the broader work of the Paris Peace Forum and its Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals, noting that the challenge is not to deny competition, but to ensure that it is balanced by enough cooperation to avoid a suboptimal and destabilizing minerals order. Henry Huiyao Wang, President of the Center for China and Globalization, similarly warned against the multiplication of “silos” and argued that, while political risk is real, it should not lead countries to abandon the logic of interdependence altogether.

A second major theme was the need to rethink standards, transparency and ESG in a more practical and credible way. There was broad agreement that stronger environmental and social safeguards are necessary, but also a recurring concern that the current standards landscape is becoming too crowded, too rigid, and in some cases disconnected from implementation realities. Ma Jun, Founding Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and member of the Global Council for Responsible Transition Minerals, gave a clear articulation of the environmental case for stronger governance, emphasizing the scale of water, pollution and tailings-related risks linked to mining, and underlining that transition minerals must be treated as a core issue of global environmental governance. His intervention pointed to transparency as one of the most promising avenues for practical cooperation, even in a context of geopolitical distrust. At the same time, both corporate and institutional voices suggested that the issue is no longer whether standards matter, but how they are designed, aligned and phased in. The intervention of Sun Lihui, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Huayou Cobalt, reflected this more operational perspective, showing how ESG is increasingly moving to the core of business strategy, while also making clear that implementation depends heavily on governance within firms and on the practical feasibility of compliance. Wang Ning, Development Department Manager at CCCMC, made a related point from the standpoint of standard-setting, observing that many companies feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of frameworks and that the priority should be less to add new standards than to align existing ones, identify common ground, and test solutions through real-world cooperation. Across the discussion, the underlying message was that trust will not be rebuilt through declarations alone, but through standards and practices that are both ambitious and usable.

A third major theme was the importance of grounding minerals governance in more genuine international partnerships, particularly with producing countries. Several participants argued that minerals should not be approached solely through the lens of consumer-country security, but also through the lenses of development, local value addition and long-term political legitimacy. Geneviève Pons, President of Europe Jacques Delors Institute, framed this in explicitly climate terms, stressing that Europe and China share a responsibility to ensure that competition does not lead to either market fragmentation or conflict, and that partnerships with producing countries must support jobs, revenue generation and environmental protection. Contributions from NGOs, foundations and development actors broadened this point by insisting that trust cannot be reduced to trust between states or corporations; it must also include local communities, indigenous groups, labor conditions and the distribution of economic benefits along the value chain. This part of the discussion suggested a shared recognition that the sustainability of mineral supply chains will depend not only on securing volumes, but on whether producing countries see the transition as creating real opportunities for upgrading and inclusion rather than reproducing older extractive patterns.

The roundtable did not erase the underlying differences in perspective, particularly on questions of market power, dependence and the geopolitical uses of industrial policy. But it did show that there remains meaningful space for a frank and substantive conversation across Chinese, European and other international stakeholders. The strongest common thread running through the discussion was that neither security-driven fragmentation nor abstract commitments to cooperation will be sufficient on their own. What is needed is a more practical middle ground: one that combines realistic standards, greater transparency, partnerships with producing countries and concrete forms of cooperation capable of rebuilding trust through implementation rather than rhetoric alone.