As competition for natural resources fractures the global order, Saudi Arabia is cementing its position as the centre of gravity for international discussions to accelerate the production of minerals the world needs for clean energy and digital technologies.
Ministers and senior representatives from more than 100 countries gathered in Riyadh this week for the Future Minerals Forum, an annual event that has become a mainstay of the minerals industry’s calendar since its launch in 2022.
Among them were representatives from all G20 countries, which include the US, Canada, China, Germany, France and Russia, as well resource-rich African and Latin American nations, the Saudi government said.
The fast-expanding forum has been a tour de force in helping position oil and mineral-rich Saudi Arabia at the heart of the conversation to step up production of minerals at a time when competition for resources is dominating global politics.
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President Donald Trump has made control over natural resources and access to critical minerals a core tenet of the US’s national security strategy as it seeks to curb China’s dominance over mineral supply chains. In a massive disruption to the global order, Washington has deployed forces to seize Venezuelan oil, both physically from sanctioned tankers and indirectly by deposing its leader, and is making a play to acquire mineral-rich Greenland from fellow NATO-member Denmark.
“The reality is that we are in the middle of what is happening in the world,” Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, told the minerals conference.
“Our objective is not to seek more territory or more people or more minerals,” he said. “Our objective is stability and calm so that we can focus on resources and building a better future.”
A global decision-shaping platform
The world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia sits on minerals worth an estimated $2.5 trillion – including lithium, rare earths, zinc and copper – all of which are needed to manufacture batteries and other clean energy technologies.
Under its Vision 2030 development plan, Saudi Arabia has made mining a key pillar for diversifying its economy away from fossil fuels and is investing its oil revenues into becoming a hub for processing and trading minerals.
“There’s only one [country] – that’s the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – that has the trust of enough countries to convene at this critical time,” said Scott Brison, vice-chair of BMO Wealth Management, whose banking arm specialises in the metals and mining sector.
“This [forum], in a very short time, has become the Davos of mining,” he added.
Like the famed Swiss ski resort, which will host the annual World Economic Forum next week, the Future Minerals Forum has become a must-attend annual event for investors and decision-makers, who seek to broker deals and invest in mineral value chains.
Saudi Arabia’s minister of industry and mineral resources, Bandar bin Ibrahim Al-Khorayef, described the event as “a global decision-shaping platform” that “influences policies, mobilise[s] investment and build[s] collaboration across the entire mineral value chain”.
It comes just weeks after Saudi Arabia opposed any discussion of possible binding rules at the UN to limit the environmental harm caused by mining and make supply chains more transparent.
US pitch for partners
The forum focused on the challenges of meeting rapidly-rising demand for minerals, driven by the roll-out of clean energy technologies and AI infrastructure, amid funding gaps and political uncertainty.
Industry leaders agreed that Saudi Arabia’s geographic location, mineral wealth, extensive relations with both the West and China – originally built on fossil fuel exports – and vast amounts of cheap energy make the Kingdom well-placed to become a global minerals processing hub.
Amid geopolitical tensions, “the Kingdom has the ability to be a neutral processor” and supply the US market, said José Luis Manzano, chairman of private investment group Integra Capital.
The US and Saudi Arabia have already agreed to co-operate on mineral supply chains, with the US government pledging to finance a new rare earths refinery in the country.
Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order calling for “agreements with foreign trading partners” to help reduce US dependence on China.
Addressing the Riyadh conference, Audrey Robertson, the US assistant secretary for critical minerals and energy innovation, defended President Trump’s approach to securing mineral supplies from resource-rich countries, insisting the US “seeks to have great partnerships where we all bring different things to the table”.
“There’s no strong-arming, there’s only strategic alliances to better our nations and better the world,” she said. Yet, when it comes to Greenland, she warned: “I would take our president at his word.”
Riyadh pledges to break with old ways
Delegates also discussed improving the transparency of mineral supply chains and ensuring that local communities endowed with mineral wealth benefit from their extraction.
Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Al-Jubeir said the “old ways” that saw “foreign companies come in, mine, exploit, take all the value outside of the country and leave the host country with nothing but a big hole on its territory” had to change.
“The new view is we need to invest. We need to keep as much of the value chain as we can in-country so that we produce jobs [and] opportunities, which in turn produce stability, which in turn helps all of us around the world.”
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At the same time, to establish itself as a minerals processing hub, Saudi Arabia is seeking to broker bilateral deals with developing countries, particularly in Africa, to secure access to resources it can refine.
Several ministers from mineral-rich African nations, including Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Ghana, Mauritania and Morocco, attended the conference.
Riyadh is also working with the World Bank on funding opportunities for seven planned infrastructure corridors to accelerate minerals development in Africa and Latin America and help get resources to the market.
Saudi strategy stirs Africa tensions
Nonetheless, Nafi Quarshie, Africa director of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, who attended the forum, told Climate Home News there is “tension” between Saudi Arabia’s plan to process minerals and African nations’ ambitions to add value to their resources and reduce exports of raw materials.
“There’s a kind of a push for Africa to do business with Saudi Arabia,” she said.
It remains unclear how African governments can ensure that any minerals agreement with Saudi Arabia creates a win-win situation and helps drive investment to refine ores into higher-value products for clean technologies on the continent, she added.
There were few civil society representatives in the glitzy halls of the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center, while communities impacted by mining projects were not represented.
Yet, if Saudi Arabia is serious about doing things differently, activists and affected peoples need to be included in the forum to put transparency, human rights and environment protection at the core of the discussions, said Quarshie.
The post At ‘Davos of mining’, Saudi Arabia shapes new narrative on minerals appeared first on Climate Home News.
At ‘Davos of mining’, Saudi Arabia shapes new narrative on minerals
Scientists have vowed to keep working on the next flagship set of reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after a political row over the timeline for their release saw its latest session suspended on Friday evening without agreement.
During the weekend, government officials and scientists alike expressed disappointment over the inability to reach a compromise before some delegates from developing countries and small island states had to leave the week-long meeting in Ethiopia to catch flights home.
The disagreement – which has persisted since early 2024 – turns on whether the three key parts of the AR7 assessment should all be published before the conclusion of the UN’s next Global Stocktake of global climate action, which is due to be completed in late 2028.
The IPCC issued a statement after the close of the session, saying that “key agenda items” – the timelines for the three AR7 reports, as well as the IPCC budget – remain open and under discussion. It said the IPCC’s plenary session and its deliberations on the pending agenda “will resume at the earliest opportunity”, giving no further details of when.
IPCC Chair Jim Skea told delegates in closing remarks that recent months had been some of the most turbulent for the climate science panel and that, if there were stronger words than “profound disappointment” he would use them, according to a summary published by the Earth Negotiators Bulletin (ENB). IPCC discussions happen behind closed doors.
IPCC scientists remained committed
In an open letter, issued on Monday, a group of nearly 120 scientists – from a total of 664 AR7 authors – said they “stand committed to continue working to deliver the AR7 reports in a manner that is rigorous, timely and inclusive, in line with our mandate to be policy-relevant”.
“An assessment that arrives after the decisions it is meant to inform cannot serve its purpose,” they emphasised. “The second Global Stocktake in 2028 is such a decision point, and the world should not have to face it without the IPCCʼs latest assessment.”
Europe, small islands and the least developed countries, plus many Latin American and developed nations, want the IPCC to meet this deadline, arguing that the findings from the UN climate science body are irreplaceable in the UN climate policy-making process.
However, around a dozen developing countries plus Russia have argued that the reports should come later in order to allow for greater research input from the Global South – something that, in their view, would make the findings fairer. They also claim that a shorter timeline would put excessive pressure on experts.
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The most vocal of this group at last week’s meeting were India and Saudi Arabia, according to the ENB summary and a developed country diplomat. Critics see this push for a longer timeline as an excuse to deprive government decision-makers of the latest science and ease pressure on emerging economies to raise their ambition, particularly on cutting emissions.
Commenting on last week’s meeting, France’s ambassador for climate negotiations Benoît Faraco said a broad coalition of developed and developing countries from all five continents, “united in their support for science and the timeline proposed by scientists”, had withstood pressure “from a few countries” seeking to slow down the process of adopting the IPCC reports.
He added that France would not back down and would “continue to fight tirelessly for science, protect the integrity of information, and convince our partners that without the best available scientific data, we will be less effective in tackling climate change and protecting our populations”.
Inclusivity proposal stalled
In a bid to unlock a solution for the AR7 timeline, countries discussed ways to improve the inclusivity of the IPCC’s work. One option put on the table was for the IPCC to expand its funding for delegates from developing countries to attend some or all of its sessions from one to two participants, according to the ENB summary and a delegate speaking to Climate Home News.
That would increase the costs for the IPCC to complete AR7 by up to a quarter, according to an assessment shared by the secretariat. The panel’s budget is under severe strain and its officials have warned that, without additional voluntary contributions, it risks running out of money before it can deliver on this assessment cycle.
Climate Home News understands that some of the IPCC’s traditional donors – which mainly include European countries, Japan and Australia – indicated a willingness to support funding for an additional developing country participant. But without an agreement over the budget or the timeline for the reports, that option was ultimately not adopted.
‘Disappointed and worried’
The three reports are managed by working groups that collate and draw overall findings from the latest scientific studies and data on the physical effects of global warming around the world, how to adapt to it, and pathways for cutting planet-heating emissions in order to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.
Winston Chow, an urban climate professor at Singapore Management University who co-chairs Working Group II on adaptation, wrote in a LinkedIn post that he was “disappointed and worried” for the IPCC authors who have worked “extraordinarily hard” to assess the relevant climate science over the past two years.
He said he shared their concern that “the rigour, time and goodwill they’ve invested are now being put at risk by the Panel’s stalemate”.
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For Working Group II, a meeting for 250 experts writing that report is scheduled for January 2027, followed by the approval of a special report on cities and climate change in Singapore next March.
But because the IPCC’s budget has not been confirmed due to uncertainty about the AR7 schedule, travel support for those researchers is at risk, wrote Chow. “If they cannot participate, our assessments will lose vital expertise, perspectives and scientific breadth, and the collective effort of our authors will be undermined,” he warned.
Scientific work continues
Despite the political holdups, he – together with French climate scientist Robert Vautard, co-chair of Working Group 1 – agreed with IPCC head Skea who told the IPCC’s closing session on Friday: “The engine room of the IPCC is working, and it’s healthy.”
Vautard commented in a separate post on LinkedIn after it ended: “The boat is at full steam.” Working groups I and II are due to start revising the first drafts of their reports, while Working Group III on reducing emissions is finalising its first draft which will be out soon, he wrote.
“The most exciting two years of the cycle are ahead, for the authors. The momentum in the engine room is here and now. Trust the engine room!” he added.
The IPCC and some scientists report that progress has been made towards achieving an equitable balance of authors from the Global North and the Global South.
The group of researchers who signed the open letter on Monday noted that “inclusivity is at the heart of how we work”, with author teams bringing together experts from developed and developing countries with diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their careers.
Plea to overcome political differences
The signatories include several scientists from some of the countries opposed to the alignment of all IPCC reports with the Global Stocktake.
“We are committed to an assessment in which the knowledge, experience and priorities of every region are fully reflected, a commitment we share with the leadership of the IPCC.
Equity is built into how our assessment is being drafted,” they added.
They appealed to governments that make up the IPCC “to overcome their political differences and work together as we do as a global scientific community, so that we can deliver the IPCC reports the world needs to hear”.
In a statement published on Monday, IPCC chair Skea said reaching consensus on the schedule for the reports is “vital”. He added that the assessments provide authoritative scientific evidence to inform national climate policies, strengthen adaptation and resilience and support access to climate finance, as well as helping communicate the scale of the climate crisis and the urgency of efforts to tackle it.
The post IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock appeared first on Climate Home News.
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock