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.
-
Digging beyond oil: Saudi Arabia bids to become a hub for energy transition minerals
The top crude exporter is using its oil riches to position itself as a major player in clean energy supply chains. Investors are interested, but hurdles remain -
Push for global minerals deal meets opposition, more talks agreed
Colombia’s proposal for the UNEA to set up an expert group to identify options for governing mineral supply chains was rejected by a broad group of states -
Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth
As companies flock to Africa to secure minerals for the energy transition, unreliable and century-old mapping risks stifling investment
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.”
-
Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth
As companies flock to Africa to secure minerals for the energy transition, unreliable and century-old mapping risks stifling investment -
Nigeria’s push to cash in on lithium rush gets off to a rocky start
The West African nation wants to supply refined lithium to the EV battery industry to diversify its economy away from oil – but early processing efforts are facing challenges -
Ending poverty and gangs: How Zambia seeks to cash in on the global drive for EVs
Zambia is wooing international investors to develop its copper resources but communities dependent on illegal mining want a better deal
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
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These efforts ultimately paid off: during the Bonn climate negotiations in June 2025, one draft text included the idea for a new institutional arrangement. One of the options in the draft text was for a “toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network [or] mechanism”.