The cobalt challenge - The dark side of the energy transition | DW Documentary

okay imagine [Music] [Music] thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC are supplying raw materials for a global Revolution what they're mining here is in high demand around the world Cobalt industrial countries urgently need the metal to make batteries the heart of all electric vehicles in the race to slow climate change Cobalt has become key to the transition away from fossil fuels who's paying the price [Music] the car makers are ringing in a new era VW Renault BMW Volvo all the big names are conversing their fleets to Electric environmental concerns are driving the transition consumer and Commercial internal combustion vehicles produce about a quarter of all the greenhouse gas emissions in Europe Volkswagen invested 1.2 billion euros in this site it's dedicated especially to the six great cars we've started making here everything was adapted and now we are 100 electric we build 100 electric cars here electricity [Music] starting in 2035 the EU intends to prohibit the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines the far-reaching decision impacts the whole production chain if you want to achieve the climate neutrality in 30 years we need to use all the Technologies which are available we are now Undisputed number one if it comes to investment into the battery sector so we are super hot zone for investment into the batteries it means that currently we have 70 projects ongoing we we have more than 120 billion years of investment over the last three years which is three and a half times more than the money invested in China in the same sector and that we are going to create a lot of just jobs and as I said completely new industry most electric car batteries in Europe are based on nickel manganese Cobalt or nmc technology which allows them to travel around 400 kilometers after one charge [Music] the batteries contain lithium and about 10 kilograms of cobalt if you look at the average high high capacity uh battery cell the sort of thing used in Tesla or Volkswagen ID3 most of it is nickel nickel is what gives the battery its extremely high range Cobalt's effectively the safety mechanism so you put a little bit of cobalt in your battery and that means that you won't have battery fires and your cells will will remain stable under extreme duress the vast majority of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo and that's essentially because there isn't really anywhere else in the world which has the same grades or mineralogy for Cobalt as the Congo it's really there isn't really any other country in the world which can claim to have the same quality of deposits quality of reserves um it's almost like the Saudi Arabia of cobalt [Music] [Music] Congo has been blessed or cursed depending on how one looks at it with extraordinary geological mineral wealth it's always been strategic whether it was in the 19th century rubber or the middle of the 20th century uranium or more recently the question of strategic critical minerals for the agenda that the International Community has adopted uh the consensus that we need to move to carbon neutral uh emissions in the world requires electric vehicles it requires renewable energy all of which require strategic minerals coming out of the Congo first and foremost one could say might be would be Cobalt Cole Waze is the Cobalt capital of the world we're here in the heart of the copper belt an industrial region located in the southern part of DRC and neighboring Zambia A Century of mining has shaped the landscape sees biggest copper and Cobalt reserves are located in the provinces of lualaba and upper katanga foreign corporations are exploiting this immense world of the 19 copper Cobalt mines in the region 15 are owned by the Chinese they share the business with the Swiss glencore Group which operates two of the world's most productive minds and Eurasian Resources Group Cobalt is transported normally by truck down to South Africa it's loaded on ships in Durban and then it ships from Durban to China where it's processed into battery chemicals and from there it ends up in the wider supply chain right now global demand for Cobalt is in the region of 140 000 tons 150 maybe um but we're expecting that to rise to 250 in the next five years you know there's a lot of new demand which is going to come onto the market and we'll we're going to need to find supply for it a ton of cobalt can fetch more than 70 000 US Dollars on the world market the mineral which often occurs together with copper has enlivened mining Corporation since the battery Market exploded 10 years ago they are making more and more profits while residents in the mining regions live on less than two dollars a day populations the people who live in the area around the mountains you looks like there are no schools hospitals or streets the people don't have access to drinking water even those who do have water can't drink it because it's contaminated with acid the natural waterways that were in a few of the villages have already been poisoned mining is tending to make the people poorer still instead of bringing better living conditions [Music] is a lawyer and a human rights activist he's investigating the impact of the battery Market boom on the local population last is only less installations the consequences are already Apparent at the facilities of the Chinese Congolese companies do you see those trucks over there dumping out waste that's what I call overburden or killings from the mains mountains of it have been built up where there weren't any five years ago during the dry season the dust drifts down onto the fields here then there's a thick layer of dust on the plants around us that's why people are growing hardly anything at all here because of the dust that comes from the tailings piles over there because of the Dust but also because of the water quality in the river in front of us water in their basins overflows and the acid in it spoils their fields how old is the maniac here three years three years almost nothing's on it could you dig out a route and sell them on the markets in order to get money to buy food knew about this problem yes to begin with they supplied us with drinking water but that's over perhaps they thought it's not so bad if they die should come and have a look at how we live here that applies to the government too we're citizens you know me I come here regularly you say our work isn't Progressive since we took over your case when your representatives come to kawasi they see that we are putting pressure on the authorities foreign stay in contact with your community leader goodbye when a mine is opened the people lose their Farmland The Villages get poisoned and the residents have to give up their traditional way of life nobody goes into the bush anymore to gather caterpillars and insects because there aren't any there you want fishes in the river anymore because there's no more fish when the water flows through the mining area has to be clear policy Guidance the main operators provide compensation for consequences like this but as I said the Congolese government is staying out of it completely and the mining companies and the end users of the Cobalt are ignoring the problem the industrial mines in lualaba and upper katanga produce 80 of Congolese Cobalt the remaining 20 comes from artisanal mining beneath the orange tarps Prospectors work in shafts deep below the surface [Music] dollar Town Bila is one of them he's also one of 150 000 people who streamed in from across the country driven by poverty they're hoping to get a piece of the pie CE [Music] life in Kinshasa was hard I lost my job they fired me my family said you can't go on like this without work I couldn't pay the rent there's Cobalt there and you can earn a living so I came here and became a Cobalt prospector I'd never done it before foreign [Music] this is mining with your hands you go down the shaft break up the stone with a crowbar and fill the sacks then the carriers go down and bring the sacks out then we've done our jobs the carriers carry it out pulling one bag after the other to the surface the women then washed the ore in the lake we pay the women and the carriers and sell the ore at the warehouse I was scared to death the first time when I got down there I started to shake all the others laughed they laughed at me because I was shaking so much [Music] I was shaking with fear but there was no going back I'm a man after all I must go down there no matter if I was afraid many Cobalt Prospectors are killed in landslides or drown when water floods the mine but thousands of families rely on what little the government and Industry allow them to mine here from their own land thank you the government has been trying to regulate the artisanal mining sector for 20 years the law says those involved must join a cooperative but in reality the structures are very hierarchical simple workers have no shares in their minds nor a say in their operation [Applause] artisanal mining is a really important thing to track because it's probably the only source of swing Supply in the Cobalt Market it's the only source of cobalt Supply which can go up or down depending on prices the vast majority of cobalt mined today is either a byproduct of copper and or a byproduct of nickel and if you own a massive copper Cobalt mine for example the vast majority of your money is made on the copper so if the price of cobalt suddenly shoots up you're not going to increase your production rate because you you care only about the copper it's great that the price of Cobalt's going up and it increases your your Cobalt value but you're not going to increase Supply to meet that additional demand you can't because it's a byproduct um the one exception to that more or less is artisanal mining the real Cobalt that's the yield from my mine shaft we take out 350 sacks in a full day of work 350. yes if the scale is calibrated correctly a sack weighs 20 kilos the Chinese manipulate their scales to cheat us so it turns out to be only 10. but normally it's 20. and then the measuring device might not work then they give you a different Cobalt content for the same product I know but we're forced to deal with the Chinese they cheat when it comes to the Cobalt content of the ore but we have to sell to them they come here and serve themselves they exploit us and leave we work hard and learn nothing what's up [Music] Cobalt mine is primarily sell their all to Chinese entrepreneurs who are pushing into the Congo after an initial processing stage they export the middle to foreign foundries [Music] foreign my question [Music] I hit the rock Until It Breaks then I look inside if there are traces of black I know that it's got Cobalt in it maybe that will end up in an e Carl smartphone thank you [Music] this was my first trip to nkowazi you know what struck me most was just how the whole city was built around the mining industry around and on top of these these minerals and just this very very very strong feeling that these people the people living there should be benefiting from this extraordinary wealth which is generating prosperity for Chinese companies European companies American companies but they're suffering they're not the ones benefiting from this you know this particularly came home in in some parts of the city where homes have are being demolished to make way for the expansion of industrial Minds um it comes home in the parts of the city where people are digging down into the basements of their houses or underground to access the Cobalt or the copper it's extremely dysfunctional amnesty Internationals had a program on corporate accountability and the role that companies play in human rights abuses around the world for about 15 years now and we've we had done previous projects in the DRC looking at the mining industry but but primarily focused on the the big industrial Minds um you know doing you know reading about this doing some basic research about this revealed to me you know and obviously it's not a secret for anyone in the DRC but the artisanal mining sector was becoming increasingly large um particularly when it came to Cobalt the cruiser the diggers were risking their lives and their health to dig this this metal out they were also not receiving probably very few receiving a fair price for their labor they were being exploited financially we found that children as young as seven or eight were also involved in this in this industry no family wants their children to work no child no seven-year-old wants to be spending all day entering you know entering illegally into the compound and spent all day picking up stones from the ground at risk of being beaten or robbed no one wants to do that they're doing that because they're forced by the circumstances [Applause] that's that's how they eat that day that's how they're they're able to afford you know a small amount for school fees dude [Music] [Applause] [Music] the main findings of the report were that as much as 20 percent of the world's Cobalt was coming from autism mines in the DRC we wanted to know where this Cobalt went who was buying this which companies which tech companies you know the mobile phone manufacturers and the laptop manufacturers were using this Cobalt in their batteries and what were they doing to to understand this supply chain and understand these conditions the response we got to this report drawing the links to you know from you know look child labor artisanal mining the Cobalt industry linking these Minds to these famous brands had a massive um media pickup much more than we were expecting no company car manufacturer or other n uh consumer of Cobble wants to be labeled as benefiting from child labor it's terrible publicity it hurts Share value if uh it is wrong uh and consumers don't like it so it's it's bad for business even if you are ethically atrophied and don't care on the other if you're only self-interested you should still be against it because it's it's bad for business I remember when the world's really started paying attention to artisanal mining it was in 2016 with the publication of the amnesty reports um and we had clients who would get in touch with us and we would they would say we want non-drc Cobalts we don't want to Source any of our Cobalt from the DRC child labor isn't the car Maker's only problem the transition to electric vehicles or EVS has made them aware of how dependent they are on Congolese Cobalt and on batteries that are manufactured primarily in Asia that's why the EU approved a major battery development project in 2017. if you want to make sure that Europe will also in the future produce the the the best but also this time most sustainable cars you cannot simply do it if you import the battery from somewhere else without that traceability without respecting all the standards without making sure that the carbon footprint is is low as possible and therefore we started with the European battery Alliance and therefore we are doing this I would say a fantastic catching up with China so it was a bit of a late start because we didn't simply in the car industry perceived three four years ago that electromobility will be here so soon now but it's totally different story right now this is actually not only good for Europe and good for tackling the climate change but there are very clear benefits for the for the local communities in the form of new jobs new investment possibilities and clear commitment that everything has to be done 100 sustainable just 10 of the world's batteries are produced in Europe in order to gain ground by 2035 the EU wants to build around 30 gigafactories and make a quarter of the global Supply on its own several hectares of forests have already been sacrificed for the new industry in Sweden the Swedish company northvolt has built the first enormous battery Factory in Europe squaring off against Asian manufacturers Norfolk was founded almost five years ago by Peter Carlson the Swedish guy and Paulo the Italian guy they found each other working for for Tesla being European both of them they then obviously start to look towards Europe which is a part of the world where we have 20 something million Vehicles produced every year we have 13 14 million people working in this industry and if you believe the hypothesis that all these cars that we produce are going to go electric not having batteries produced at scale is always going to be a critical thing for Europe and that was sort of the premise for the idea of Norfolk came about so they moved back to Europe and started Northville towards the late towards late 2016. as a company we brought in more than 6.5 billion dollars of Investments we've been fortunate to have a lot of the the well-established car manufacturers on board from an early stage BMW was perhaps the first one in in 2018 Volkswagen it's a big both customer and investor in Northwest and most recently we announced a joint venture together with Volvo course we the aimed to build another one of these gigafactories in order to have independent raw materials for the new battery factories Europe is operating a number of mining projects reserves of cobalt have been identified in Sweden Norway and Finland there are now two nickel Cobalt mines operating there and seven more are being developed [Music] Finland has dozens of deposits of critical minerals and has opened large areas to mining [Music] we have just started mind development process in kusama that area has been thoroughly investigated by a former State company and then another company after that since early 90s so there's a lot of material that has been drilled from that area and we have a also done some Drilling it's promising at this moment the current deficit would do a good profitable mind the International Energy Association estimates that we need about 20 times more Cobalt to the World Market that we have now Finland cannot and will not provide that all we can provide some some of that part but it's very important for the for example a car manufacturer to have uh possibilities the traceability is going to be the European answer to the Chinese China dominated uh production what comes to Cobalt Finland is the only EU member that has deposits of all the minerals needed for batteries 300 kilometers from the Arctic Circle the company Terra farmer has reactivated the mine in sotkamu it was closed in 2012 after toxins leaked into the surrounding waterways and lakes Terra farmer is run by The Finnish government and trafigura a raw materials trading company that has been convicted of environmental crimes in Africa the facility supplies Renault with nickel for its EVS many people in Europe have absolutely wrong view on the mining activities people still see I mean the miners with headlights and and physical kind of working risky working but of course the modern mining is is this is not the picture what we produce here in in terraforme is the battery chemicals so it's a nickel sulfate and Cobalt sulfate uh that we produce from the raw materials that we mine ourselves so we have a mining biolating and then we we produced further into the battery chemicals if you look Cobalt the production capacity is 7400 tons battery credit copper sulfate again for battery application and which is roughly for 300 000 electrical vehicles per annum the contract with Renault so it covers almost one third of our production capacity but what is the main thing from our perspective is that that now we jointly with Renault are building a supply chain from all the way from mining activities through battery chemicals cathode materials battery cells to the uh car manufacturing that is sustainable and so so we have a a of course being in European Union we have of course a lot of focus data that environmental mothers are in in taking care in a proper manner human rights labor rights are in a good order according to the EU commission by 2030 there should be at least 30 million electric vehicles on Europe's roads yet to reach this goal 10 Terra Pharma factories would be needed to supply the Cobalt alone I think the boom and exploration in Europe is certainly a reflection of the higher prices that we have now they are going to run into the issues of the quality of the reserves you know I I've seen I've seen mining projects which have boasted about having .08 Cobalt in there or grade in the Congo some Cobalt reserves can be as high as like three or four percent Cobalt you know for artisanal sources certainly in the Congo some artisanal mine sites of such high Cobalt that you can sort of pick up a rock and it has sort of a slight blue green tint and you can tell it contains like 10 Cobalt you're not going to get that anywhere in Europe with its high operating costs and low yields Europe will never be a Cobalt El Dorado but it could score big in another key sector recycling within a decade 10 of all the world's Cobalt could be recycled the Belgian company umicor is a leader in this market it says that in the future it will be able to recycle nearly a hundred percent of the Cobalt from batteries we started with battery recycling with recycling of mobile phone batteries but knowing that electric vehicles would be just a matter of time because indeed the circularity the complement the complementarity of mining on the one hand which you still need today but it would be a waste to not recycle products like Cobalt and be less dependent on on mining for example yeah it will recycling is a huge hugely important Market to investigate for battery metals because uh because they're endlessly recyclable it becomes a huge source of supply within your demand Fork where within your supply forecast especially in the long term when we build 10-year 20-year forecasts for Cobalt and nickel and lithium it becomes extremely important to understand the circularity of those Supply chains firstly because obviously it's a huge amount of material that's going to be coming back into the supply chain but secondly because it changes where the supply comes from starting in 2035 the batteries of all EVS sold in the EU will be required to contain at least 20 recycled Cobalt Volkswagen is already operating a recycling facility the future Giants of European battery production vehicle in France and northvolt in Sweden have already taken that into consideration at their gigafactories this raw materials that we need for battery metals they are recyclable by nature and you can recycle them over and over again so it's really about mining them once and then using them forever and and that is the fundamental difference in this change here and obviously given at the speed we're growing this Market currently we're it's going to take a few decades it's going to take a while to get to a point where you have a set Market you know one car in one car out type of Market but once you get there you could obviously have a very circular field of raw materials so in 10 years for example the first generation of electric vehicles in Europe comes off the comes off the road and everyone starts scrapping them and buying new vehicles that Cobalt will those batteries will be recycled in Europe and they'll be fed into the European supply chain which means that over time because of that recycling Loop countries and and regions will have a reduced dependence on African minerals [Music] following the amnesty report of 2016 the mining industry was forced to make its Supply chains more transparent then in 2019 the oecd brought together the most important companies that a forum in coalwayze the aim was to support them in tracing Cobalt how the magic words due diligence thank you we represent the largest companies in the world that have a common Vision to ensure that the minerals and metal sourcing and responsible and contributes positively to Social and economic development globally due diligence is a process whereby companies are supposed to map their supply chains or other business relationships and operations and identify in what ways those business relationships or Supply chains might be linked to Human Rights abuses and if that means go all the way to the point of extraction then so be it and the fact that we and others have exposed you know a range of Human Rights abuses at the minds means that they absolutely should go back and and map and understand that risk due diligence also involves [Music] you know mitigating those risks so it's not just a question of understanding what's going on but also mitigating them because it's a means to an end and the end is preventing human rights abuses he manufactures commissioned the service provider RCS Global to discover the conditions under which their Cobalt was being mined the company monitors industrial minds and is trying to integrate the artisanal Minds in in due diligence programs for decades there have been a lot of conversations around how to improve autism mining not much has actually been achieved in that regard right now in reality the child labor is not the only risk like I said um the most prevalent risk on ASM sites so on artisanal and small scale mining sites by far is working conditions at the moment we had eight Cobalt ASM sites that is the target to scale to 12 by the end of next year you're absolutely right to say that it isn't every year Tesla and small scale mindset of course in the Congo um the reason for that is that you have around about 2 million and Sizzler miners in the country if I look at the overall program in the DRC there's around about 33 000 miners that are actually under under monitoring from uh you know the better mining program if you take all the miners from all the different mine sites into consideration right you drive incremental Improvement you cannot in any way improve every single site at the same speed at the same time one of the mines audited by RCS Global has met all the due diligence criteria the pilot mine in casulo a district of kolwezi in 2014 a resident here discovered a vein of cobalt that has already attracted as many as 15 000 Prospectors to ensure the district didn't collapse and to keep children at Bay the provincial government expropriated the property it then transferred operation of the mine to Hawaii Cobalt which resettled the residents as part of the deal the Chinese company is relying on artisanal mining cooperatives to extract the metal why you then buys what's produced and has commissioned RCS Global with its due diligence it's good for the company's image the company had come under Fire from Amnesty International for selling Cobalt mind using child labor now Prospectors in casulo no longer risk their lives nevertheless they're still at the mercy of the Chinese who set the price for what they buy how much does it cost to clean a shaft like this 350 000 to 400 000 Congolese francs they build a wooden scaffold in it to reinforce the walls that costs around 200 000 francs and we pay for the tarps and all the rest we need three scaffolds in all that's 500 000 francs to support the shaft how much does the Cooperative cover nothing at all the Cooperative doesn't care about us so how much is left for you then just enough to pay for manioc flower getting to the mine and laundry soap so that we look clean you can't say that this is good work it doesn't offer any future unless you don't spend anything what are we supposed to live on companies like RCS Global have enormous power in the new market for due diligence services but given the continually changing artisanal minds and complex Supply chains how can one guarantee genuine tracing as I've already said Volkswagen itself isn't currently buying Cobalt instead we get the material via the supply chain of our cell suppliers where we work together with an independent service provider to identify its source we use Audits and mapping audits that can follow the supply chain back as far as the Congo and currently it's the case that we are able to carry an audit out only once a year that's why we are never 100 certain if for example the material from artisanal mining ends up in our supply chain if we find that we act immediately and demand the supplier no longer accept these sources when we buy our battery cells we're dealing with a very opaque supply chain the steps are very far removed from the mining directly and the intermediate partner links are often in China where we don't really know how the suppliers there are trading amongst themselves you also have to imagine that a supply chain isn't a static thing companies change so do suppliers and sub suppliers which is desirable for us in order to get the best price that's why it's relatively non-transparent because there are so many partners in the supply chain and it keeps changing which keeps things in the dark China is essentially a black box in a lot of ways um you can see raw materials going into China and you can track what comes out of China but actually understanding the framework of who buys and sells what's inside of China is extremely challenging um that's especially true for Cobalt as well because you could have um a very very good quality industrial Cobalts which is genuine sort of non-artisanal traceable but if it's sold to a refinery in China which is also purchasing other sources of cobalt it's very difficult to separate all of those you have to if you're if you're if you've signed an agreement with a Chinese Refinery you basically have to take it on faith that they're going to keep those streams separate um and that's that's that's a very difficult thing to do there are different ways in which um the downstream companies try to dodge their responsibility one of those is to hire Consultants expensive Consultants who basically conduct the due diligence themselves do the reporting and that's kept that they're almost at arm's length from the company itself the other thing that companies do is join industry schemes so they join up with all the other companies in their sector and they they create a body which does the due diligence for them or or promotes a set of Standards which they all sign up to and then it's just a paper exercise they can all say yes we agree with these standards we've signed up to these standards but it doesn't necessarily lead to the change we want to see on the ground and that's why there is a role for organizations like Amnesty International but particularly a role for organizations like donors in in colwayze because you need the voices and the and the the expertise of you know lawyers and activists and scientists and community members themselves and miners in the DRC understanding what's going on and and exposing what's going on because we've got to see that change there it's no good just having you know a fancy report on a website continues to be on child labor and with good reason there are still thousands of children working in the small mines in Louisburg yet many ngos say that as a result the other problems which cannot be solved with due diligence like forced resettlement without appropriate compensation environmental pollution and Corruption are pushed into the background s the big car makers are very reserved when it comes to this topic um for example there have been forums organized by the oecd on this very issue of responsible procurement of minerals no panel discussion on corruption can you find a representative of the Auto industry willing to sit next to me and explain his industry's point of view uh this topic is practically taboo because everyone knows that the problem affects a large part of the Cobalt supply chain uh the plundering of Congolese natural resources is nothing new more than 60 years Belgian Colonial rulers enriched themselves from the Congo's resources after Independence was declared in 1960 a new type of plundering began the dictator mobutus cesico and his friends siphoned off billions in profit from the state-owned mineral company jacquamin in 1997 Laurel Desiree kabila seized power and war broke out after kabila was assassinated in 2001 his son Joseph became president He restored peace and stimulated the mining sector in order to fill government coffers but Jacob mean was bankrupt and uh in 2002 it turned out was just as broke as the Congolese government and not just economically the World Bank forced reforms on the government they said yes you have the minerals but not the resources to make the sector reliable open your country up to multinational corporations that worked well for us because the Congolese government already had his hands in the mining business as well are among the multinationals that came into the Congo all the big ones came but not to give the people a future they all came to me in order to understand the Cobalt sector you first have to look at how the companies that are active today in the Congo first obtained the mining licenses especially the Cobalt licenses a key figure shows up an Israeli businessman named Dan gerkler he played sort of a mediator role between the multinationals that were interested in licenses for copper and Cobalt and the Congolese politicians who could make decisions about who got the licenses in many cases this happened a multinational corporation be it the Swiss glencore group or the kazakurasian research group wanted to get a license that once had belonged to the state company but instead of selling the license directly to the corporation or holding a round of bidding to find the best investor did something that it's known as a direct Award of contracts it sold the license at a very low price who had good connections to the former president Joseph Alex president [Music] after he came to power in 2001 Joseph kabila befriended Dan gertler curtler was bringing new money into the Congo at a time when the country urgently needed investment he made a way for Western companies to enter the country in 2007 the former Global leader in raw materials glencore received the best prospecting licenses in the country through Gerta both became co-shareholders in mutanda mining one of the world's largest Cobalt mines glencore then loaned goodler Millions after he negotiated another mine deal with the Congo when this transaction became public the Israeli came up on the U.S Authority's radar they suspected gatler of bribing the kabila regime regarding several projects sometimes even with the participation of a U.S investment fund it's estimated that the Congolese government lost more than a billion US Dollars during the course of these deals things became uncomfortable for gertler and so as a result of this he was placed under the sanctions and uh other actors were also placed uh certain High officers of the kabila regime and others uh as well but certainly he is the largest tart it was the largest Target in terms of value of the assets he controlled the US which also wanted to invest in the Congo filed lawsuits against Dan getler and glencore Britain and Switzerland are also investigating the company in 2022 the Swiss multinational announced that it had set aside 1.5 billion US dollars for legal disputes how do industrial groups like yumikor in Belgium which sources Cobalt from glencore view that if there is a conviction we would need to assess what is happening we will do our own assessment as well if a judge finds that the the party is guilty we will look into it and then make our our decision of course yeah based on the the legal outcome is that's rather disappointing to me imagine that you've got a company there buying all that's being mined using child labor and nobody's bothered by it because the company hasn't been convicted for doing it when it comes to child labor you'd never hear the argument no conviction no problem but it's different with corruption as long as no one gets convicted it's fine it is clear to us that corruption is not a victimless crime and so often that's how it's portrayed it is money passing hands between middlemen and and corrupt Elite officials but of course at the end of that chain are frequently ordinary citizens who suffer quite dramatically as a result of the corruption and the corruption around the metal coal mine was no exception metal coal only works with kilometer long piles of mine tailings that were deposited in kolwezi during the Belgian Colonial period today the site has some of the richest yields in the copper belt in the early 2000s the Canadian company first Quantum received prospecting rights it was the deal of the century the tailing still contained 300 000 tons of cobalt with a value of 20 billion US dollars then suddenly the kabila regime pulled the plug on first Quantum and withdrew the license we now know from court documents and court records what happened and what occurred is that the mining license had been stripped through the assistance of a company owned by Dan gertler who saw this as a very profitable mine he held it for a short period of time and then flipped it to a large multinational Mining Company then called Eurasian natural resources Corporation today called Eurasian Resources Group or ERG and that company owns the mine today but we know through court records it was a mind that was corrupted Away by Dan gertner bribing Congolese officials including Congolese judges in order to obtain the mining permit back then several hundred workers were employed building the new processing plant in carlwayze and all these people suddenly lost their jobs the kazak company Eurasian Resources Group then completed the facility which from then on was known as metal coal RTR despite all assertions to the contrary the 700 first Quantum workers who were fired were neither compensated nor rehired messages yes the sparkly stuff wow wow yes a desert where does metal coal Works back there quite far away yes behind the smoke back there that's where metal coal started the recovery later it went as far as here foreign [Music] I hope that with our involvement we can make the parties aware of the real problems of copper and Cobalt mining not just the issue of child labor I'm not saying that child labor isn't a problem but it's not the biggest problem in the sector what do you expect from A specter that it resolves the case so we get paid Justice but what do you expect from the hearings then I'll get my severance pay instead of paying it all at once they paid in installments 600 Francs is that normal 600 000 francs for getting fired our money to pay school fees for the children and to pay the doctor now I can no longer afford to become sick it's bad I was even able to pay the church tax with my wages how can I find a new job without a blessing they just terminated the contracts without any compensation as if we didn't exist no we don't matter to them we are hoping for a great deal from this case we'll hang in there until the end the company has to admit its mistake and compensate us I know that they're getting rich with what they're producing there so don't kill shoes and we the people who built the factory are poor that's unfair that's as if you would work a field together with your children and then when it's harvest time you go and get the neighbors kids that's what's Happening Here and we still had work we had access to Medical Care we earned enough to send our children to school then I got fired and my daughter became very ill yeah I did all I could to see that she was treated in the hospital they turned me away she died on the way home hello my son died a year later that's my daughter her name was yes she had malaria and that's him what was his name wait what happened he had malaria and yellow fever he died too he was eight years old [Music] [Music] welcome to radio television Monica today we're talking about ecosystems what are the consequences of mining for the local population today our guest is Professor Bonza a toxicologist and professor at the University of lubumbashi Professor what were you doing here in coldway first we assess the level of contamination of the ecosystems that are relevant for the population how polluted are the waterways how contaminated are the fish that are eaten after that we looked at People's Health we wanted to see how much they've been affected by eating the fish breathing in the dust and by the general contamination of their environment has been investigating the ecological and health impacts of Congolese mining for 15 years working for several ngos it's something companies applying due diligence don't take all that seriously from here the acid flows down as far as the Lulu river which flows into the Congo near Village the people who live there will tell you that they can smell the acid at night who's responsible for this ecological disaster the Komodo copper company first and foremost it belongs to glencore their plant is over there when the Basin is full they open the drain then the color of the water changes and this foam forms from the lime that they dump into the basement to keep the pH value greater than seven the set but I don't think it works because the toxic Metals prevent the acid from being neutralized look at the water the soil and the mud the color shows that we continue to have a very serious problem here because this river flows into the Congo too [Music] the Congo is one of Africa's most important rivers it provides a large part of our country's water it's just about impossible for us to get an appointment with the authorities to deal with this issue even here at the provincial level when the company wants an appointment it gets one immediately why is that because the company pays for it and for the same reason you can almost rule out getting support the activities of ngos under pressure from ngos glencore finally confirmed the leakage of sulfuric acid but it said it didn't have any effects on the stocks of fish and surrounding ponds paradoxically the company has already begun compensating victims and cleaning up the ponds celestein balza and his team detected highly elevated Cobalt values in the blood and urine of Mine Workers from kolwezi in an article in the journal Nature's sustainability they reported changes in the DNA of children who had inhaled The Ore dust an indication of an increased risk of cancer today the professor is conducting tests on about a hundred Prospectors they're exposed to Rado a radioactive gas released from Rock which contains uranium is foreign if we can't get a handle on the pollution we're going to have a huge problem soon there won't be any life left in the rivers even now most of the rivers in the former province of katanga are contaminated and not just here but in kivu practically everywhere they've mined natural resources if we don't watch out this country is going to have an ecological and toxicological Scandal ecological toxicology thank you Finland land of a thousand lakes it's not just home to some of the largest oil reserves in Europe it's also one of the continent's most important sources of fresh water resource that could be threatened by mining in 2012 1000 hectares of rivers and lakes were destroyed when toxic sludge was released from the sotkamo mine which belonged to the talvivara Mining Company public pressure led to the mine's closure until the Terra farmer group took over its operation Ten Years Later victims of the disaster are still waiting for compensation well what's the state of the lake the kiltwell lake here yes hopefully it's not as bad as lakayavi right now really it's full of algae again in the fall of 2015 it was really bad and for a few years now it's been getting worse again we had to take out the Nets it would have been a waste of work otherwise I see but are there still fish in nakayavi only just a few really yes we're catching so few now that it doesn't even cover our costs do you remember the ad for lakayavi the Region's last Wilderness the fish had a really good reputation fishing is by lakayavi is so well known I believe it after the kipsaka Basin leaked nobody wanted our fish anymore not even for free fishing was just about dead for about three or four years now there's been fish again but we've really got serious reservations about selling them and wholesalers haven't taken professionally caught fish for Years anyway and now you've always got to be going to court hearings yeah if you want to call it that it will probably continue at the beginning of December in the district court the first cheering is over and the administrative court is also involved what do you have to say about the hearings hopefully I'll live to see the day they make a ruling it's Thomas and we've already been suffering as a result of the damage for 10 years you could say that now that Terra farmer has taken over most of the insolvency each one of the defendants has a team of two or three well-known lawyers really they've got ever sheds HPP Partners the most expensive law firms in the country I'll just keep on fighting and fighting I'm not going to settle for it that's understandable it's unfair and wrong to you all lost his case even though he had expert reports that showed what the pollution did to the fish in the in the lake how he earns his living he and eight other victims are not filing an appeal because they can't afford it [Music] environmental activist Mika flirt knows all the details of the 2012 disaster is outraged by the negligence of the mind's former owner and is among those who called for its closure we were concerned about the terraform at that time it was called talavivaramine we were concerned about its impact to the waters and they stated that it's a pile itching and the most environmental friendly mind in the world and they don't release any Wastewater Etc that those were the marketing lines to the local politicians and Regional politicians and people that why they should support this huge mind the reason for Talavera bankruptcy I guess are many and I think I'm not the the right person to to call that through into deeply but the basic setting you know where the ideas when they invested to the site have now proven to be the right ones they did miss some very important elements like water treatment so all the rain water that is raining in this area and touches the the the ore or the Rock and it needs to be collected and purified before it can be discharged back to the nature and and these kind of facilities they did not plan originally unfortunately so that must have been one of the reasons that they did finding the problems with with water and the first thing we did was that we we built a central Water Treatment Plant this is known best available technology Central Water Treatment Plant as well as then this discharge pipeline from the central Water Treatment Plant all the way to the big water ways and we started to purify the water so that we can when it's raining heavily it doesn't impact it doesn't innovate disturb the production we purify the water and release it bio leaching which which is a technology that they they invested and built here was not uh operating steadily during their time so we have done a lot of a lot of further development to make it work you know in a stable manner but the basic ideas are the same as they had Mega fluid doesn't trust industry claims neither does Yari natunan a biochemist and the chairman of the NGO mining watch Finland they're monitoring the surroundings of the mine operated by Terra farmer it's foaming down there from lime lime is used as a precipitation agent for the metal that's where it's farming here there was a big leak here the sediment is contaminated and the water quality is I can really see it in the sediment s this black layer plants are in there I'll take it out now you can see the layers here and the black maybe heavy metals are being washed up with the water there's a leak in the pipe up there up here is the Wastewater Basin for the tailings and it's full of contaminated water and they say it's just from humus but the nickel content in the brook is still above the Environmental Quality standard and it's probably the same with cadmium too the values are many times higher than what you're allowed to release into the environment heavy metals Terra farmer has admitted that there was a leak in 2020 but claims that this was then sealed it says the concentrations measured by Yari natunan come from natural sources the biochemist doubts that the water treatment pipe could break at any time and release a toxic brew into the soil the biggest problem here is this mine the waste rock the tailings that can't be used that has a sulfur content of nine percent sulfur reacts with water and air if you have a ton of waste rock the reaction would water and air will produce 300 kilos of concentrated sulfuric acid this reaction goes on for thousands of years as long as that type of rock is still here supporters of the mine call us nimbis that stands for not in my backyard as if it were just about something local but who would like to step out of the door of their house and find a 300 kilogram dump full of toxic waste that destroys the environment that's illegal shouldn't be happening absolutely not that means that year after year just to get nickel for the battery of a single electric car you produce 50 tons of this hazardous waste that's frightening 50 tons just for the nickel in a single electric car battery with the car buyer maybe like to get these problems delivered to the driveway along with the car [Music] is located in Southeastern Finland it's the biggest lake in the country in less than two years ten exploration permits were issued for the region around it people who live on the lake are worried about the future of their tourism industry the area is also part of the eu's Natura 2000 program nothing survives not a single species and the water doesn't circulate anymore everything just sinks to the bottom that's how it is the substances that are precipitated have sunk to the bottom that's why the water's so clear in my opinion that's evidence of water toxicity basically what happens with legs toxic waste Frosty the bottom takes the PH down and stops the natural circulation of the lake so in the spring and in the Autumn where the water changes that dies and when that dies then the whole lake does Misa mink became an activist when she noticed the mining activities in the Saima Lake increasing she recalls an incident from the 1990s when toxic Wastewater leaked from a Cobalt mine and wiped out all the life in one of the Lakes foreign I just don't believe that it's a solution that the Nordic countries and especially Finland then becomes uh the battery materials resource for the rest of EU so that we can produce more electric cars and and all of the the widgets that we need um to get rid of fossil fuels so it's mine destroys biodiversity we have to face it and then the other part is fresh water so there needs to be much bigger thought put into this and a long-term strategy you know how are the humans going to survive on this planet we are going to need fresh water and Finland has more fresh border resources than probably any other country in Europe there's not a single mine in Finland that has closed water circulation if just a portion of these toxins ends up in our water we can already imagine what this country will look like in one or two hundred years it's estimated that the demand for raw materials to make batteries will increase 30 times by the year 2040. only in this way can we meet the emissions targets of the Paris Accords that's an absurd number in Finland there are currently nine mines for metallic oars you don't have to be a mathematical genius to know what the situation is going to be like here in 2014 if we end up becoming Europe's awesome the EU wants to make itself independent of the material flows coming from the Congo in China of course that's right because the situation with respect to responsibility is even worse than it is here that's why we've started the legislative initiative limits for mining here I'd like to again give a big thanks to everyone because tonight we surpassed 50 000 signatures so the draft will now officially be debated in Parliament yeah foreign [Music] [Music] is [Music] in the interests of the planet for people to be driving electric vehicles if you're gonna get a car you know well I would say get a bike but if if you want to get a car get an electric car rather than a diesel or petrol powered one in the interest of the planet and future Generations that's that's fine but if you do that ask the car maker what goes into your battery what are you doing to make sure that that the the mining that pulls out the metals that goes into that battery what are you doing to make sure that's not harmful that that's not harming the people of the DRC or other countries where this mining takes place [Music] Felix just a Katie has been president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2019. he promised to renegotiate the mining treaties but the process is taking time and the Congolese people are still failing to profit from the wealth of resources in their country meanwhile millions of EVS continue to drive on our streets powered by Cobalt from the Congo and there are more every day around the world protests are growing louder environmental and human rights activists are organizing to take on the mining industry policymakers can no longer ignore their voices [Music] but there is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 1,903,101

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2022, documentary 2023, documentary, cobalt, climate crisis, electromobility, batteries, Tesla, child labor, China

Id: 0Q2IW7UEclI

Length: 86min 1sec (5161 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023