Navigating critical mineral sustainability, security and competitiveness

Mistra Geopolitics and Mistra Mineral Governance co-hosted a research seminar in March 2025, bringing together researchers, experts, and stakeholders to explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding critical mineral sustainability, security and competitiveness.

Challenges facing the extraction of critical minerals

The guiding research questions framing the dialogue included:

- What are the governance gaps for critical raw materials (CRMs) that the research discussed today helps to make apparent?
- How is great power competition and geopolitics impacting the critical raw material governance agenda, and what are the main risks to it?
- What do you see as the most important ways forward for achieving secure and sustainable critical raw material supplies that support the energy transition globally?

Watch the recording

Aaron Maltais, Nella Canales and Björn Nykvist from Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) spoke about corporate strategies for balancing sustainability and geopolitics in critical mineral supply chains.

Dr Jiayi Zhou from SIPRI and Dr André Månberger from Lund University presented novel research about the role of great power competition in shaping critical mineral governance.

Gunilla Reischl from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs contributed with the international angle to the discussion together with Daria Ivleva from adelphi.

The seminar concluded with a roundtable dialogue and a question and answer session led by Aaron Maltais from SEI, identifying key governance gaps and pathways forward.

Read 'Critical Minerals and Great Power Competition' by SIPRI

Mistra Geopolitics team

Adelphi

Daria Ivleva

Daria Ivleva is a Senior Advisor and Co-Lead of the Climate Policy Programme at Adelphi. In Mistra Geopolitics, she works on the geopolitics of decarbonization.

Telephone:+49 (30) 8900068-76

LTH

André Manberger

André Manberger is researching how global metal flows for low carbon energy systems interact with security.

Email:andre.manberger@miljo.lth.se

PhD student

Jiayi Zhou

Jiayi Zhou is currently a Researcher at SIPRI and recently completed her PhD at Linköping University. She has conducted fieldwork in Russia, China, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and has research experience in a range of hard and soft security topics. In the context of Mistra Geopolitics, she was involved in Work Package 1 – Geopolitics and Security in the Anthropocene. Her related interests are in food security, agrarian change, and geo-economics. Her PhD supervisors were Dr Malin Mobjörk and Dr Eva Lövbrand. Jiayi was active in Phase I of Mistra Geopolitics.

Email:zhou@sipri.org

SEI

Ylva Rylander

Ylva Rylander is the press contact for Mistra Geopolitics. Ylva is a Communications and Impact Officer at Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). As a core member of SEI’s communications team and previous Press Officer of SEI, Ylva writes and edits press releases and creates news stories. With over 15 years of experience in public relations, awareness raising and external communication, she also provides strategic advice to SEI and Mistra Geopolitics researchers to help them maximize the impact of their research.

Telephone:+4673 150 33 84

SEI

Maria Cole

Maria Cole is a Senior Communications and Impact Officer at Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Stockholm. Maria is the Communications Lead for Mistra Geopolitics and leads the work package on Communications and Stakeholder engagement.

Telephone:+46 70 224 20 22