A landmark report released on September 3, 2025 by the Forests & Finance Coalition, titled Mining and Money: Financial Fault Lines in the Energy Transition, exposes how global finance is tied to widespread social and environmental harm in the transition mineral sector. Between 2016 and 2024, major banks provided nearly US $493 billion in loans and underwriting to mining companies producing cobalt, lithium, copper, and other critical minerals, while investors held US $289 billion in bonds and shares. This flow of capital has enabled expansion, but without adequate safeguards, it has also perpetuated destructive practices in some of the world’s most sensitive regions.
Despite strong sustainability rhetoric, the report found that the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies of the 30 largest financial institutions scored an average of just 22%, revealing serious gaps in protection for Indigenous rights, biodiversity, and tailings safety. Nearly 70% of the financed mines overlap with Indigenous or peasant lands, and 71% lie in biodiversity hotspots, intensifying risks of displacement, pollution, and community conflict. These figures underline a contradiction at the heart of the energy transition: while clean energy technologies depend on minerals, the extraction model driving their supply continues to replicate old patterns of exploitation.
The report uses case studies from Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and Australia to show the reality on the ground—ranging from deforestation and toxic spills to unsafe labor and catastrophic dam failures. Its conclusion is unequivocal: without enforceable human rights and environmental standards, financing transition minerals will deepen inequality and ecological damage instead of supporting a just energy future. The message to financiers and governments is clear: prevention through strong policies and accountability is not only ethical, but also far less costly than reacting to social conflict and environmental collapse after the fact.