Eight months have passed since Scars of Growth had its world premiere in Geneva at the Festival du film et Forum international sur les droits humains (FIFDH). Since our film has traveled as far as Uruguay, Indonesia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, India and will be brought to many countries more until the end of December with the Science Film Festival organised by the German Goethe Institute. The film won the German Environmental and Sustainability Award at NaturVision Film Festival, funded by the Ministry for Climate and Energy of the region Baden-Württemberg and has been awarded the EELISA Special Mention at the Another Way Film Festival in Madrid.
In August the documentary had its TV premiere on ARTE with its German title „Das Rohstoff-Dilemma — Mit Bergbau aus der Klimakrise“ and French title „Des mines vertes, one solution à la crise climatique?“. Next week it will have its TV-Premiere in Austria on the 23th November at ORF 2. Swiss public broadcaster SRF and the Spanish national public TVE also have purchased licenses as has Al Jazeera.
As an important part of the film takes place in Sweden, showing the Swedish mining industry and the Sámi’s fight for land and survival for their culture and lifestyle, we hope that a Swedish broadcaster will bring the documentary to the Swedish public. The organisers of the EU Raw Materials Week which starts today has not answered a proposal to show the film although, the event has a prominent role in the documentary.
It is the EU commission’s DG GROW — short for Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs — that started this annual event in reaction to China’s sudden halt to export rare earth elements after the infamous Senkaku Islands incident in 2010. This policy event brings together representatives from EU institutions, industry, governments, academia, and civil society to discuss the latest developments in raw materials policy. It would have been a great opportunity to reach out to the industry and policymakers to discuss the topics we raise in our film — like mining waste management, inclusion of affected communities or material reduction targets. It seems the decision makers in Brussels and the industry are not ready yet to talk seriously about reduction.
Since we started working on the film in 2021 a lot has happened. Metals are now regularly on the mainstream news and on the top of the agenda of many governments. China started to restrict (again) the exportation of rare earth elements and (again) the industry is panicking. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act is in vigor and until June this year 60 strategic projects in- and outside of the EU to secure supply chains for critical raw materials like lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt were selected.
Interestingly, one of the these selected projects was suspended last week. It is the Jadar lithium mine in Serbia owned by the Australian-British mining giant Rio Tinto. The project is very promising in terms of geology and economic potential but, has faced fierce resistance from the local communities and in the entire country for years. So, while the civil society in Serbia is celebrating, the organisers of the EU Raw Materials Week have to digest a major backlash in their race for critical raw materials.
We still hope we can show the film to the EU Raw Materials Week - maybe next year, to bring a new dimension and another perspective on raw materials policy to decision makers. We need policies to radically reduce the material footprint of Western industrialised countries. Just today, to mark COP30, six organizations from around the world are calling on the Global North to drastically reduce resource consumption as part of the so-called green transformation, since resource extraction causes serious social and environmental damage in producing countries.
A recently published series of studies from the Philippines, South Africa, Indonesia, and Peru shows that the rising demand for so-called transition minerals is directly linked to water pollution, human rights violations, environmental destruction, and minimal local economic benefits. All the authors argue that increased resource efficiency alone cannot prevent these impacts.
“The EU already consumes 25 to 30 percent of the world’s produced metals, even though it only makes up 6 percent of the world’s population,” emphasizes Rhoda Viajar of Alyansa Tigil Mina, an environmental network from the Philippines, and calls for “degrowth and profound societal change to reduce unsustainable raw material consumption.” Jaime Borda of the Peruvian network for environment and human rights, Red Muqui, argues, “a just energy transition will only be possible if global demand for critical raw materials is reduced.”
German NGOs Powershift and Misereor are supporting those calls. "We advocate for binding targets to reduce primary consumption, strong due diligence obligations along supply chains, and transparent information about the origin, content, and risks of raw materials. Public funds should strengthen repair, reuse, recycling, and regional production instead of subsidizing new extraction projects. Reduction is not a program of deprivation, but a prerequisite for climate justice and dignified livelihoods worldwide.“
Will those calls be heard in Brussels this week? If so, they will probably be shrugged of the shoulders, as unrealistic or utopian. But utopian are the hopes that technology will save us - as economist Timothée Parrique points out in our film. So far the envisaged policies are only shifting dependencies — from fossil fuels towards minerals — instead of seriously tackling the issue by rethinking the need for continuous economic growth and overconsumption of resources.
More mining in the EU won’t substitute mining in the rest of the world; in countries with insufficient nature protection, worker’s safety and indigenous rights. And even in Europe higher standards do not mean there are no risks of water pollution or for human and indigenous rights violations.
A good example for this is Sweden, a country with a high reputation of being a model in gender equality, sustainability and social rights. Despite a positive reputation the Swedish government is failing its indigenous minority by prioritising the mining industry. The Sámi people who are especially under pressure because of old and new mines as we show in the film. Ironically their lifestyle is already sustainable and aims to be in balance with nature.
This highly developed country is not immune to accidents at mines either. LKAB is Europe’s biggest iron ore producer and made a profit of almost 800 million Euros in 2024. Despite its branding as a modern, innovative company the Swedish Work Environment Authority criticized state owned LKAB after a fatal accident in 2024 at the Kiruna mine, in which a man died after being crushed by a hatch and then falling from a scaffolding. The authority identified deficiencies in seven different areas like inadequate risk assessments and instructions, media reported.
Another major incident is a massive oil leak that at the Kiruna mine inside the industrial area discovered in 2021 after nine months spilling heating oil undetected. An estimated 2 million litres of oil leaked into the soil we found out during the shooting to the film. Cleaning up may take up between 5 to 10 years, the company says. LKAB was criticised this year for not doing enough to clean up the mess.
All this is to underline that mining always will have negative impacts on nature, the communities next to the mine and the people working inside it. For this reason we need to evaluate thoroughly how much materials we really need before opening new mines - no matter where on the planet.