Just-Shoring Aims to Center Justice in Minerals Policy

Researchers propose a new framework to shift focus from competition and security to the rights and interests of communities affected by critical raw materials extraction.

Published on Mar. 6, 2026

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A clean energy future hinges on minerals like copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements. But the race to secure these critical raw materials (CRMs) puts pressure on the places where they are mined, often in developing countries. Researchers propose a new framework called "just-shoring" to shift the focus from competition and security to the rights and interests of the communities whose lands are most at risk from CRM extraction.

Why it matters

As governments and firms pursue strategies like on-shoring, re-shoring, and friend-shoring to secure independent CRM sources, they risk repeating the same extractive patterns that have long burdened communities contributing the least to climate change. Just-shoring aims to make accountability and transparency enforceable, giving communities a legal right to co-govern the mineral lifecycle.

The details

More than half of proposed CRM facilities are located on or near agrarian or Indigenous land. Existing frameworks like the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals recommend a shift to local resource control, but only on a voluntary basis. Just-shoring pushes beyond best practices, guided by three key questions: Who benefits? Whose risks are amplified? How much material extraction is necessary for a just transition?

  • In January 2026, researchers published a commentary on just-shoring in the journal Nature Energy.

The players

Jessica DiCarlo

A human geographer and political ecologist at the University of Utah, and the lead author of the just-shoring commentary.

University of Utah

The institution where DiCarlo is an assistant professor in the School of Environment, Society & Sustainability.

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What they’re saying

“Right now, powerful, often Western, governments and firms are attempting to reshape the geographies of supply chains without changing the rules of extraction. If we don't rethink who benefits and who bears the costs, we risk repeating the same injustices of the fossil fuel era under a 'green' label.”

— Jessica DiCarlo, Assistant professor, School of Environment, Society & Sustainability (Nature Energy)

“We cannot build a low-carbon future on sacrifice zones. Communities are told extraction is necessary for climate action, but too often they are also excluded from decision making or benefits and, instead, left to absorb the costs.”

— Jessica DiCarlo, Assistant professor, School of Environment, Society & Sustainability (Nature Energy)

What’s next

The just-shoring framework proposed in the Nature Energy commentary aims to shift the focus of critical raw materials policy from competition and security to the rights and interests of affected communities, making accountability and transparency enforceable.

The takeaway

As governments and companies race to secure independent sources of critical raw materials needed for the clean energy transition, the just-shoring framework calls for a rethinking of who benefits and who bears the costs of mineral extraction. It seeks to give communities a legal right to co-govern the entire mineral lifecycle, moving beyond voluntary best practices to address the injustices that have long burdened those contributing the least to climate change.