How can we generate wealth and prosperity without contributing to climate collapse, while making sure it doesn’t collapse our economies?
By Mônica Sodré
September 22, 2025
The world’s economic development over the past three centuries came at the expense of nature, and it shaped the accumulation of wealth, financial flows and geopolitical power. No country has ever given up strategic assets and resources because of the harm they might cause, whether to people or to biodiversity. Given this, Brazil needs to take on two debates: the exploration of new oil and gas frontiers, and the exploration of critical and strategic minerals, which are considered essential to the energy and climate transitions.
Fossil fuels still account for 80% of the world’s energy. Looking ahead, there is convergence across medium- and long-term scenarios, from the International Energy Agency to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): global energy demand will grow, and oil will persist in the global mix. Domestically, demand is expected to double by 2033.
Given this, the essential question is: where will that energy come from?
If the race for the future is a race for energy and technology, it will also be a race for critical and strategic minerals. These minerals are essential for generating clean energy, and science has known about the link between burning fossil fuels and global warming for 50 years. An electric car requires, on average, six times more minerals than a conventional one. An onshore wind farm requires nine times more than a gas-fired power plant. According to the International Energy Agency, in scenarios aligned with the Paris Agreement (net zero), demand for critical minerals more than quadruples by 2040.
Current investment in mining and processing is insufficient to meet future demand, which creates an imminent bottleneck. Unlike oil, the production and processing of these minerals are far more concentrated. This creates single points of failure in the global supply chain and represents a systemic business risk. As a result, the race has already begun, with countries regrouping into blocs and pursuing substitution and recycling.
Electrification and climate change demand these minerals, and so do wars, which use them in drones, radars and fighter jets. The world is preparing for war, and military spending today is the highest in 40 years. As fragmentation and conflict grow, critical and strategic minerals will become the new geopolitical weapon. Given their dual use, the race is not only economic or environmental. It is a race for technological and military superiority. We therefore cannot treat the issue as a mere matter of commodity exports.
Since Brazil holds part of the reserves of these minerals, we are already at the center of an ongoing geopolitical dispute. And assuming that these minerals will be exploited for the reasons described above, we must be able to answer a fundamental question: how can we use our advantages to generate more wealth in a way that benefits Brazilians, with nature as an ally of development?
The answer begins with a legal framework to address the issue. It also requires a national strategy to build a battery and electronic waste recycling industry. It requires economic studies that demonstrate the potential for deepening mineral value chains. Local policies need to be reviewed and created to prevent the misuse of funds that occurs with the Financial Compensation for the Exploitation of Mineral Resources (CFEM). Tax incentives are needed to encourage companies to process our minerals and manufacture products with them here.
Other measures include compensation obligations tied to mining licenses, covering mine closure, restoration of degraded areas and traceability. They also include investment in infrastructure and logistics to move production. Finally, they include socio-environmental safeguards that overcome the vulnerabilities of traditional mining, such as:
- life-cycle analysis;
- proper management of tailings and waste;
- incentives for lower-impact, more efficient extraction methods.
We are facing one of the greatest challenges of our time: how to generate wealth and prosperity without contributing to climate collapse, while making sure it doesn’t collapse our economies. Confronting this challenge is inherently contradictory, because climate solutions are predatory toward nature and the environment.
If we accept this contradiction as a given, it is not illogical for a country like Brazil to decide to exploit the resources beneath its soil, as its Federal Constitution authorizes. What may be illogical is a country that aspires to global climate leadership without engaging in substantive discussions about the impacts and economic choices this entails. Such a country would be looking at the issue only in the short term and only through environmental and scientific sensitivities, with little clarity about the role it wants for itself.
For development purposes, we also cannot ignore the lack of strategic vision, which holds back the country’s development just as much. Changes in behavior are therefore needed. We need a foreign policy that puts this issue at the center of the conversation and seeks to diversify partners, so as to avoid new versions of old dependencies. And we need the same shift among decision-makers, who today hold the task of deciding how, not whether, we will take part in this game. The future can’t wait.
Mônica Sodré is a political scientist, a senior fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), and CEO of Meridiana.