Forum for the Future | A clean, equitable energy future and the role of critical minerals

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An introduction to our project:

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability organisation. For almost 30 years we’ve been working in partnership with business, governments, philanthropy and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a just and regenerative future in which both people and the planet thrive. Forum is focused on enabling deep transformation in three game-changing areas: how we think about, produce, consume and value both food and energy, and the purpose of business in society and the economy.

As part of this mission, Forum has begun work to enable India’s approach to critical minerals to support the just and inclusive energy transition, recognising the country’s rising global importance in clean energy supply chains and the strategic role minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and graphite play in this shift.

Why this work, and why now?

India’s clean energy transition is rapidly accelerating, but this progress comes with urgent challenges. How might India secure critical minerals without compromising environmental sustainability or social equity?

It is clear that we don’t have the answer to this question yet, but that people are beginning to see the need to answer it in some corners of the ecosystem. We interviewed over 40 expert stakeholders, which revealed:

• A deepening awareness of the environmental and social impacts of mining and processing of critical minerals

• A persistent tension between decarbonisation urgency and sustainable practices

• Fragmentation across the ecosystem- where policymakers, industry, civil society, and financiers often operate in silos.This siloed approach leads to missed opportunities for collaboration and shared learning, limiting India’s ability to address systemic risks and deliver a transition that is not only fast, but fair and future-fit.

Our approach

This project seeks to enable a just and resilient critical minerals value chain by:

• Mapping trade-offs and risks across critical mineral exploration, processing, and access

• Convening key actors from civil society, philanthropy, industry, and policy to align on what it looks like for India to secure and scale the critical minerals sector in a just and regenerative manner

• Identifying opportunities to align incentives and unlock systemic change

• Building the capacity of stakeholders to drive responsible, inclusive energy transitions

By examining how India’s clean energy ambitions, across wind, solar, battery storage, and EVs, intersect with its critical minerals strategy, we will enable the multiple stakeholders to identify the risks to the just transition and possible ways to mitigate them. The work aims to spark strategic dialogue and collective action, recognising India’s growing influence in global supply chains and the broader ripple effects of its policy and industrial choices. Rather than duplicating existing research on impacts, this initiative seeks to align and activate diverse actors to address structural gaps and drive a just transition.

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Over the last 4 months we have prioritised engaging with our peers to gather feedback on our report and deepen relationships with civil society organisations, think tanks, and EV and wind sector actors active across India’s critical minerals landscape. This process has helped build a clearer picture of who is doing what, where, and with whom and has surfaced opportunities to align efforts. We are now beginning to shape a shared understanding of how we might work together more strategically and coherently to support a just and resilient energy transition in India.

On 23rd July 2025, we launched our report, Critical Minerals, India and the Just Transition. It offers a 4-step framework to investors, industry actors and policy makers to build resilient, socially just and ecologically positive critical minerals value chains. It focusses on supply chain decarbonisation, workforce resilience, mitigating geo-political risks, long-term community development, and transparency.

You can read the full report here.

The report presents the ambition and action on aligning the critical minerals value chains with the just energy transition as a spectrum, ranging from shallow, compliance-driven reform to deep, transformational change. It makes it clear that if we are to embed justice, equity, and regeneration at every level of India’s energy transition, addressing the appropriate critical minerals value chains is key.

Four levels of transition ambition

1. Status Quo – No change or minimal improvements.

2. Managerial Reform – Compliance with ESG norms and risk mitigation.

3. Structural Reform – Rebalancing value, power, and voice across the supply chain.

4. Transformational Change – Creating fundamentally regenerative systems that redistribute benefits, include all stakeholders, and prioritise long-term planetary and community health.

This report provides recommendations on what is needed to embed just transition principles in the critical minerals sector. These include:

1. Strengthening collaborative action to strengthen India’s ability to seize emerging opportunities, manage risks across the value chain, and build long-term foresight capabilities.

2. Developing a resilient and skilled workforce by investing in targeted training programs, enhancing the adaptive capacity of workers and communities, and supporting a vibrant MSME ecosystem to position India as a processing hub over the coming decades.

3. Integrating supply chain transparency and participatory governance by evolving regulatory frameworks, embracing participatory decision-making, and leveraging technology to enhance traceability and accountability.

4. Enabling businesses to embed sustainability beyond compliance by showcasing the value of ambitious, sustainability-driven strategies and deepening the understanding of environmental and social risks and opportunities across the supply chain.

5. Positioning the just transition as India’s competitive advantage by promoting sustainability as a driver for attracting responsible investment, leveraging blended finance to scale innovation and transparency, and establishing India as a global leader in socially and environmentally responsible financing for critical minerals

Key insights and learning:

1. Without action, the energy transition risks replicating many of the environmental and social harms of the fossil fuel-based system.

2. The Just Transition should be understood as a shift that can occur superficially, achieving unstable and insecure progress while the overall transition contributes to negative impacts, and it can occur deeply, in which equity, inclusivity and value are embedded, with positive impacts across social and environmental challenges.

3. There is a narrative that sustainability must wait for India to secure mineral supply and scale clean technology production before being integrated, however by embedding sustainability and a just transition, India can differentiate itself in the global market, meet a growing demand for traceable, environmentally safe minerals, and contribute to its own and global targets for climate and nature. Sustainability should be integrated immediately and consistently as industries are scaled.

4. Conversely, not embedding sustainability can lead to social and environmental harms, including civil protest and disobedience, water pollution, and loss of livelihoods. These have consequences for a company’s social license to operate as well as increased exposure to risk.

5. The existing civil society is beginning to coalesce. Effective convening and concerted collective action has the potential to influence and shape the growing clean technology industry in India and associated supply chain.

6. A key challenge for us has been limited private sector buy-in, driven by a lack of clarity on why a just transition approach is relevant to their work and what role they can play. This has made engagement inconsistent and required us to pivot our efforts toward building understanding and alignment with industry priorities.

Our current focus and next steps:

As our report recognises the need for coordinated civil society engagement in this space, we convened a closed-door workshop in Delhi on 21st April with leading CSOs and think tanks. The session fostered open dialogue, surfaced seven shared priorities including environmental and social impacts, policy influence, clean energy linkages, and global geopolitics and revealed strong interest in long-term, co-created, and action-oriented collaboration. As a next step, Forum will continue supporting this emerging ecosystem through further dialogue, joint research, and collaborative advocacy. We will also be joining and strengthening the efforts of the existing coalition 3C-SET to build momentum for a just and resilient critical minerals future for energy transition in India.

Our engagement with the private sector has surfaced a critical gap: the lack of a compelling business case for action towards the just energy transition in the critical minerals sector. There is insufficient robust evidence and a lack of clear articulations of the business risks of externalising environmental and social harms, and current narratives around externalities have not activated meaningful change within companies. To address this, we are adopting an iterative, action-sprint approach combining rapid research, testing, and feedback to identify and communicate social and environmental externalities in business models relating to critical minerals through means that encourage immediate and meaningful action to shift current practices.

In parallel, we are also scoping our approach to better understand the emerging trends, technologies, and skill gaps shaping the future of work in the critical minerals sector. This includes mapping the skills needed to support a just and future-fit transition and identifying opportunities for inclusive and resilient workforce development.

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Recap of our work and objectives

To further progress towards a safe and just energy transition, with a particular focus on critical minerals, Forum for the Future is actively engaging with industry, civil society, and financial actors to develop transparent, responsible, and resilient critical mineral value chains in India. Our objectives are to:

• Build a deeper, collective understanding of social, environmental and geo-political challenges, risks and opportunities in critical minerals value chains with an Indian perspective

• Develop a deeper understanding of the value of ambitious sustainability approach towards mining, processing and recycling of critical minerals – particularly with clean energy industries such as wind energy, battery storage and EVs

• Develop and socialise a clear business case for increasing sustainability ambition; highlight risks and implications of not doing so

• Support development of a resilient, thriving workforce in India as domestic mining and processing of minerals gathers pace

Key highlights of our work since the last update:

Raising the ambition of clean energy industry for a just energy transition in the minerals sector:

• We are working to address the critical gap of a missing business case for a just energy transition in the minerals sector by demonstrating how externalised social and environmental harm translates into tangible business risks and opportunities for change. We are building on our desk research and a review of business case literature from industry-facing actors and Forum’s earlier work. We have engaged with leading think tanks and institutions (IISD, Asia Development Bank), as well as industry players (Anglo-American, Lohum, Altmin).

• We are now developing a prototype framework that builds on the Just Transition framework from the first phase of work, outlining the business value levers and possible actions. The prototype will soon be tested, with opportunities for stakeholders to engage in October and November.

Strengthening workforce resilience:

• Recognising that workforce development is critical for establishing India as a processing and manufacturing hub for critical minerals, we have created a dedicated workstream under the Just Transition agenda to support the sector in building an inclusive, skilled, and resilient workforce for a future-ready industry.

• Our goal is to position workforce resilience in the transition narrative as going beyond technical training, encompassing proactive future-fit skilling, inclusion, equity, and social protection. Early analysis has highlighted systemic challenges including shortages of skilled workers, outdated training systems, limited MSME support, gender exclusion, and informality in the sector.

• To strengthen the design and delivery of this workstream, we have initiated discussions with Global Business Lab (GBL) to leverage their networks and expertise in workforce development.

CSO collaboration and engagement:

• We are formalising a collaboration with Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), which will further strengthen collective efforts, amplify outcomes, and build trust across CSOs, industry, academia, and philanthropy.

• Forum, in collaboration with Desta, is developing a modelling framework to map India’s critical mineral flows across wind, EV, and storage sectors, integrating environmental and social impacts. We are now refining the model with stakeholder engagement and will convene a core group to test the framework.

What have we learnt so far?

Learning and insights for business case discussions:

• Business case framing needs to be appropriate and relevant to the business audience. Interviews have demonstrated a gap in how civil society/think tanks discuss opportunities in sustainability, and how business leaders do. To ensure the proposed output of a business case framework is impactful, we should aim to engage representatives from business as much as possible.

• For example, typical framing on the value of a sustainable approach from a business leader is based on building shareholder value through cost reductions or revenue increases.

• Many business cases in existing grey literature lack a strong evidence base. Best case examples have case studies that demonstrate clear value of action taken (e.g. investment in desalination leading to x decrease in costs and y decrease in local protests).

• Additional primary research is needed, especially in India, to explore the quantitative and qualitative impacts of certain risks, such as from climate-related impacts (increasing heat impacting workers, drought), and opportunities, such as circularity. Currently these lack a strong evidence base beyond theoretical assertions.

Key learnings from collaboration and CSO engagements:

• Building partnerships and trust with civil society organisations (CSOs) and industry in the sector is a slow time taking process but an essential one to ensure longevity and collective action.

• From theory to action: CSO inputs backed by field evidence (case studies, best practices) are especially powerful in influencing policy conversations and gaining momentum for policy action

• There is a growing recognition that discussions on critical minerals need to move beyond supply chain considerations to also reflect the social and community dimensions of development.

• Collaborative CSO platforms are evolving in the space and there is an opportunity to strengthen cross-learning and collaboration. The goal is to foster spaces that encourage open dialogue, foster trust and collective action.

On workforce we have emerging learnings and insights that include :

• Workforce aspirations extend beyond technical skills, and the workforce wants dignified working conditions, resilient and future-ready livelihoods, which must shape the design of skilling pathways.

• Competition from allied industries could intensify workforce shortages in critical minerals unless sector-specific strategies are developed.

• Collective leverage of MSMEs in the system can play a pivotal role in creating distributed job opportunities, embedding resilience locally, and strengthening India’s processing and manufacturing base.

All the above insights and learnings are shaping the development of the framework, business case, and stakeholder engagement approach.

What does a just transition in critical minerals look like?

A just transition in critical minerals in India, as outlined in our recent report, envisions a holistic approach that balances environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic resilience. It emphasizes transparent, accountable, and inclusive governance structures to ensure marginalized communities have a voice in decision-making and benefit equitably from the energy transition.

The framework integrates circular economy principles, including recycling and resource efficiency, to reduce dependency on virgin materials and strengthen supply chain resilience. Developing a skilled and adaptable workforce through education and training ensures economic opportunities are accessible to those directly affected by mining and processing activities. Finally, multi-stakeholder collaboration among government, industry, civil society, and academia is critical to align policies, share knowledge, and mobilize resources, creating a cohesive and actionable strategy for a sustainable, just, and inclusive critical minerals sector in India.

What can different stakeholders do?

• Industry and industry collaborations: Embed sustainability across procurement, production, R&D, and supply chains; collaborate with suppliers; partner with governments, academia, and training institutions for inclusive workforce development; pilot environmentally positive technologies; leverage platforms and civil society to co-develop guidelines and local development plans.

• Government and policymakers: Enforce ESG safeguards and sector standards; support multi-stakeholder platforms; fund inclusive skill development; create incentives like green credits and blended finance; integrate community voices and promote India’s leadership internationally.

• Think tanks & civil society organisations: Develop research, policy guidance, and roadmaps; convene stakeholders for evidence sharing and pilot projects; ensure transparency and accountability; provide expertise on skills, biodiversity, and governance; monitor impact and build local capacity.

• Foundations & philanthropy: Invest in research, pilots, and scaling interventions; support inclusion and local economies; convene cross-sector dialogues; provide catalytic funding; fund monitoring, evaluation, and blended finance for private sector engagement.

• Academia: Conduct applied research on clean technologies and critical minerals; develop industry-aligned curriculum; provide policy and investment guidance; act as knowledge hubs; foster innovation ecosystems with startups, MSMEs, and industry players.

Read our report to learn more about the five action pathways outlined that are designed to operationalise just transition principles across the emerging clean technology and critical minerals sectors.

We welcome partners from all sectors to join us in co-creating pathways for critical minerals supply chain that is inclusive, resilient, and aligned with India’s clean energy ambitions. Reach out to us at [email protected] to collaborate and explore opportunities.