Raw Materials and Sustainable Development Goals: the EU Policy Contribution

Many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations for 2030 (UN General Assembly 2015) could not be reached without the contribution of raw materials. Raw materials are fuelling the manufacturing sector and creating jobs and value added along the supply chains. At the same time, the provision of raw materials can generate negative environmental and social impacts, constraining the achievement of other development goals. At European level, policy initiatives dedicated to raw materials have focused both on resource availability and efficiency issues (EC 2011), but also on security of supply concerns (EC 2008) and circular economy (EC 2015). Moreover, a regulation has been issued on the responsible sourcing of minerals from conflict affected areas (EU 2017). For combining efforts in this field, the stakeholder platform Raw Materials European Innovation Partnership (RM EIP) was created in order to spur innovation and research in the field (EC 2012). In order to support the EU raw materials policy, the European Commission (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing the EC Raw Materials Information System1 and issued the 2016 Raw Materials Scoreboard (EC 2016). This paper investigates the links between raw materials sectors and the SDGs, based on an in-depth analysis of the literature (on social impacts of the mining sector) and the result of the RM EIP monitoring 2016 (EC 2017). Challenges for the sustainability of the mining sector regards, in particular, health and safety for workers and local communities and land use conflicts. Results also show that the highest potential of the raw materials policy in terms of contribution to the SDGs concerns the goals on economic growth (8), innovation (9) and peace (16). Additional indirect contributions of the RM sectors to other goals (e.g. green energy, zero hunger and good health) are also highlighted.