Compound criticality of bauxite production: implications for sustainability and trade neo-colonialism

Abstract

We describe bauxite as having compound criticality. (1) It is a critical raw material (CRM) from which alumina and thereby aluminium are produced, and aluminium has the highest production levels of all metals deemed significant to the Clean Energy Transition. (2) Gallium is a by-product CRM, extracted during alumina refining. (3) Multiple other CRM by-products could be extracted during alumina refining: scandium, lithium, cobalt, titanium and REE. (4) Production is profoundly influenced by price inelasticity (for by-products), regime instability of bauxite production and supply chain bottlenecks. We review the geology of bauxite ore deposits as a function of complex CRM supply potential, and interrogate the trait of criticality using four of the world's dominant producer nations of bauxite and potential patterns of value addition from raw materials to refined products. Trade agreements and mitigation strategies to ensure security of supply in consumer regions prioritize removal of low-cost bauxite by large-scale mining operations and shipping of unprocessed ore at high CO 2 footprint from producer nations. Ore-refining nations have investments that are deemed extractive because they remove large quantities of raw material for export with minimal or no in-country processing and they can also place producer nations in debt. Opposition to neo-colonial debt-trap policies and extractive practices increases regime instability and thereby criticality. We highlight how societal-environmental-political interactions and the mineral-energy nexus in the bauxite-aluminium supply chain are subject to increasing turbulence, which may reshape the geographies of supply chains.