Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases

This briefing by RMI argues that the energy transition's reliance on critical minerals requires a shift from treating commodities as undifferentiated goods to implementing mine-to-market traceability. The document highlights how the lack of transparency hides human rights violations and environmental damage, and proposes five key actions to enable commodity differentiation and ensure a just transition.

• The current global trade model treats critical minerals as undifferentiated commodities, which obscures the specific environmental and social impacts of different mines and prevents the market from signaling demand for responsibly sourced materials.
• Lack of supply chain visibility leads to significant sustainability failures, including child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo where children as young as 6 earn less than $2 per day, and catastrophic mining accidents in Brazil and Hungary.
• RMI identifies five essential actions to catalyze a paradigm shift toward commodity differentiation at scale: strengthening product-level standards, deploying tracking and auditing technology, aggregating demand through buyers' alliances, rallying investors via investors' alliances, and tightening regulations and public procurement.
• Traceability is feasible, as demonstrated by the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, which launched a watch with fully traceable precious materials and aims for all its watches to be produced this way by 2025.
• RMI plans to develop a roadmap for standardizing product performance and achieving traceability on a commodity-by-commodity basis, beginning with aluminum and steel.

APA

RMI (2022). Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases. https://rmi.org/resources/supply-chain-traceability-looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/

Chicago

RMI. Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases. 2022. https://rmi.org/resources/supply-chain-traceability-looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases |date=21 November 2022 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/supply-chain-traceability-looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2022supply, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Supply Chain Traceability: Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2022}, month = nov, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/supply-chain-traceability-looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }