As Europe accelerates its green transition through e-mobility, renewable energy and advanced communication technologies, the demand for critical raw materials (CRM) is set to rise sharply. There is also continued used in military applications. The extraction of these materials often stirs controversy, particularly when mining is proposed in Europe’s own “backyard.” This blog delves into the complexities of NIMBYism (“Not In My Backyard”) in this context, challenging the simplistic view that local resistance to mining is merely selfishness. Instead, I argue for a more nuanced understanding that considers the deep-seated connections between people, their environments, and the broader implications of the green transition.
Does local opposition hinder necessary progress towards the green transition? NIMBYism as a label is often associated with a particular demographic: including older, white, property-owning individuals living in rural areas. This stereotypically suggests they oppose developments like CRM mining because they find it dirty and noisy, aesthetically displeasing, generating commercial traffic, or reducing property values.
Stereotypical social justice and activist campaigns against mining are different: more diverse and committed groups of activists, with concern for environmental and community values, and certainly less interest in conserving property values and the rural idyll for landowners. But why is “NIMBYism” labelled differently to “activism” when both describe movements to halt mining projects and increasingly CRM projects in Europe? To box certain people’s actions and feelings into specific categories is unhelpful.
This simplistic view fails to capture the diversity and legitimacy of local opposition. Consider the case of the “Nanas,” a group of so-called NIMBYs whose main focus since 2014 has been opposing fracking in the UK, beginning in Fylde, a rural part of Lancashire, north west England (there is also a similar group in Australia). These are women, most of retirement age, and as they admit, they transgress the NIMBY/activist divide. To a certain extent, they are privileged: but they are also marginalised in terms of gender and age.
These women have rallied to oppose fracking in their backyards and on their doorsteps. Their campaigning is not only environmental, but intergenerational, focusing on retaining the rights or life chances of their grandchildren. Nanas knit while protesting and give out cups of tea, wearing yellow pinafores, the clothing of a bygone age in the UK. Theirs is a place-based social movement, with resistance highlighting the threat to social relationships and to the land. As Scott & Smith have suggested, campaigns elsewhere over a decade ago for a “right to landscape” in a region of Ontario, Canada over proposals for renewable energy projects could easily be labelled as NIMBY, despite making similar, broader environmental justice claims. So-called NIMBYism can also be an assertion of care.
A fundamental aspect of human behaviour is the desire for agency and control and the desire to belong with others and with a place. Consultation with affected parties, a fundamental aspect of good practice for all mining projects and green energy initiatives, considers everyone’s opinions and feelings. Obtaining a community’s “Social Licence to Operate” should apply to green projects, as it does to conventional mining in many countries, particularly where Indigenous people are affected. Limiting public participation and local control over decision making in “green” projects is counterproductive. Easing private investment in CRM, as happened with the Renewable Energy Law in Mexico (2008), erodes local agency and control. Mining for CRM in Europe should not follow the same path, as campaigns opposing lithium production in Portugal are demonstrating.
With community and land in mind, we must also examine another reason why people may refuse mining on their doorsteps: what happens when everything is gone? Entire cities and towns have been vacated where a CRM has run out, as with cryolite in Greenland. Mining can be short-lived, with boom-and-bust cycles (as Frank Melcher explains in his blog post). Planning for mine closure is part of planning to mine. Perhaps a landscape can be “returned to nature,” as with the Svea coal mine on the Norwegian territory of Svalbard, which was at a cost of €1.35 million, or turned into something along the lines of the Eden Project, a successful eco-education destination located on a former mine site in Cornwall, UK.
The idea of “common good” has sometimes been used as a justification for mining and green energy development projects. To use a technical term, places where these projects are intended to happen and where they occur are often called “sacrifice zones,” But people often live and work there, unlike the corporate management and mine workers. Those that come in and mine, as in both miners and company bosses, earn money from such a business, and the latter do not have to deal with potential or actual harms that come from mining itself. Such is the case for many Sámi people, European Indigenous people who live in the northern parts of Fennoscandia, as Larsen et al. demonstrate regarding the ongoing impacts of mining in Sweden on Sámi land. In other words, miners and company owners gain from the sacrifice of others. The justification for mining of “for the common good” rings hollow; this reading of mining for CRM is actually dehumanising.
As Europe races to secure the raw materials considered essential for its green transition, we must resist the temptation to oversimplify the complex dynamics of local resistance to mining, and to sacrifice landscapes, communities and regions, labelling it inconvenient NIMBYism. Opposition to mining often stems from legitimate concerns about the environment, community, and the future of livelihoods. These concerns are not just obstacles in the path of the energy transition, but essential expressions of agency and belonging. For the green transition to be truly sustainable and just, it must be grounded in genuine consultation, fair compensation, and respect for the voices of those directly affected. Not all projects, therefore, are likely to meet distributive or procedural justice criteria. By redefining the “common good” to genuinely serve all, we can ensure that the transition benefits more than the privileged few, who consume renewable energy and products without sacrificing their own environments. A “just” energy transition is not just ethically imperative, but also crucial for fostering long-term social and environmental resilience.
