https://seas-at-risk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Breaking-Free-From-Mining.pdf
- A 2050 blueprint for a world without mining on land and in the deep-sea presents evidence-based alternatives for a different future in which primary metal extraction has become a thing of the past. Realizing how difficult it is to work to bring about something we can’t even see in our imaginations, the paper is an invitation to imagine a world without mining. This is critical to generate positive images of a future with no mining (or at least much less mining, instead of more) that can help citizens, communities, movements and policy-makers guide their action in the present.
CIRCULARITY AND INNOVATION – A FIRST STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Circular economy policies in the 2010s emphasised recycling in a time where actual recycling rates for many metals were trivial while reuse, repair, remanufacture and lifetime extension were being mostly ignored. Policy and legal changes as well as public pressure reframed the “problem” of e-waste into a growing opportunity for urban mining so that effective metal upcycling and reuse of products not only became mandatory (with defined thresholds), but actually thrived, particularly when required recycled-content targets in manufacture were set and enforced.166 In the 2010s China had already established that new products were required to contain a minimum of 20% recycled materials by 2025.167
SPACE, HOUSING AND CITIES
The localisation of neighbourhood economies and the transport revolution made cities walkable again – inaugurating the new “15-minute city” concept176 – while the urban landscape was redesigned to accommodate urban horticulture and farming (including beekeeping), foodscaping in parks, vertical gardens and rooftop farming, community composting and biowaste-management initiatives.
TIME IS…LIFE: THE TIME-USE REVOLUTION
Changes in mobility, production and transport of goods and usership were facilitated, together with many other social and economic changes – such as localised food production, increased social and political engagement, etc.– by shifts in work environments and patterns. Home working increased exponentially during COVID lockdowns, and was continued, generally on a part-time basis, when the pandemic was tamed. Working from home allowed greater flexibility, reduced commuting and allowed an inversion of urbanisation trends and rural reflourishing.
BREAKING FREE FROM THE GROWTH PARADIGM
Serge Latouche summarised this shift through the “8 Rs” of the virtual circle of degrowth: 221
• Reassess what matters;
• Reframe key notions such as wealth, poverty, value, scarcity and abundance;
• Restructure the productive apparatus and social relations to fit these new values;
• Redistribute wealth and access to natural resources between North and South and between classes, generations and individuals;
• Relocalise savings, financing, production and consumption;
• Reduce production and consumption, especially for goods and services with little use value but high environmental impact;
• Repair and Re-use products; and
• Recycle waste.