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Short abstract:

This paper explores how German mining professionals shape the ethical legacies of mining projects in the Global South. It critically examines how they position themselves as technology developers and just transition makers, while neglecting their contribution to socio-environmental injustices.

Long abstract:

While the discipline of geology is often assumed to be “only about rocks”, authors have highlighted its significance for colonial relations of power (Hecht, 2023; Yusoff, 2022). Conversely, individual professionals and professional societies, are increasingly pushing for just and sustainable practices in contexts of mineral extraction (see Ayeh & Bleicher, 2021 on the emerging field of ‘geoethics’). At the surge of global demand for Energy Transition Minerals and Metals (ETMs), this paper studies German mining professionals’ roles in implementing these ‘sustainable mining’/’mining for sustainability’ agendas at home and abroad. With virtually no active metal mining projects in its own country, German industry and society is highly dependent on raw material imports. At the same time, though, the mining heritage in former areas of extraction such as the Ore Mountains finds its expression in the export of ‘sustainable’ technologies, know-how and ideas.

Based on multi-sited ethnographic field research in different sites of the German mining community (e.g. industry conferences, transdisciplinary workshops, policy events) and qualitative interviews conducted in the German Ore Mountains, the paper explores the specific roles of white geoscientists and mining engineers in shaping the sustainability and justice legacies of mining projects in the Global South. Instead of doing ‘dirty’ mining jobs, professionals increasingly position themselves as ‘transition makers’ that contribute to the material basis of global energy transitions. Yet by promoting technological solutions to complex arrays of socio-environmental injustices in contexts of extraction, they usually neglect their own role in shaping powerful geological relations and sustainable futures.