Selected for the Global Economic Symposium 2011

With increasing societal awareness for climate and sustainability issues and prices for fossil energy sources rising, green technologies have emerged as a viable and promising field for business growth as well as for distinctive policy-making. Previously neglected by mainstream political agendas, governments and companies, nowadays widespread initiatives can be found – mostly in resource dependent countries or regions such as the EU, the US, China and Japan – to foster a Green New Deal. Green technologies heavily depend on numerous limited mineral resources, the supply of which mainly originates in developing or emerging countries. Access to these resources has thus gained strategic importance for technology businesses and their respective countries: The recent debate about China’s quasi-monopoly in the market for Rare Earths has triggered a reorientation towards resource policy, so far culminating in considerations about interlinking development aid with resource contracts. Without supranational coordination and a timely combination of policies on the one hand and a shift in focus of businesses to resource efficient and sustainable business practices on the other hand, a race for mineral resources will evolve not only between companies but between nations as well.