Geopolitical Mining · Article
2026: No Industrial Economy (or Industrial Security) Without Formal Mining and Social Legitimacy
Authors: Marta Rivera | Eduardo Zamanillo
If we already accept that any serious industrial economy rests on mining, the critical question now is how we build and sustain its legitimacy.
For years, mining behaved in the public narrative as if it had to apologise for existing. It was treated as a necessary but uncomfortable activity, something that had to stay at the margins of conversations about development, industrial strategy or national prestige. The centre of gravity moved elsewhere: financial markets, stock indices, asset valuations, spreads and liquidity.
In the last year, that hierarchy has shifted. Re-industrialisation, economic security and supply chain resilience entered the mainstream of economic and political debate. Senior officials and heads of government began to speak openly about where batteries, chips, turbines, cables and specialised equipment will be produced, and under which rules (Davos FMF, Critical Minerals Ministerial, etc.). Behind this renewed vocabulary sits a simple question: who can actually produce what they need, at scale and on time?
As soon as that question is taken seriously, mining reappears. Not as an exception or an afterthought, but as part of the infrastructure that sustains an industrial economy. If a country wants factories, networks and equipment, it needs materials. And at the beginning of that chain of materials there are always mines: deposits explored, permitted, financed, built and operated under specific institutional conditions.
Once this is accepted, the debate looks different. The central issue becomes how societies understand and judge the role of formal mining in this new industrial economy, and how they decide which projects are legitimate anchors of their future and which are not.
China Saw It First: From Resources to Geopolitical Mining
This change of perspective did not start in a vacuum. For more than two decades, China has treated minerals as strategic assets. Beijing invested in exploration, long term offtake agreements, processing facilities, refining capacity and logistical corridors. It integrated mining decisions with its broader industrial, technological and foreign policy agendas. Rare earths, nickel, graphite, lithium, copper and a long list of other materials were never just commodities. They were elements in a larger design.
A significant part of the West followed a different path. Industrial capacity was offshored, processing and refining were relocated, and mining itself was often treated as something that belonged to the periphery. Economic success was increasingly measured from the perspective of design, services and finance, while the material base moved further away from political and social attention.
The result is well known. Supply chains for a wide range of critical materials became concentrated in a small number of jurisdictions. Control over production, processing and refining was no longer diffuse or redundant, but increasingly centred in a few states and a handful of large companies. Vulnerability ceased to be an abstract concept and became a concrete risk for industries, militaries and public services.
This was the starting point of Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining: the idea that mining had migrated from the realm of resource economics to the field of geopolitics. The book mapped the new distribution of power around minerals and the consequences of that shift. The present article takes that diagnosis as a given and moves to the next layer: what happens when the world not only recognises the geopolitical nature of mining, but also decides to rebuild industrial capacity on top of it.
United States: Industrial Security as National Security
The most explicit expression of this turn has come from the United States. In its recent National Security Strategy and related policy documents, Washington links national security directly to industrial security. A strong, diversified and resilient industrial base is described as a condition for strategic autonomy, technological leadership and social stability.
From that starting point, the United States has launched a sequence of measures that all point in the same direction:
- a renewed industrial policy focused on semiconductors, clean energy technologies and strategic manufacturing;
- large scale incentives to locate or relocate production within allied territory;
- efforts to redesign parts of the supply architecture for critical minerals and materials.
In major forums, from Davos to the Future Minerals Forum and the recent Critical Minerals Ministerial, US officials have repeated the same core message: a country that aspires to lead must be able to produce key components and systems, and must have credible access to the minerals that make them possible.
This is more than a rhetorical shift. It places the worker and the productive base back at the centre of strategy. It also clarifies that financial depth, by itself, is not enough. Power and resilience depend again on factories, logistics, infrastructure and the material systems that support them.
The New Industrial Economy: How Production Is Being Reorganised
What we call here the new industrial economy is not a return to a nostalgic past. It is a reorganisation of production around three pragmatic concerns:
- Where essential goods will be manufactured, from batteries and cables to turbines and medical equipment.
- Under which rules and standards those goods will be produced.
- With which base of skills, infrastructure and institutions they will be sustained over time.
Supply chain diversification, friend shoring, industrial policy and strategic stockpiles are all different responses to the same question: how to build an economy that can keep operating under pressure and change.
In this context, mining appears as part of the foundation. It provides the materials for the equipment that runs factories, the networks that move electricity, the vehicles that move people and goods, and the tools that allow agriculture, health and education systems to function. When a state decides to re-industrialise, it is implicitly deciding how it will secure that foundation.
The key question then becomes: what does recent evidence tell us about the contribution of formal mining to growth, employment and development in this new scenario?
What Recent Evidence Shows: Mining, Growth and Economic Density
Several institutions that rarely share the same stage have converged on a similar diagnosis.
The World Bank’s 2014 report, “The Contribution of the Mining Sector to Socioeconomic and Human Development”, looked at mineral dependent low and middle income countries over two decades. It found that many of them experienced faster GDP growth and stronger improvements in the Human Development Index than non resource economies in comparable conditions, particularly in education and health. Where governance was more robust and linkages were encouraged, mining revenues helped expand infrastructure and social indicators. Where governance remained weak, volatility and inequality persisted.
A decade later, “Transforming Metals and Minerals into Jobs and Lasting Prosperity” (World Bank, 2025) updates this logic for the age of critical minerals. It frames minerals as inputs for energy systems, digital infrastructure and urban development, and emphasises that demand growth alone does not guarantee better lives. Lasting prosperity emerges when mineral revenues and investment are translated into jobs, infrastructure, services and productive capabilities that outlive the mine itself.
These figures matter for two reasons. First, they confirm that mining is not an isolated enclave. It forms part of a wider productive fabric that includes industry, logistics, services and knowledge. Second, they show that the impact of mining depends heavily on the density and quality of these linkages. A mine attached to a thick ecosystem of firms, skills and infrastructure contributes differently from one that remains disconnected from its surroundings.
At a comparative level, the Mining Contribution Index (MCI, 7th edition) published by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) offers a structured way to think about this. The index ranks countries according to the relative importance of mining in export revenues, fiscal income, GDP and employment. High MCI scores often signal significant exposure to price cycles and political attention. Yet in jurisdictions where institutional quality is higher and linkages have been intentionally cultivated, this strong contribution has gone hand in hand with broader human development gains.
Taken together, these analyses point in a consistent direction: formal mining, embedded in a coherent industrial and institutional strategy, supports more complex and resilient economies. It anchors employment, stimulates local and national suppliers, finances infrastructure and strengthens the material base on which other sectors build.
A Brief Reminder: Minerals in Everyday Life
Most specialised audiences already understand that minerals underpin advanced technologies: batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, data centres and defence systems. It is equally important to keep in view the rest of the picture.
Minerals are present in the steel and copper that support and connect a house, in the fertilisers and machinery that make modern agriculture possible, in the buses and trucks that move people and goods, in the equipment that sustains hospitals and laboratories, and in the tools that shape plastics, toys and everyday objects. Behind almost everything we use, there is at some point a mineral that was explored, extracted, processed and transformed.
Remembering this helps to frame discussions about mining not as a remote technical topic, but as a question about the material conditions that allow societies to live, work and innovate.
Legitimacy as a Strategic Variable
Once the role of minerals in the new industrial economy is clear, legitimacy becomes a strategic variable. It shapes whether projects advance or stall, whether capital flows into or away from certain jurisdictions, and whether communities see mining as part of their future or as a threat to it.
In this context, legitimacy can be understood as the degree to which a society recognises formal mining as a meaningful contributor to its long-term aspirations. Several elements converge in that recognition:
- Clear and consistent rules, applied with predictability.
- Visible benefits in the form of employment, infrastructure, services and opportunities that communities can connect to their own trajectories.
- Institutions that accompany the life of the project, from permitting and monitoring to closure and post-mining transitions.
- A public narrative that explains the role of mining in the industrial, social and territorial project of the country.
Projects that combine solid technical performance with credible governance and territorial engagement tend to enjoy more stable operating environments. They become reference points for what a modern mine can offer and for how it can coexist with other economic activities and social expectations.
In the new industrial economy, this kind of legitimacy is not a complementary layer. It is part of the core architecture that determines which projects are bankable, which partnerships are politically sustainable and which territories participate in the opportunities that re-industrialisation opens.
When Formal Mining Retreats
In many regions, formal mining has been, for decades, one of the few structured sources of employment, infrastructure and state presence. It has brought roads, power lines, schools, clinics and logistics platforms to areas that otherwise would have remained disconnected from the main circuits of the economy.
When this presence disappears without a realistic alternative, territories reorganise themselves. Extraction does not necessarily stop; it often changes form. Activities with lower standards may expand, informal economies gain weight, and institutions lose influence over what happens on the ground. Employment becomes more fragile. Environmental and social impacts can become more diffuse and harder to address.
Strengthening formal mining that is demanding in its standards and strongly linked to local and national development paths offers a different trajectory. It provides a more consistent platform from which communities can build livelihoods, skills and projects that extend beyond the life of a single operation.
A Window of Opportunity
The current realignment around critical minerals and industrial policy creates a window of opportunity that is not distributed equally, but that is open to many.
In countries like the United States, the priority is to re-industrialise: rebuild capacities that were weakened or relocated, and anchor new technologies in domestic territory.
In many countries across Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia, the priority is to industrialise further: use this cycle in minerals to move up the value chain, strengthen productive ecosystems and expand the range of dignified jobs available.
In both cases, the combination that matters is similar:
- a solid mineral base, explored and developed with long horizons;
- institutions capable of converting revenues and investment into infrastructure, skills and productive diversification;
- and a continuous effort to strengthen the legitimacy of formal mining in the eyes of communities, workers and broader society.
Countries and companies that manage to align these three elements are better positioned to turn the new industrial economy into tangible improvements in living standards and strategic autonomy.
Why Legitimacy Work Matters Now
The new industrial economy places mining back at the centre of strategy. Recent evidence confirms that, under the right conditions, formal mining contributes to growth, employment and the thickening of economic life. The decisive factor is how those conditions are designed and maintained.
Legitimacy work, in this sense, is a strategic task. It means connecting the material contribution of mining with the everyday experience of people and with the long term decisions of states, companies and investors. It requires data, institutional frameworks and a language that allows societies to see mining as part of a coherent industrial project, with clear responsibilities and clear benefits.
This is the space in which we choose to work from Geopolitical Mining and Geopolitical Mining Advisory: the intersection between minerals, legitimacy and the new industrial economy. Our aim is to help decision makers read this system with clarity and to support those who want to build projects, portfolios and policies that make sense in this new era, for capital, for countries and for the communities that live with mining every day.
For board-level insight and decision support on mining, legitimacy and industrial strategy, visit Geopolitical Mining Advisory .
For the full Geopolitical Mining framework behind this article, see our book Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining .