The Critical Minerals That Matter: Aotearoa/NZ’s Basic Needs in a Global Catastrophe

Matt Boyd, Nick Wilson

TLDR/Summary

• The NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment released a Draft Critical Minerals List, for public consultation (now closed).
• The list is based on a report by Wood MacKenzie which identified a short list of critical minerals.
• We find that the list could pay more attention to the minerals essential to NZ in a global catastrophe scenario.
• Therefore, we made a submission on the draft list that takes this global catastrophic risk management perspective.
• We strongly agree that the following minerals already included should remain on the list: Potassium, Phosphate, Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Magnesium, and Selenium
• Given changing needs following a global catastrophe, the list could additionally include Gold, Silver, Iron, Calcium (Limestone), Thermal Coal, Salt (sodium chloride), Iodine, and Geological Hydrogen (and perhaps other minerals).
• The global catastrophic risk lens should be applied across all strategic analyses the government undertakes.

Two Tales of the Apocalypse

In the book The Knowledge Lewis Dartnell speculates on how someone might rebuild civilisation from scratch after an apocalypse. The essential minerals he mentions, in rough order of priority, include those needed for agriculture (potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus for fertiliser), food preservation (salt), thermal energy (coal), lime/calcium carbonate (multipurpose for agriculture, hygiene, safe drinking water, smelting metal, making glass, and construction materials), the pyrite rocks (to make sulphuric acid for chemical production processes), clay and lime mortars plus sand and gravel for cement, and iron for steel.

In The End of the World is Just the Beginning Peter Zeihan examines global demographic trends and geopolitical strife, and warns of future severe disruptions to global trade, and the potential for industrial collapse in many regions. His analysis underscores the importance of access to iron ore, bauxite (aluminium), copper, cobalt, lithium, silver, gold, molybdenum, platinum, and the rare earth elements.

The overarching point of these two books is that industrial processes and the wellbeing and quality of life that depend on them, are in turn dependent on a critical set of key inputs. The critical minerals. Preserving what already exists is clearly easier than rebuilding an industrial society from scratch, so it is wise for societies to ensure continuing access to critical minerals.

Global Catastrophic Risks

Production, trade and supply of critical minerals is threatened by global catastrophic risks such as nuclear war, supervolcano eruptions, extreme pandemics, cyberattacks and solar storms. These all threaten global infrastructure and could precipitate the collapse of production or global trade (see for example our Hazard Profile on nuclear war and NZ).

A core problem for island nations is that many of them, such as Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) are effectively the ‘last bus stop on the route’ and could suffer immense consequences in these contexts that accelerate the risk of societal collapse. Access to critical minerals is needed to secure basic needs such as clean water (eg, chlorine), food production (NPK fertilisers), and heating (eg, coal for thermal energy in case of electrical failures).

MBIE’s Draft Critical Minerals List

To its credit, the NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) recently released a Draft Critical Minerals List for public consultation. MBIE’s justification for creating a critical minerals list centres on ensuring economic stability, supporting technological advancement and clean energy transitions, strengthening international partnerships, and addressing potential supply chain vulnerabilities for minerals essential to NZ’s current and future needs.

The List is extracted from a report by Wood Mackenzie, which also draws on critical mineral lists of other countries. In preparing the report industry stakeholders were consulted and the process included: Definition of Critical Minerals within the NZ context, analysis of NZ mineral production, consumption and trade, data gap analysis, development of a Long List identifying minerals produced by and/or essential to NZ, and a supply risk assessment. The result is the list of minerals in Table 1:

Not Business as Usual

We note that the Wood MacKenzie methodology appears to assume that a degree of global trade continues, as “Global Reserves” and “Global Supply” are key factors in the supply risk assessment. However, there are plausible scenarios where global trade is completely disrupted (see for example our Hazard Profile detailing the impact of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war on NZ). In such cases even trade with Australia may take some time to re-establish at scale. We feel that the analysis does not yet adequately consider a range of global catastrophic risk scenarios.

The Wood MacKenzie Report defines critical minerals: “to be included in the draft list, a mineral must be:

• Essential to NZ’s economy, national security, and technology needs, including renewable energy technologies and components to support our transition to a low emissions future and/or
• In demand by NZ’s international partners, and
• Susceptible to supply disruptions domestically and internationally.

Essential is defined as critical to maintaining the NZ’s economy today and into the future and not readily substitutable.”

This definition, and the “total mineral demand” calculation performed for the Wood MacKenzie Report, appears to omit minerals that, while not essential under business-as-usual, may attain particular significance in situations where global conditions are radically altered, such as following a global catastrophe that potentially lasts years or a decade or more (eg, nuclear winter).

We are most concerned about the class of risks that would cause the most harm to NZ (including a risk of permanent economic and social damage). To reiterate, these global catastrophic risks (GCRs) include: major volcanic eruptions at global pinch points, nuclear war (with or without nuclear winter or high-altitude electromagnetic pulse), severe pandemics (natural or engineered), major global food shock, global industry disabling solar storms, devastating global cyber-attack, catastrophe from misaligned artificial intelligence (AI), large asteroid/comet impact, etc.

Such risks have the greatest expected harm (when likelihood and impact are multiplied). We have written a detailed report about this kind of risk and how NZ might ensure resilience. Although individually such risks may have a low probability of occurring in any given year, collectively they are plausible, and some are even likely in the long term.

Critical Minerals for Basic Needs

Following a global catastrophe, it will be necessary to focus on ensuring that basic needs (water, food, shelter, energy, communications, transport) are able to be supplied and distributed.

In catastrophe circumstances minerals such as Potassium and Phosphate (which are not on our international partners’ Critical Mineral Lists) may be particularly important, as might Gold, Silver, Coal, Iron, Calcium/Lime. NZ’s critical minerals analysis needs to include a global catastrophic risk lens and contemplate the downstream context following the potential extreme catastrophes listed above.

The particulars of which minerals are “In demand by NZ’s international partners” should include analysis of scenarios where global trade has collapsed and trade operates on a restricted regional basis (eg, NZ, Australia, Indonesia), as this context may alter what is “in demand” regionally.

We made a submission to MBIE about the Draft Critical Minerals List. Our main point in making the submission was that decisions around critical minerals must be taken through a lens that includes global catastrophic risks where international trade is radically altered. There could be a completely new context, and therefore new priorities could emerge (ie, where global reserves and global supply are inaccessible).

This perspective should supplement considerations of mineral needs under business-as-usual for economy, trade, sustainability, and general security considerations.

Through the global catastrophe lens we strongly agreed with the following minerals already included on the Draft List: Potassium, Phosphate, Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Magnesium, and Selenium.

But we also recommended that the following be added to the list: Gold, Silver, Iron, Calcium (Limestone), Thermal Coal, Salt (sodium chloride), Iodine, and Geological Hydrogen.

Our reasoning was as follows:

• Potassium and Phosphate: Critical for industrial agriculture and food security.
• Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Magnesium, and Selenium: Essential for addressing soil deficiencies in NZ and for alloyed steel production.
• Limestone/Calcium and Aggregate/Sand: Crucial for construction and road repairs, especially important due to NZ’s extreme dependence on road transport.
• Iron (and Bauxite): Vital for tool-making and construction. Domestic production capability important in case of trade disruptions.
• Thermal Coal: For heating, and potential energy source if hydroelectric generation is impaired due to climate disruptions (eg, nuclear winter or volcanic winter).
• Salt (sodium chloride): Essential for food preservation without refrigeration and chlorine for water treatment.
• Gold (and/or Silver): Potentially needed to base a new currency in case of economic collapse, or for purchasing critical imports from Australia and Indonesia.
• Iodine: Important for preventing dietary deficiencies and producing disinfectants.
• Minerals used as Catalysts for Biofuel Production: Critical for producing biofuels to run agricultural machinery, interisland ships, and other transport in post-disaster scenarios.
• Geological Hydrogen Gas: Potential future fuel source in case of disruptions to liquid fuel imports

We are concerned that much risk mitigation activity in NZ addresses only smaller more common risks (eg, floods, earthquakes, 10% global fuel supply disruptions) and therefore leaves most of the expected future harm to New Zealanders unaddressed. In contrast we note that the US has a Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act (2022) and the first US report on how to supply ‘basic needs’ in such scenarios is imminent.

Interdependent Sectors

Finally, we note critical links between minerals, agriculture, transport, interisland shipping, liquid fuel and other industries. For example, agriculture depends on mineral inputs, which must be transported, perhaps between islands, using liquid fuel. These issues of resilience to global catastrophe cannot be addressed in isolation, and the global catastrophic risk lens should be applied across the spectrum of resilience initiatives, such as NZ’s National Fuel Security Study, solution scoping for the interisland ferry replacements, when considering coastal shipping, transport infrastructure decisions, crop choices and development and land use strategies.