Mining, Rare Earths, and the Willful Blindness of a Connected World
By Paul Barnett – Founder, Enlightened Enterprise Academy
The BBC’s recent exposé on China’s rare earth mining industry - “Poisoned Water and Scarred Hills” - casts a harsh but necessary light on the environmental and human costs of our modern digital age. The images of toxic waste ponds, radioactive sludge, and scarred landscapes in Bayan Obo and Ganzhou are disturbing, yet familiar. We’ve seen this story before. We shake our heads in concern. And then, for the most part, we look away.
The global attention this report brings to China’s mining practices may well be a welcome relief for mining operations elsewhere, many of which are owned or financed by companies and banks based in the world’s richest countries. But this isn't just China’s problem. It’s ours.
What We Choose Not to See
When environmental devastation and human suffering don’t occur on our own doorsteps, most of us choose to remain, consciously or unconsciously, willfully blind.
“Willful blindness” is not just a metaphor. It is a legal term, defined as the deliberate avoidance of knowledge of facts, used to hold people accountable for actions they claim not to have known about, when that ignorance was a choice. The concept was popularized by Margaret Heffernan in her book Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril. She describes it as “a human phenomenon where people choose not to know something, even when that ignorance causes harm.”
And in the case of mining, particularly rare earths, but not only, it is one of the most consequential examples of our time.
Who Should We Hold Accountable?
When we do choose to act, the question becomes: where should we direct our efforts? Mining is a large, complex system, dependent on a web of interrelated actors. From mining companies and local contractors to financiers, regulators, politicians, technologists, and end-product brands, no single actor holds the whole key to change. That means effective action must be systemic, multi-pronged, and coordinated.
Most activism understandably targets the most visible players: the mining firms, or the authorities that permit harmful practices, often for financial reasons. Many mining operations are concentrated in regions rich in natural resources but poor in economic opportunity, where corruption and exploitation are common.
Targeting those closest to the action seems obvious, but is it the best strategy?
Lessons from the Fashion Industry
The movement to reform the fashion industry offers a different playbook. Campaigners targeting sweatshops and child labor found success not by focusing on the factories themselves, but by shining a light on the global brands that profited from them.
One famous case involved Nike, which came under intense scrutiny in the 1990s for labor abuses in its supply chain. Activists exposed conditions in overseas factories, forcing the brand to adopt codes of conduct, increase transparency, and invest in social responsibility.
The Apple–Foxconn controversy in the 2010s echoed the same theme: major tech brands could no longer pretend they weren’t responsible for labor conditions in the factories that built their products.
So why not apply the same logic to mining, which forms the base layer of so many global supply chains?
Mining Is the Deep End of the Supply Chain
Mining is often the least visible part of the global economy, yet it's foundational. Smartphones, laptops, wind turbines, solar panels, EV batteries - all depend on rare earths and other minerals. That makes mining a keystone industry, and one of the most powerful leverage points for systemic change.
But we don’t usually ask:
Who profits most?
Who underwrites these operations?
Who turns raw materials into globally marketed products?
And who benefits from our silence?
Mining harms are not just the responsibility of miners and regulators. They are enabled by opaque financial flows, inadequate oversight, and supply chains designed to maximise ‘efficiency’ and minimize visibility. To challenge this, we must go beyond individual actors and address the entire system.
Understanding the System: The PESTLE Lens
That’s why I suggested Rob Karpati, a former mining executive and thoughtful industry reformer, write his recent article using the PESTLE framework, a tool for systemic analysis that looks at the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental dimensions of an issue.
His article, An Enlightened Mining Enterprise, offers a practical roadmap for how mining might evolve to align with modern standards of sustainability, ethics, and stakeholder engagement.
Creating a Participatory Learning Network for Change in the Mining
Building on these conversations, we’re now exploring the creation of a Participatory Learning Network (PLN) for the mining industry, a space where stakeholders across the value chain can collaborate, learn, and drive systemic change from the inside out.
To many, the idea of an enlightened mining enterprise may sound like a contradiction. Mining is, by nature, extractive. But that does not mean it must remain exploitative. Not trying to change it is to accept the status quo, and in doing so, accept the damage it continues to cause.
If this vision resonates with you, whether you are in a mining company, a regulatory agency, a financial institution, a technology platform, or the owner of a product brand dependent on mined materials, I invite you to get in touch. We are particularly interested to hear from those who finance the industry, and from impact investors who may currently shy away from mining, perhaps out of concern for what an association might do to their reputation. Yet wise impact investors might recognize the outsized influence they could have by engaging with this sector. As the source of raw materials for so many other industries, mining offers a unique leverage point for addressing the root causes of many 21st-century challenges, from environmental degradation to social injustice and corporate accountability.
Contact me at paul@enlightenedenterprise.ac