The future low-carbon global economy increases the demand for critical raw materials historically extracted from the Global South, leading to high human, social, and environmental costs. Existing technical research tends to focus on providing insights into the market and governmental actors whose economic progress depends on making those resources sustainable (European Commission, 2023). However, these solutions designed for the Global North do not respond to the interests, values, and knowledges of those assuming extractive burdens in the mining sites in the Global South. These trends jeopardize the principle of recognitional justice, endorsed by the IPCC, which strives for a “robust engagement and fair consideration of diverse cultures and perspectives” in climate transitions (IPCC, 2022), in addition to other social and environmental concerns. 

Our panel aims to bring together ongoing research at TU Delft in mapping colonial risk of critical raw materials with researchers in philosophy and ethics of technology and STS, interested in unraveling colonial practices and legacies. The panel will comment on the opening statement of the new blog series on Decolonial Options and Possibilities in Design and Engineering published at 4TU.Ethics. The statement invites researchers to consider decolonial responsibility by recognizing the geopolitical nature of the Critical Raw Material framework and how academic and engineering communities are necessarily positioned in relation to European ambitions for material and energy. Particular questions for the panel include:

• What would be the decolonial dimension of recognitional, participatory, or other aspects of climate justice and material transitions? 
• Do decolonial perspectives fundamentally question the very possibility of fair extractivism?
• How can decolonial perspectives on climate change and/or extractivism inform the design and governance of technologies relying on critical raw materials? 
• (Why) are environmental, justice, and material considerations marginalized in philosophy of technology?

References 
European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Grohol, M., Veeh, C. (2023). Study on the critical raw materials for the EU 2023 : final report, Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/725585 

IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers (H.-O. Pörtner, et al. (eds.)). In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 3-33, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.001.