(68d) Community-Engaged Life Cycle Analysis: Ensuring Sustainability While Protecting Sovereignty

Decarbonization of the transportation sector is critical for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change. Often, transportation decarbonization technologies – such as electric vehicles – require minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, and more. Increased decarbonization may therefore result in increased mining operations in order to acquire these minerals. It is critical that these minerals are acquired in ways that do not cause more environmental problems than those they mitigate through their use in decarbonization technologies, and it is critical that life cycle analysis (LCA) frameworks assess the impact of these operations in a holistic manner. Given the history of extractive industry operations located on Indigenous lands, it is also imperative that LCA frameworks incorporate Indigenous worldviews and knowledge systems. Current LCA frameworks almost entirely rely on scientific ecological knowledge (SEK), excluding traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and other ways of knowing. As sovereign Peoples, Indigenous Peoples have a right to assess its sustainability based on the criteria and knowledge systems they see fit. LCA frameworks centered on SEK alone limit who gets to define sustainability and risk violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples to determine their own priorities using their own institutions.

Collaborating with the Ojibwe Nations, we expand on a co-developed community-engaged LCA (CE-LCA) framework to assess the potential impacts of a proposed copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. CE-LCA aims to be a framework inclusive of diverse worldviews and knowledge systems, in this case rooted in the Four Orders (Physical, Plant, Animal, and Human) central to Ojibwe lifeways. CE-LCA centers community priorities, values, and culture to ensure that LCA results are locally-relevant. In this case, we highlight the relationships between the Four Orders, assessing how mining operations impact the ecological, social, and cultural health that underpin these relationships. Existing work conducted by Ojibwe tribes and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission identifies members of the Four Orders most at risk from climate change impacts. Using both SEK and TEK, we build on this work to illustrate the risk factors to each of the relationships between these species and their relation to Ojibwe health and sovereignty. In contrast to existing, separate environmental and social LCA frameworks, the results from the CE-LCA process provide a holistic, integrated assessment of impacts on environmental, human, and cultural health and the interconnectedness between them. Ultimately, the results will identify what impacts are most critical for mining operations to address to ensure a sustainable supply of the minerals needed for decarbonization.