electric vehicles—don’t
catch fire when we power
them on. Cobalt’s value is
reflected on commodities
markets: It topped $51,500
per ton in September, a
32-month high.
Sixty percent of the
world’s refined cobalt
comes from one place:
the copper-and-cobalt
belt in the south of the
Democratic Republic of
the Congo. If there’s a
ground zero for cobalt, it’s
the mining city of Kolwezi,
a place buzzing with gold-
rush vitality. But Kolwezi
is rarely mentioned in EV
automakers’ “battery day”
presentations. There’s a
reason for that. For the
past decade, mining in
Kolwezi and the DRC has
been synonymous with hu-extracted minerals.
One company stepping
up is Mercedes-Benz par-
ent company Daimler. The
German auto giant made
headlines this summer for
its €40 billion ($47 billion)
pledge to go all-electric
by 2030. For a luxury-car
brand that sells more than
2 million vehicles per year,
that’s a lot of cobalt.
But as it ramped up its
EV ambitions, Daimler also
set out to map all the places
on the planet—from mines
to smelters—that handle
cobalt for its batteries. As of
March 31, it had identified- It has sent teams of as-
sessors to one-third of the
locations, aiming to certify
that each supplier meets its
strict standards—including
no kids in the mines and no
contaminants spewed into
the water or air. The plan
is to extend the audits to
battery components lithium
and nickel too. Suppliers
who don’t comply will get
the boot, Daimler says.
NGOs have pushed the
corporate world into this
action: In 2017, when Am-
nesty put out a report card
on companies’ handling
of child labor in the cobalt
belt, most carmakers,
including Daimler, got poor
grades. Much has hap-
pened since then, including
the formation of the Global
Battery Alliance, a consor-
tium of over 60 companies,
NGOs, and monitoring
groups, aiming to ensure
the creation of a sustain-
able, ethically sourced
cobalt supply chain.
Ethical procurement
isn’t a panacea, notes Mathy
Stanislaus, director of
public policy and engage-
ment for the alliance. “You
have to invest in the root
cause,” he says. “This is a
poverty issue.” With that in
mind, since 2019 Daimler
has also been investing in
Kolwezi. It has earmarked
€1 million for a program
that has so far moved
nearly 5,000 children out
of the mines and into class-
rooms. The same initiative
trains women and girls to
be farmers, seamstresses,
and business owners. Many
of the women and children
vow: They’re not going
back to the mines.
—Bernhard Warnerman rights abuses. The co-
balt boom there coincided
with the forced eviction of
Congolese communities
from resource-rich lands.
Artisanal miners were
detained unlawfully, often
violently. And then there’s
the staggering number
of children toiling in the
region’s open-pit cobalt
mines.
“While technologies
like electric vehicles are
essential for shifting away
from fossil fuels, the battery
revolution carries its own
risks for human rights and
the planet,” Mark Dum-
mett, director of Amnesty
International’s Global Is-
sues Program, said in
February, challenging busi-
ness to create supply chains
that contain only ethicallyBATTERY FOR A BENZ
The Daimler unit has pledged to
sell only electric cars by 2030.COURTESY OF DAIMLER AG