Collective security in a fragmented world: avoiding the scramble for critical minerals through coordinated stockpiling

A growing number of governments have adopted or announced unilateral programmes to stockpile copper, cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements and other critical minerals. This comes in response to the increasing weaponisation of trade in these minerals, whose supply chains are geographically concentrated. Without coordination, such programmes will intensify competition for critical minerals and heighten price volatility, risking the very crisis that governments are trying to prevent.

This report explores the role of critical minerals in the energy, digital and rearmament transitions, proposing an institutional architecture for a robust, effective and internationally coordinated stockpiling mechanism. The authors show why the risk is not in stockpiling itself but in the current scramble to secure supplies.

Core recommendations

To meet these challenges, policymakers should cooperate to:

• Anchor the stockpiling mechanism in the International Energy Agency, with an expanded membership.
• Separate emergency response from supply diversification objectives by design.
• Coordinate stockpile build-up schedules to avoid simultaneous demand shocks.
• Establish pre-agreed release conditions that are calibrated prior to the next supply shock, not during it.
• Establish a secondary forum for long-term supply diversification, with equal producer-country representation.
• Assign complementary mandates to other international organisations to support the core mechanism.