Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-03-31
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Emmanuelle Champion, Professor, Université TÉLUQ
The energy transition is accelerating. But in the territories where the minerals that make it possible are extracted, another question arises: that of the consent of indigenous peoples.
In political, media, and even scientific speeches, the energy transition is often presented as an obvious and linear trajectory: it would simply be a matter of replacing fossil fuels with renewables, electrifying uses, and innovating technologically to decarbonize our economies.
Decarbonization thus appears as an essentially technical imperative, embedded in the reassuring continuity of energy progress.
But this representation hides an essential dimension: the transition is not only energetic. It is also material, territorial, and political.
A transition is not a simple replacement
This narration of the transition as an orderly succession of substitutions is based on a particular representation of energy history. However, coal did not make wood disappear; oil did not replace coal.
Likethe historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz showed it inWithout transition(2024), past energy transformations have never been simple replacements. Each new energy source has rather been added to the previous ones, contributing to an overall expansion of the consumption of materials and energy.
This linear reading of the past makes the idea of a “soft” transition compatible with continued economic growth conceivable. It turns decarbonization into a reassuring horizon. But it makes invisible the material tensions that this transformation generates today.
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The material heart of decarbonation: the minerals
Because the energy transition relies on heavy infrastructure: batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, electrical grids, electric vehicles.
All this requires somecritical and strategic minerals— lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earths — whose extraction takes place in specific locations and raises different political issues depending on the territories.
In Canada, this dynamic is particularly visible. The federal government has made critical minerals a cornerstone of its industrial policy inlaunching in 2022 the Canadian Strategy on Critical Minerals, which identifies 31 resources considered essential for the energy transition and anticipates several billion dollars in investments to support their development.
Several of these minerals — lithium, nickel, graphite or niobium — are present in significant quantities in Quebec. The province currently has more than onearound thirty active mines and several dozen exploration projectsor development related to these resources, mainly in Northern Quebec, in Eeyou Istchee or on the Côte-Nord. However, these regions largely correspond to recognized or claimed Indigenous territories.
At the global level, an analysis of more than 5000 projects related to energy transition minerals shows that more than 50% of extractive projectsare located on or near territoriesoccupied or used by Indigenous peoples and land-dependent rural communities.
This is not a simple geographical coincidence. It is a major political fact.
When the transition becomes a territorial issue
This territorial concentration means that the material costs of the transition are distributed unequally.
TheUnited Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues highlightsthat the impacts of mining minerals necessary for the energy transition “accumulate and turn into systemic violations of the rights of Indigenous peoples, notably prior, free and informed consent and self-determination over their lands and resources”.
The transition therefore does not only concern the climate. It redefines the political conditions of access to land and resources. In other words: decarbonization transforms an energy issue into a territorial issue.
Make the question of consent a structuring issue
In this context, the question of Indigenous consent can no longer be treated as a procedural formality.
The Prior, Free and Informed Consent (PFIC), recognized by theUnited Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, becomes a central axis of the transition itself. Because the climate imperative accelerates extractive projects, shortens deadlines, mobilizes arguments of urgency.
However, urgency can come into conflict with the long time frame of collective deliberation and self-determination. Decarbonization therefore does not eliminate conflicts: it shifts them. It reconfigures the relationships between states, companies, and Indigenous communities, making consent no longer a peripheral issue in the debate, but one of its central stakes.
A transition under political conditions
Questioning this dynamic does not mean denying the climate emergency. Rather, it is about recognizing that the energy transition is not solely a technical project. It is also a project of reconfiguring power relations over space and resources.
If the transition is to be truly just and sustainable, it cannot be limited to a carbon calculation. It must incorporate the question of consent and the self-determination of the peoples concerned. Because the energy transition will not only be green – it will be political.
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A transition already legally reconfigured in Quebec
In Quebec and Canada, this reconfiguration is not theoretical. It is already visible in judicial decisions and concrete industrial agreements.
In 2017, the Quebec Court of Appealconfirmed the decisionof the government to refuse a uranium exploration project in Northern Quebec, in the caseStrateco Resources. The mining company claimed that its project met all technical and environmental requirements. However, the Court recognized that the authorization of an extractive project does not depend solely on geological or economic criteria: it also involves a political dimension, in which social acceptability – particularly from the perspective of the indigenous communities concerned – can be decisive.
Without explicitly establishing prior, free, and informed consent, the decision thus contributed to shifting the focus towards the issue of the relationship to the territory.
In 2020, Rio Tinto and the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-utenam reached an agreementthe Ussiniun agreement (“renewal” in Innu-Aimun), ending a $900 million lawsuit. This settlement illustrates another aspect of this transformation: it acknowledges that extractive conflicts can entail historical responsibilities and initiate reparations processes.
At the federal level, the adoption in 2021 of theUnited Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (often called Bill C-15), which aims to harmonize Canadian laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, now enshrines the principle of consent within the country’s legal framework. While its implementation remains debated, it reinforces the idea that access to resources can no longer be considered independently of the self-determination of the peoples concerned.
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In this context, the energy transition cannot be reduced to a decarbonization strategy. It becomes a political test: that of the institutions’ ability to reconcile the climate imperative, increased mining exploitation, and effective respect for Indigenous consent.
The transition will not only be a matter of carbon. It will also be a matter of law, territory, and power.
Emmanuelle Champion received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
–ref. Decarbonize, but at what cost? The energy transition facing Indigenous rights –https://theconversation.com/decarboner-mais-a-quel-prix-la-transition-energetique-face-aux-droits-autochtones-275160