Boycotting Congolese cobalt to improve social sustainability? Insights from a newly developed poverty reduction potential method

Other conference contribution, 2025

Societal actors have considered boycotting cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) because of harsh social conditions. However, these conditions are largely symptoms of poverty, and how cobalt mining contributes to poverty has not yet been quantitatively assessed in a social life cycle assessment (SLCA) context. This SLCA study investigates the poverty reduction potential of the battery material cobalt sulfate produced in China from cobalt mined and refined in the DRC. Literature on poverty reduction and the cobalt sulfate life cycle were consulted to develop characterization factors (CFs) for poverty reduction potential. Considering the importance of economic growth for poverty reduction, the value added in processes constitutes the basis for the CFs. In addition, three factors that suppress the poverty reduction potential of economic growth were considered: corruption, inequality and the prevalence of poor people. These factors were accounted for by using the corruption perception index, the Gini coefficient and the share of people living below different poverty thresholds (2.15, 3.65 and 6.85 USD/day), respectively. The resulting poverty reduction potential reveals the product-related value added that may benefit the poverty-stricken population after corruption and inequality have taken their tolls. Our results show that the poverty reduction potential is higher in the DRC compared to China. This indicates that cobalt has the potential to reduce poverty in the DRC, although there may still be other barriers and local circumstances preventing this potential from being realized. Therefore, additional studies on the cobalt mining sector are recommended, considering for example the influence of Chinese ownership of the industry. Nevertheless, despite all uncertainties, it seems questionable that boycotting cobalt would have a mainly positive influence on the poverty and related social concerns in the DRC.