Critical Minerals, Critical Rights: EU-India CRM Cooperation and Indigenous Land Safeguards
As the EU leverages the 2026 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to diversify CRM supply chains, India becomes a strategic supplier of minerals such as bauxite, lithium, and rare earths. Yet CRM extraction and mining in India has long intersected with indigenous (Adivasi) rights conflicts, where deposits on or near indigenous lands trigger disputes over land acquisition, forest rights, and community consent. India’s formal framework, including the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA, and the Forest Rights Act (FRA), offers robust protections, but implementation gaps and corporate pressures endure. FTA‑driven CRM expansion risks deepening Adivasi land rights conflicts unless EU‑level due diligence and sustainability commitments are matched with effective, consent-based safeguards at the local level. The credibility of CRM‑linked, value‑based supply chains depends on the EU aligning its green‑industrial ambitions with effective protection of Adivasi land rights, as well as on India’s capacity to put Free, Prior and Informed Consent-like (FPIC) safeguards into concrete practice.