Explainer Series
Indo-Pacific Explainer:
Critical Minerals
Published: 26 February 2024
This guide is provided as part of the Perth USAsia Centres ‘explainer series’ and is intended for education purposes. It is free to use and share but attribution to the Perth USAsia Centre is required.
Read the explainer
↗ The term ‘critical minerals’ refers to a range of metals and minerals – like lithium, cobalt, and rare earths.
These minerals are used to make many technologies essential (or ‘critical’) to daily life, including mobile phones, semiconductors (used in computer chips), electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and fibreoptic cables.
Without these minerals – and the technologies they
enable – global economies would be significantly disrupted.
