Illusions of 'conflict-free' minerals

Illusions of 'conflict-free' minerals

The hubris over "conflict minerals" has resumed again. Several high-tech companies are being hailed as heroes that are "pioneering progress toward wiping out the use of conflict minerals," according to a Reuters report. The Enough Project's annual score card for electronic companies trying to cut out conflict minerals from the supply chain showed many Western electronic manufacturers are getting top ratings from the industry body.

Perfect, clean and 100 percent legally-mined mineral materials used mainly by electronics manufacturers from the Democratic Republic of Congo? That would be the day. One more thing: selfless electronics industry executives, sleeves rolled up, swatting away illegally sourced raw materials with the singular goal of saving the harried people of the Congo and its neighboring countries from horrible warlords? The tittering you hear is coming from a corner office somewhere in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Shanghai, or Seoul and maybe from a treetop shack deep in the Congo rain forest.

'Conflict minerals' and supply chain

Let's make one fact clear. There are too many realities and illusions surrounding the subject of "conflict minerals" depending upon where you sit in the electronics supply chain, Congress and on the ground in the Congo. These minerals include items like columbite-tantalite (used in making tantalum powder for capacitors), wolframite and cassiterite and a huge chunk of global demand for these products are mined in the Congo where most of the mines are either owned by or "taxed" by local warlords.

The US Congress included the subject of "conflict minerals" in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act because it wanted to end the long-running wars that have ravaged the Congo region and resulted in the savage treatment of children and family members. However good its intentions, Congress has only waded chest-deep into an issue it barely understood and passed laws that while looking good on paper constitute a nightmare for folks on the ground mining the minerals as well as company executives trying to avoid a legal and public relations nightmare.

What has resulted is the farce of the Enough Project and other well-intended but misguided efforts to either help the people of the Congo curb their decades-long civil war or keep Western companies' supply chain and consumer electronic products scrupulously clean of blood-tainted components. The report issued today by the Enough Project made it clear that while "leading electronic companies are making progress in eliminating conflict minerals from their supply chains [they] still cannot label their products as being conflict free." (Download the full report here.)

Yet, the Enough Project gave at least four companies -- Intel, |Motorola Solutions Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., |Apple Inc.-- high makers for being "pioneers of progress" and said these companies "have moved forward to develop solutions despite delays in the legislative rule-making process by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission." It also identified electronic manufacturers described as "laggards" that are "standing out due to lack of progress and communication."

Before you tar and feather the companies proclaimed "laggards" by the Enough Project, understand this: you are most likely yourself an unwitting accomplice in whatever crimes are being committed in the Congo that propelled the US Congress to pass a law on the mining of the minerals. Furthermore, you may be as limited in what you can do to effect change as the companies that have been criticized sharply by everyone. You may be a "laggard" yourself.

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TAG:Conflict Minerals Apple HP