Australia & India Cooperation
Critical Minerals
The Tech Policy Design Institute, in partnership with the Centre for Australia-India Relations and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, hosted Titiksha Vashist as an inaugural Maitri Fellow, researching Australia-India cooperation in critical minerals and clean energy technology.
The final output of the Fellowship is a playbook for policy makers: ‘Deepening Australia-India Cooperation on Critical Minerals’.
The playbook addresses the geopolitical, economic and sustainability imperatives which drive critical minerals policy, and provides recommendations for government, industry and academia on how Australia and India can stitch a mutually beneficial critical minerals cooperation.
The playbook is a result of research undertaken over six months, including in-depth interviews in Australia and India with government officials, businesses and research groups working on critical minerals, and civil society.
Project overview:
Critical minerals – lithium, cobalt, copper, and other rare earths – have rising importance worldwide as the building blocks of the digital age and the transition to renewable and clean energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles all depend on these minerals, as do core elements of defence and telecommunications systems. Australia aims to leverage its critical minerals reserves and capabilities to become a global critical minerals power, alongside its strategic partners. India is a promising partner- as a rapidly growing economy seeking to build manufacturing capabilities. Critical minerals are increasingly taking centre stage in the Australia-India bilateral and multilateral forums of which both countries are members. However, critical minerals accompany complex policy challenges, which require a holistic view of the issue, and coordination between several stakeholders including government, industry, civil society, and financial institutions to achieve success.
This project has created a playbook for Australian and Indian policymakers placed across levels and portfolios of government, offering them a big-picture view of the critical minerals opportunity and challenges, keeping the Australia-India partnership as the central vein. The research undertaken for this project included in-depth interviews with experts across Australian and Indian governments, industry stakeholders, companies, academics and research organisations, and collaborations built across the two nations. These insights are supplemented by bringing a multi-disciplinary and cross-sectional lens to the critical minerals conundrum, to create value for practitioners placed across stakeholder groups.
Key Recommendations
Indicative supply chains of oil and gas and selected clean energy technologies
About Titiksha Vashist
Maitri Fellow
Titiksha Vashist was a Maitri Fellow of the Center for Australia-India Relations (CAIR), hosted at the then Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University. She is also co-founder of The Pranava Institute, a New Delhi-based research organisation working at the intersection of emerging technology, policy, and society in India.
Titiksha’s work focuses on emerging tech regulation and the socio-political implications of technology in India. She is a two-time awardee of the University of Notre-Dame and IBM’s Tech Ethics Lab and her work has been presented at global forums including the UN Internet Governance Forum, IDOS, and Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
In the media