June, 2026
Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi's debut G7 summit at Evian, France was a noteworthy diplomatic event, which also highlighted a key convergence of climate, mineral, energy, and security policies. The country's push for stockpiling of critical minerals witnessed strong support at the G7 Summit both from members as well as from like-minded countries. Securing support for the development of 90-day reserves, IEA-coordinated stockpile releases, and a 2030 target to diversify away from dominant mineral suppliers has laid the foundation for making critical mineral supply chains less vulnerable to geopolitical turbulence.
However, sustaining this momentum and translating summit commitments into actionable policies will require paying attention to two important dimensions.
First, the framing of critical minerals supply security as a climate security issue, rather than a purely commercial or defense one, is important from policy perspective. IGES's Asia-Pacific Climate Security project treats the energy transition itself as a driver of geopolitical competition, not as a neutral technical process among the existing security dynamics debates. This framing can help policy measures like stockpiling, supplier diversification, and regional resilience partnerships like POWERR Asia align well with climate and energy policy instruments as much as economic and national security measures.
Second, and more complex, is the producer country's dimension. The T7 Solutions Paper IGES contributed to highlights that consumer country stockpiling does little to address the underlying vulnerabilities producers in global south face. These countries bear serious environmental and social costs while gaining only limited value-addition to their economy or to society. Whether G7 stockpiling commitments can translate into actual value-sharing arrangements that connect key issues like economic security and climate mitigation, or only targeted only at securing supply chains, is an important question.
Japan's offer to share JOGMEC's stockpiling expertise represents an important cooperative gesture that reinforces the credibility of its proposals. Nevertheless, stockpiling mechanisms alone cannot guarantee supply security. G7 members and partner economies must also develop the institutional, financial, and technological ecosystems necessary to support these ambitions. Stronger partnerships with producing countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, built on principles of mutual benefit and shared value creation, will be essential.
Japan's existing engagement with countries across these regions provide some useful foundation. While Japan already plays an important role in these region's clean technology development through initiatives including JCM, future cooperation should target strengthening support for their critical minerals sector. In many of these producing countries, the critical mineral sector is in dire need for addressing inherent challenges in accelerating circular economy and increasing clean energy use for upstream and midstream activities. Japan's support would allow critical mineral partnerships to contribute not only to supply chain resilience but also to a more inclusive and secure energy transition in these countries.
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