The island has rare elements needed for electric cars and wind turbines. But protesters are blocking one project, signaling that mining companies must tread carefully. From a report: This huge, remote and barely habited island is known for frozen landscapes, remote fjords and glaciers that heave giant sheets of ice into the sea. But increasingly Greenland is known for something else: rare minerals. It’s all because of climate change and the world’s mad dash to accelerate the development of green technology. As global warming melts the ice that covers 80 percent of the island, it has spurred demand for Greenland’s potentially abundant reserves of hard-to-find minerals with names like neodymium and dysprosium. These so-called rare earths, used in wind turbines, electric motors and many other electronic devices, are essential raw materials as the world tries to break its addiction to fossil fuels.
China has a near monopoly on these minerals. The realization that Greenland could be a rival supplier has set off a modern gold rush. Global superpowers are jostling for influence. Billionaire investors are making big bets. Mining companies have staked claims throughout the island in a quest that also includes nickel, cobalt, titanium and, yes, gold. But those expecting to exploit the island’s riches will have to contend with Mariane Paviasen and the predominantly Indigenous residents of the village of Narsaq. Until she was elected to Greenland’s Parliament in April, Ms. Paviasen was manager of a heliport that provided one of the few ways to get to Narsaq, a village at the mouth of a fjord on the island’s southwest coast. The forces reshaping the planet — extreme weather caused by rising temperatures, and rising demand for electric vehicles and other green technology that require bits of rare metals — converge at Narsaq, where fishing is the main industry and most people live in brightly colored wooden houses with tar paper roofs.
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