Metals and minerals
Rare earth elements
Where it comes from, what share of an industry’s output it is, and which wars the model links to it.
This page shows production, shares and inputs. It does not show a death toll per tonne. The shares below say what part of an industry’s output this material is, and what part of a war’s harm the model links to it. Multiplying either by a number of people gives a result, and no result is published until it comes from a recorded calculation, with a range and a confidence grade.
- Critical raw material (EU list) — Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (Critical Raw Materials Act), Annex II — the 34 critical raw materials. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1252/2024-05-03/eng
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The products it reaches
Each product whose list of materials contains Rare earth elements, with its deaths per item by the materials method and the part of that figure this material accounts for.
Scenario Economic-embedded, using FIGARO 2023.
In this calculation, no product’s figure reaches it.
Deaths per tonne produced are calculated for this material too, but not shown: that figure has no range yet.
Who produces it
The publisher’s own figures for 2025, across 13 countries. Nothing here has been linked to anything yet.
| Country | Produced | Share | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| China CHN |
270,000 t | 69.5% | estimated |
| United States USA |
51,000 t | 13.1% | estimated |
| Australia AUS |
29,000 t | 7.5% | estimated |
| Myanmar MMR |
22,000 t | 5.7% | estimated |
| Thailand THA |
4,800 t | 1.2% | estimated |
| India IND |
2,900 t | 0.7% | estimated |
| Madagascar MDG |
2,700 t | 0.7% | estimated |
| Russian Federation RUS |
2,600 t | 0.7% | estimated |
| Brazil BRA |
2,000 t | 0.5% | estimated |
| Nigeria NGA |
1,500 t | 0.4% | estimated |
| Viet Nam VNM |
150 t | 0.0% | estimated |
| Malaysia MYS |
110 t | 0.0% | estimated |
Production figures: FAO, FAOSTAT, CC BY 4.0. FAO does not endorse any figure made from them, and none is implied.
What share of an industry’s output it is
Worked out from production, not typed in: an industry’s split between materials is the share of what it actually produced. These are WORLD figures, all years together; the model itself uses a separate mix for every country and year, because a world mix would link deaths in the Congo to copper mined in Chile.
| Industry | Share of output | How |
|---|---|---|
| Mining of metal ores 07 |
0.6% | world mix · LOW |
| Mining and quarrying B |
0.0% | world mix · LOW |
Weight and value answer different questions and are never added together. A tonne of gold weighs the same as a tonne of iron ore but is worth far more, so the share of an industry’s harm this material gets depends on which one is used.
Which wars the model links to it
The average share of each war’s harm that the model links to this material, taken over the countries and years the war covers. An average of shares is not a share of a total, and the two differ whenever the coverage is uneven.
| War | Average share of its harm | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Government of Rwanda - Civilians | 19.51% | 2 |
| Jalisco Cartel New Generation - Sinaloa Cartel | 0.66% | 1 |
| Nigeria: Government | 0.06% | 17 |
| Iraq: Government | 0.04% | 1 |
| Syria: Government | 0.00% | 1 |
| Russia - Ukraine | 0.00% | 4 |
| Ukraine: Lugansk | 0.00% | 1 |
These are shares of a war, not counts of people. The number of deaths they stand for is calculated but not published: it has no range yet and has not passed the test on past years.
Harm per tonne and per euro
Harm per tonne and harm per euro are both calculated. Neither is shown yet.
Harm per tonne of this material is defined for 16 years, 2010 to 2025: the years for which the model has both the harm and the world production of this material.
Both are numbers of people divided by an amount, from a calculation that has no range and has not passed the test on past years yet, and nothing of that kind is published until it has. What this page can say now is whether each can be worked out, and on what basis.
Sources
| Version of the data | Downloaded | File fingerprint |
|---|---|---|
| usgs_mcs · MCS2026-20260206 | 2026-09-29 | 582a0aa231aea53d… |
U.S. Geological Survey, National Minerals Information Center, Mineral Commodity Summaries — MCS2026-20260206, retrieved 2026-09-29 from https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/file/get/69837e43b66b01367d7ec7c7?f=__disk__d3%2Fac%2F84%2Fd3ac8466552946c5e8caa2c2c6338d9e1aff655d. Licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal (public domain dedication) (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).