1. GOVERNANCE FRAGMENTATION AND SYSTEMIC VULNERABILITY IN CRITICAL MINERAL VALUE CHAINS The energy transition is accelerating demand for critical minerals, yet governance structures remain fragmented across ministries, policy instruments, and value chain segments (UN, 2024). Mineral strategies are often developed in isolation from energy planning, industrial policy, water management, or food security frameworks. Project-level assessments typically focus on geological confidence and feasibility, while system-level policies allow strategic autonomy. This separation creates misaligned incentives: upstream extraction is prioritized without adequate consideration of downstream processing capacity; industrial strategies target manufacturing expansion without clear visibility of supply maturity; environmental and social safeguards are addressed late rather than embedded structurally (UN DESA, 2025). The result is a predictable chain: governance fragmentation leads to misaligned incentives, which amplify supply chain fragility and ultimately create sustainability bottlenecks (IGF, 2021). These tensions are most evident in the midstream segment. Midstream processing is structurally distinct from upstream extraction and downstream manufacturing (Pickles, S., 2023). It is capital-intensive, infrastructure-dependent, energy- and water-sensitive, and exposed to regulatory and permitting uncertainty. It is also the segment where value addition, technological upgrading, and employment opportunities are concentrated (IEA, 2021). Yet midstream decisions are often treated as secondary outcomes of mineral endowment rather than as strategic governance choices. From a sustainability perspective, midstream projects are pivotal. They determine resource efficiency, emissions intensity, circularity pathways, and resilience to external disruptions. Domestic or regional midstream capacity can shorten supply chains, reduce transport emissions, improve traceability, and create opportunities for integrating recycling (UNEP, 2020). Conversely, neglecting midstream activities entrenches dependence on concentrated processing hubs, increasing systemic exposure (IEA, 2024). An integrated governance approach is therefore required, one that links project-level maturity, possible with the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC), with system-level sustainability and resilience objectives, based on the United Nations Resource Management System (UNRMS), and treats criticality and midstream readiness as sequential, interlinked governance questions rather than isolated analytical exercises. 2. INTEGRATED RESOURCE GOVERNANCE ARCHITECTURE Integrated resource governance requires coherence between project-level information and system-level policy objectives. UNFC and UNRMS together provide this linkage. Used in isolation, each serves a distinct function. Applied together, they create an operational architecture that links mineral project realities to sustainability, resilience, and long-term value objectives. UNFC operates at the project level. It provides a principles-based internationally recognized classification tool structured along three axes: environmental–socio-economic viability (E axis), technical feasibility (F axis), and confidence in product estimates (G axis). This tri-axial structure enables governments, investors, and technical institutions to assess not only resource quantities but 56
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