Systematic Risks\nof the Global Lithium Supply Chain\nNetwork: From Static Topological Structures to Cascading Failure Dynamics

Recent years have seen increasing concerns on supply\nchain risks\nof lithium, a critical material for achieving e-mobility transition\nand climate ambitions. These risks propagate both along the life cycle\nand across national boundaries in a multilayer network. However, most\nprevious studies are either only based on static network measures\nor focused on individual layers, ignoring dynamic cascading risks\nand interconnected and interdependent relationships along life cycle\nstages and across economies. Here, we integrated trade-linked material\nflow and complex network analyses to investigate intricate interconnections,\ninterdependencies, and systematic risks of the global lithium supply\nchain. Both static and dynamic measures of the global lithium supply\nchain network exhibit a “robust-yet-fragile” property:\nrobust for random shocks yet fragile for targeted shocks and robust\nfor small or local disruptions yet fragile for large or cascading\nfailures. Portugal, Brazil, Singapore, Canada, Finland, Norway, South\nAfrica, Israel, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates are most likely\nto be affected by supply disruptions. A hypothetical USA-China trade\ndecoupling will increase the severity and susceptibility of network-wide\nfailures by around 5%. Our results call for global collaborations\nand collective efforts to balance efficiency and security and avoid\na “zero-sum game” in securing the lithium supply chain.