Addison Desmond, The University of California – Santa Barbara
Abstract
The global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is widely acknowledged as a necessity for the future of our population and planet. Yet, underlying political and economic processes reproduce long-standing colonial patterns of extraction. Although wind, solar, and hydropower offer low-carbon alternatives, the technologies enabling them rely on rare minerals such as cobalt and lithium: resources disproportionately sourced from the Global South. Drawing on historical and structural analyses, this paper argues that the green energy transition is embedded in an unequal exchange system that shifts environmental and social burdens onto marginalized communities while channeling benefits into the Global North. Case studies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chile, and Bolivia demonstrate how extractive industries perpetuate human rights abuses, environmental degradation, and violations of Indigenous sovereignty. While climate finance has emerged as a proposed remedy, it functions more as a charity narrative rather than substantial aid. Climate finance refers to financial resources provided, primarily by developed countries, to support mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts in developing nations in response to climate change. Examining the geopolitics of rare mineral extraction further reveals how governance fragility and external demand render resource-rich Southern states vulnerable to exploitation. The paper concludes by outlining suggestions for a more just energy transition including responsible sourcing, community-led governance, and enforced climate finance. A future of sustainable energy that is mutually beneficial requires addressing the colonial dynamics embedded in the current green transition.
- Historical and Structural Context
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, humans began to use fossil fuels for large-scale energy production. Coal and oil became the backbone of the anthropocene, used for transportation, energy, and industrial production. However, the fact that fossil fuels are finite has pushed humans to find sustainable ways to fuel a high-demand society. Additionally, the negative impact of fossil fuel-usage on the climate, human health, and the environment have compounded our need for renewable, or “clean” energy. We are currently in the midst of a transition period between fossil fuel dependence and widespread usage of more sustainable, low-carbon sources. Clean energy technologies are significantly more renewable than their predecessors. Wind, water, and solar power do not emit extensive greenhouse gases and are infinite. However, the batteries used in these technologies require rare minerals like lithium and cobalt. The extraction of these materials is heavily concentrated in developing countries in the Global South, where weaker environmental regulations and labor protections often prevail. As a result, the global energy transition has shifted resource dependency rather than eliminated it, perpetuating economic and environmental inequalities between industrialized and developing nations.
Centuries of colonialism have pushed Indigenous populations into poverty and disproportionate hardship. Although formal colonial rule has ended, these unequal power relations persist through neocolonial economic systems that continue to marginalize Indigenous communities. The rise of the Global North in both industrialization and economic development has only been made possible through exploitation of the Global South. Historically, this has been demonstrated through unequal exchange theory, which claims that economic growth depends on the appropriation of resources and labor, extracted through price disparities and trade. Today, this unequal exchange is conveyed through environmental burden: who adds to the fire, and who suffers the consequences. Imperialist trends from the past are being replicated in the transition to green energy. Multinational corporations (MNCs) headquartered in the United States, Europe, and Canada are establishing extractive industries which exploit the labor of unregulated states in the South. Global demand is structured through supply chains in which raw materials are extracted in the South under weak labor and environmental protections, while higher-value processing and manufacturing occur in the Global North. Although clean energy earns its name through reduced environmental impact, it is tainted by the imperialist and immoral processes that fuel it. The green energy transition, while essential, is reproducing extractive patterns reminiscent of colonial resource exploitation.
- Case Studies: Neocolonial Extraction in the Green Energy Transition
These case studies illustrate how the green energy transition reproduces colonial patterns of extraction through contemporary market mechanisms. Colonial legacies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have established an extractive economy orchestrated by MNCs. More than half of the world’s cobalt supply, a rare mineral used for batteries in renewables, comes from the Katanga Copperbelt in the DRC2. There are approximately 79,000-108,000 artisanal miners in the DRC and 73 percent of them are younger than fifteen years old. There are several records of human labor protections in Congolese law but the majority of artisanal miners have no understanding of their rights. They often unknowingly dig past the safety threshold and remain underground for extended periods of time because no one enforces these safety precautions. Mining communities face significantly high DNA damage, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and chronic injury. Intense mining practices also degrade the environment. The high concentration of exposed metal in the soil of these communities is unsuitable for plant growth, replacing natural vegetation with sparse grasses. The low vegetation cover allows the metallic soil to erode and spread in the wind, affecting surrounding communities. While extraction occurs in the DRC, the profits are largely captured by multinational corporations headquartered in the Global North, which control processing, manufacturing, and global distribution of cobalt for electric vehicle and renewable energy markets.
Among the most commonly discussed rare minerals is lithium which is primarily used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Lithium mining requires immense water use as it is pumped into the ground to bring up lithium brine, which evaporates and leaves the desired mineral. This intensive process has created water rights issues for Indigenous groups all over Latin America. Fieldwork from the Salar de Atacama salt flat in Chile conveys injustices faced by the Atacameño people of the region. Powerful families that rule Chile’s mineral trade economy have mining property throughout the state and access to lithium deposits. However, water is not readily accessible, yet it is used intensively in the lithium extraction process. MCNs and major international mining corporations are squeezing the Salar de Atacama region dry for their private extractions, directly abusing the Atacameño people’s water rights and affecting livelihoods. Not only does this case of green extractivism degrade the Chilean environment, but it also violates Indigenous water rights and culture that has existed there for centuries.
Contrary to the extraction management in Chile, Bolivia takes on a resource-nationalist approach. This means that the state has control over the extraction, taxation, and trade of resources to foreign entities. Bolivia’s nationalist stance in terms of resources, and in this case, lithium, has caused conflict with foreign investors. As the demand for lithium has increased with the green revolution in the Global North, Bolivian producers have faced external pressure to enter the international trade game. This external pressure reflects a neocolonial economic structure in which Northern corporations and MCNs states and investors seek access to Southern resources while discouraging sovereign control over extraction. However, leaders in Bolivia give no sign of wavering anytime soon, as this would undermine their resource-nationalist governance.
Across the DRC, Chile, and Bolivia, the emerging green revolution continues to reproduce patterns of extractivism through neocolonial economic structures. These cases illustrate how the Global North continues to facilitate extractivism through neocolonial economic structures. While state governments and local elites in the Global South are often positioned as primary actors, they operate within global supply chains dominated by multinational corporations headquartered in the United States, Europe, and Canada. These corporations, supported by Northern trade policies and investment frameworks, extract raw materials at low cost while capturing the majority of economic value through processing and manufacturing abroad. The demand generated by the Global North’s green transition intensifies extraction while externalizing social and environmental harms onto marginalized communities in the South. This dynamic reproduces colonial patterns of resource exploitation under the facade of sustainable development, revealing green extractivism as a contemporary form of neocolonialism.
Beyond material extraction, green extractivism also operates diffusely, framing exploitation as ethical and sustainable while obscuring ongoing inequalities. The language of climate responsibility and technological innovation legitimizes intensified resource extraction by positioning the Global North’s green transition as a moral imperative, even when it relies on exploitative labor practices, environmental degradation, and the dispossession of Indigenous communities in the Global South. Unlike earlier colonial extractive regimes that were explicitly violent and coercive, contemporary green extractivism is mediated through markets, trade agreements, and development rhetoric that normalize unequal exchange. This shift allows multinational corporations and Northern states to deflect accountability by emphasizing emissions reduction and clean energy goals, while the social and ecological costs of extraction remain geographically and politically distant.
III. Climate Financing
To ease the burden carried by the Global South, climate financing has been proposed to support the economies of developing nations by incentivizing low-carbon development. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, developed countries. have pledged to finance developing countries through funds existing through grants, bonds, and loans. In theory, this support enables recipient countries to build economic stability and physical infrastructure capable of withstanding climate-related threats, while simultaneously encouraging participation in the global energy transition.
Climate finance has contributed to mitigation efforts by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating employment in less carbon-intensive sectors. However, while expanded climate financing may offer short-term relief, it fails to address the structural conditions that produce exploitation in the first place. The dominant narrative frames Northern countries as benevolent actors assisting the Southern states in its transition, obscuring the historical and ongoing extraction that made such “assistance” necessary. In this sense, climate finance functions as a form of reparative justice. The Global North has been extracting, colonizing, and exploiting the Global South in different ways preceding industrialization. Only now, this process is disguised under the veil of the “green revolution”. What appears as progress risks becoming a continuation of exploitation under a new moral and environmental justification.
Moreover, compensation alone does not guarantee justice for Southern laborers and communities. Climate finance is often mediated through state institutions or private actors that do not meaningfully redistribute benefits to those most affected. Without a fundamental shift in global systems that restructures supply chains, enforces labor protections, and grants communities sovereignty over their resources, climate finance risks reproducing the same neocolonial power dynamics it aims to remedy. Rather than dismantling extractive systems, climate finance simply stabilizes them by compensating for harms without challenging who controls production and profits.The repeated failure of Northern countries to meet their financial commitments further underscores how these arrangements operate through coercion rather than accountability, maintaining Global North dominance while offering only partial compensation.
IV. Shifting Extraction and the Global Politics of Rare Minerals
It is important to note that the Global South is not a monolithic entity uniformly subjected to extraction. Patterns of mineral exploitation vary significantly depending on a country’s resource endowment, governance capacity, and position within global supply chains. While some states, such as China, exercise considerable control over mineral reserves and leverage them for geopolitical influence, others, including the DRC and Chile, remain embedded in extractive roles shaped by historical dependency and limited bargaining power. As a result, contemporary green extractivism does not target all Southern states equally, but rather concentrates on regions where high mineral potential intersects with political fragility, regulatory weakness, or colonial legacies. For example, China holds the Earth’s largest reserves of rare earth minerals, making access to any portion of these resources highly sought after. In 2010, however, China abruptly halted rare mineral exports to Japan after a territorial dispute, prompting other nations to reconsider their dependence on Chinese supply. Following suit, the U.S. has sought to reduce its dependence on China by expanding domestic extraction at Mountain Pass, California. This effort quickly revealed the severe environmental costs of large-scale rare mineral mining within U.S. borders. Rather than curbing demand, the U.S. shifted extraction outward, reproducing colonial patterns by intensifying mining operations in Latin America and South Africa. China’s control over rare earth reserves demonstrates that mineral exploitation is not uniformly imposed across the Global South, but rather targets states with limited bargaining power, weaker governance, or historical dependency.
For countries with high mineral potential and fragile governance, the presence of untapped mineral reserves is often framed as an opportunity for economic development. In practice, weak governance structures and political instability frequently transform resource wealth into a site of exploitation. Church and Crawford’s global map overlaying mineral reserves with state fragility and corruption illustrates how regions rich in resources, particularly in the Global South, are more vulnerable to abuse. When high resource potential coincides with conflict, fragile supply chain governance, and limited regulatory capacity, these states become especially susceptible to labor exploitation and human rights violations. As the green revolution accelerates in the Global North, the narrative of sustainability often obscures environmental and social injustices occurring in politically insecure states of the Global South. The clean energy transition reduces emissions within Northern borders while shifting the environmental and social burdens of production onto Southern countries. Claims for justice in these states are frequently dismissed as regional issues, assumed to be solvable through domestic environmental governance or economic growth. Such approaches, however, merely treat the symptoms rather than addressing the structural inequalities embedded in global supply chains that allow the North to benefit from “clean” energy at the South’s expense.
V. Suggestions
As the Global North will continue to extract from resource-rich countries in the Global South, responsible sourcing is vital in the future of a truly sustainable green revolution. As illustrated by several case studies, a lack of transparency in extractive industries exacerbates domestic issues such as labor rights violations, absence of consent, and unfair trade practices. Developing ethical sourcing frameworks addresses transparency upfront by holding extractive countries and corporations accountable. These frameworks promote sustainable development by establishing standards for worker safety, fair wages, and long-term economic opportunities over short-term profit.
Similarly, community led development is essential to ensuring that local and Indigenous populations are not excluded from decision-making processes surrounding resource governance. Meaningful inclusion allows communities to exercise sovereignty over their land and resources, helping to prevent displacement, environmental degradation, and exploitative labor practices. While responsibility for community engagement often falls on domestic governments, extractive nations and MNCs must acknowledge their role in shaping outcomes. Ethical engagement requires recognizing who bears the social and environmental costs of extraction and actively working to mitigate them.
Climate financing frameworks also have significant potential to remedy the externalities of resource extraction, particularly with equity and accountability in mind. While foreign aid is often small-scale and unlikely to promote lasting development, targeted climate finance can strengthen infrastructure and representation in nations that have been historically marginalized within global markets. Prioritizing countries with heavily monopolized industries may increase political and economic agency for mining communities and other affected groups. Accordingly, reparation must take precedence over charity-based narratives to confront the Global North’s colonialist legacies.
Another issue with climate finance is the lack of enforceable commitments from donor nations. Promises made to less developed countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, and Chile are frequently unmet, undermining trust and long-term planning. Without accountability mechanisms, climate finance risks functioning as symbolic compliance rather than material support. Ultimately, without a restructuring of global supply chains, both ethical sourcing and climate finance may serve as damage control rather than drivers of systemic change. A just and sovereign energy transition therefore requires confronting the structural failures of international institutions and humanitarian organizations, as well as redefining responsibility within the global political economy.
The Global Affairs Journal 
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