Green for Whom? Extractivism and the Global Energy Transition in the Global South

Anvita Tripathi
Research Intern, Jindal Centre for the Global South
O.P. Jindal Global University, India

As our planet turns green, electric cars swoosh quietly down European boulevards, solar panel farms cover Californian plains, and windmills spin along Scandinavian shores. This new world of renewable energy heralds deliverance from climate disaster. But there is a disquieting reality behind this shiny vision of sustainability: the Global North’s transition to green is founded on the shoulders of the Global South.

The move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy has not stopped extraction – it has merely diverted it. Lithium for battery packs, cobalt for electric motors, nickel for solar panels, and rare earth elements for wind turbines have become the new oil. These critical minerals are being found in many of the most susceptible places in the world: lithium in Bolivia’s salt pans, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo mines, nickel in Indonesia’s rainforests, and copper in Chile’s Atacama Desert (Sovacool, 2019).

This geographic distribution is not by chance. It is a product of centuries of colonial resource mapping and the current dynamics of unequal exchange. The nations that possess these minerals continue to be trapped in a well-known function: raw material exporters within a value chain that enriches other nations (Riofrancos, 2020).

Green Capitalism, Same Old Story

The transition to renewable energy continues what dependency theorists term “unequal exchange,” the consistent transfer of value from periphery to centre (Hickel, Dorninger, Wieland, & Suwandi, 2022). Southern nations mine minerals in environmentally destructive conditions, sell them at commodity prices, and then buy back finished technologies at premium prices. A kilogram of lithium carbonate from Bolivia may be worth $15; by the time it comes back as a Tesla battery, its value is tens of hundreds times greater.

This configuration guarantees that the Global South absorbs disproportionate ecological and social burdens yet captures few economic rewards. Lithium mining in Chile’s Atacama harvests 65% of the water in the region, devastating fragile ecosystems and Indigenous communities (Babidge, 2016). Cobalt mining in Congo is based on artisanal labourers, including children, working under dangerous conditions for poverty wages (Amnesty International, 2016). The nickel boom in Indonesia has driven deforestation, endangering biodiversity hotspots and Indigenous lands (Voigt et al., 2021). One must ask if this vicious cycle of using majoritarian absolutism of assigning more “value” to a certain group’s happiness in comparison to a disadvantaged one’s is sustainable, human and whether it is even worth the “profit” and “utility” derived from it.

At the same time, the North continues to control technology, production, and intellectual property. Chinese, European, and American firms lead battery manufacturing, vehicle assembly, and green infrastructure (Nayar, 2021). The Global South’s contribution is still extractive, quite literally.

The Sustainability Paradox

The contradictions are sharp. Renewable energy is being promoted as the answer to the environmental crisis, yet its supply chains replicate the same extractivism that is causing ecological meltdown (Dunlap & Jakobsen, 2020). The European Green Deal and U.S Inflation Reduction Act invests billions in clean energy, relatively little in ensuring ethical sourcing or assisting mineral-rich nations to move up the value chain.

This is “green colonialism,” the exploitation of Southern landscapes and resources to serve Northern climate objectives, in the absence of addressing structural inequality or historical responsibility (Ajl, 2021). When German car manufacturers import lithium from Chile or Norwegian battery companies import cobalt from Congo, the colonial extractive pattern continues, but now under the guise of climate action.

The irony heightens when it becomes pressure on Southern nations to achieve environmental benchmarks beyond their means, while Northern patterns of consumption, the very source of the climate crisis, go mostly unscrutinized. A European using an electric vehicle might feel saintly, yet if the battery’s source meant the displacement of Indigenous peoples in Argentina, the moral accounting becomes much harder.

Pathways to Resistance

But the Global South is not inert. Some nations are testing resource nationalism and value capture policies. Bolivia, during Evo Morales’ reign nationalized lithium deposits, demanding domestic industrialization instead of mere extraction (Kaup, 2013). Indonesia prohibited nickel ore export in 2020, compelling international firms to construct domestic smelters and provide employment (Syahrir, Samagi, & Pratama, 2022). Chile is considering lithium nationalization for greater domestic value retention.

These actions are met with intense opposition. Foreign investors threaten the flight of capital, credit rating agencies downgrade sovereigns claiming resource control, and free trade agreements bind policy space (Gallagher & Thacker, 2008). Global capital’s structural power sets a limit on how much individual countries can resist the system.

This is where South-South solidarity comes in. Regional groupings such as ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) or projects such as the envisioned “Lithium OPEC” among Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia could forge collective bargaining leverage (Arsel, Hogenboom, & Pellegrini, 2016). If nations with mineral wealth coordinated production and pricing, they might alter the terms of exchange in their favour.

Likewise, knowledge sharing and technology transfer between Southern countries would create manufacturing capability. If cobalt were processed by Congo, batteries made in Indonesia, and vehicles assembled in Chile, the clean supply chain would be fundamentally altered. China’s emergence confirms that ending Northern technological monopolies, though challenging, is feasible (Lin & Wang, 2017).

Rethinking Climate Justice

Finally, true climate justice means facing difficult questions: Can the Northern green transition be equitable if it continues to exploit the South? Can we say it’s “sustainable” if it decimates landscapes where we extract minerals? Can we meet climate objectives if we don’t take on the unjust global economic regime?

Real sustainability needs more than substituting fossil fuels with just lithium. It means that Northern overconsumption has to be scaled down, and the South compensated for its ecological debt. It means that mineral wealth must benefit the communities where resources are discovered (Dorninger et al., 2021). It means technology transfer, not technology hoarding. It means acknowledging that Indigenous Bolivians have an equal right to decide the future of lithium as Silicon Valley tech bosses.

Climate justice must not be separated from economic justice. The green transformation will not succeed if it turns into another vehicle of wealth transfer from South to North. Either we establish a truly just system of renewable energy, or we risk merely greening colonialism.

Conclusion

The world energy transition is at a fork in the road. One route is toward a cleaner North based on Southern exploitation – climate action for a few, business as usual for all but a few. The other route demands radical reorganization: South-South cooperation, national value capture, technology democratization, and the acknowledgment that those who extract the minerals need to share the prosperity they create.

The decision will not just decide who gains from the green economy, but whether we get anything worth describing as justice. For saving the planet is not worth anything if we lose the people who inhabit it.

References

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• Voigt, C., Klausmeyer, K., Mascia, M. B., & Corcoran, D. (2021). Trading forests for minerals: The materiality of nickel in electric vehicle batteries. Conservation Science and Practice, 3(9), e485.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author (s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Jindal Centre for the Global South or its members.