Energy transition and green neocolonialism: Socio-environmental impacts and post-extractivist challenges in Latin America

Abstract

The global energy transition is driving a new wave of mining extraction, focused on critical minerals and rare earths elements, essential for green technologies such as batteries, solar panels, and electric vehicles, as well as for advances in smart automation. Framed as a path toward decarbonization, this dynamic is reproducing and intensifying extractivist logics that threaten the territories and rights of Indigenous peoples and rural communities in Latin America. This article analyzes, from a climate justice perspective, the tensions between the discourse of ecological transition and the concrete impacts of green neo-extractivism on people, the environment, and natural resources. It argues that, in the absence of effective oversight, greater transparency, meaningful social participation, and redistribution of benefits, the energy transition risks reinforcing patterns of dependency and green neocolonialism. Finally, the article proposes a set of principles to advance toward a just and sustainable post-extractivist transition.