Are We Living in an Era of Green Colonialism?

During the age of empires, the colonisation of the Global South by imperial powers in Europe was done not only to expand their territories beyond their borders but also to exploit the colonised for their natural resources. These resources usually came in the form of precious metals and minerals, agricultural products, and human labour; which the empires deemed necessary to build influence, wealth, and strength. By the end of World War 2, these empires began to disintegrate, as colonies began to seek independence which continued beyond 1945. This shift led to the creation of a new world order centred less on empire and more on democratic rule. Although the age of empire ended, a new era of neo-colonialism was born, where former colonisers aimed to continue to obtain resources from former colonies.

Instead of colonising, former empires, great powers, and multinational corporations indirectly controlled newly independent states through economic and trade agreements, financial reliance, and foreign aid. One area in which old colonial structures and legacies are still prevalent is the Global North’s acquisition of critical minerals and rare earths from the Global South to fuel the transition from fossil fuels as an energy source to renewable energy. This exploitation is defined as green colonialism, where the Global North exports the environmental and social costs of the green transition onto states and indigenous people in the Global South. The term green colonisation is justified, as it is a combination of external control, constrained policy autonomy, unequal bargaining and uncompensated costs the Global North forces onto the Global South. This can be explained by the Global North extending the economic and social costs of green transitions to mineral-rich states while reducing the economic value of these states, leading to a colonial economic structure, which can be challenged by a resource rebellion in the form of resource nationalism, industrial policy, and contractual renegotiation if colonial conditions persist.

First step to answering the question of whether the world has entered an era of green colonialism is to deconstruct who exactly the green economy is for. Nations in the Global North have been working to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels in a bid to combat climate change and transition to green and renewable energy sources. UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres mentioned there are five actions that need to be implemented to speed up the transition to renewable energy. These actions include making renewable energy a public good, improving global access to raw materials, levelling the playing field for renewable energy technologies, shifting energy subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and tripling investment in renewables. While the intentions behind the green transition are commendable, it lays the foundation for unequal relationships to emerge, as green colonialism becomes a moral imperative. This justification is explained as “The current rhetoric that subliminally justifies the exploitation of human life and resources in the Global South for the greater good—saving humanity from the climate crises—presupposes that certain lives are more valuable than others”. This imperative, therefore, is used as justification to conduct green colonialism in the modern day.

When it comes to the green transition, states in the Global North are implementing policies that would transform their reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Naturally, this contributed to a geopolitical shift as now countries in the Global North are competing to lead the green transition by investing and acquiring green technologies to generate sources for renewable energy. This competition to lead the global green transition and the advantages of switching to green technologies has contributed to a geopolitical rift in the following ways “…through a competition to seize the economic opportunities in the energy transition, through a need for energy security and geopolitical autonomy in a more dangerous world, and through the effort to diversify economies to make them more resilient”.

To lead the green transition, the Global North invests in green technologies such as EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, which require a significant amount of critical minerals to power effectively. These minerals include lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earths, which are abundant in areas such as Africa, South America, and Asia, and are essential to producing these technologies. The issue lies in that the geographies of the Global North in areas such as the US, EU, and UK are not particularly rich in these minerals, therefore resulting in these entities relying on the Global South to extract these raw materials for use in Western green initiatives.

Conversely, the Global South has an abundance of such minerals and rare earths which are needed to fuel the green transitions of the Global North. The disparity in resource availability is clearly noticeable, as 70% of transitional mineral reserves needed for the Global North’s green transition are in the Global South. This statistic was derived from a 2025 study conducted by Oxfam which focused on addressing the colonialism of the green transition and how rich industrial countries exploit the Global South and its indigenous lands and populations to achieve this transition. It should be noted that reserve concentration provides geological context; it does not measure ownership, control or profit distribution. Due to the availability of critical minerals and rare earths in the Global South, the Global North states compete to acquire these resources to fuel their own green transitions, thus making the race for critical minerals and rare earths a geopolitical dilemma for these states. This is where the green colonisation begins to take root, as the Global North’s green ambitions begin and end in the Global South. This is addressed as “At the start of the life cycle and supply chain, many inputs are mined or grown and harvested in the Global South” and once this cycle is completed, “…there is the eventual disposal of the components of a green economy, again often in the Global South”. This life cycle exposes the exploitative and neo-colonial nature of the green transition, as the Global North benefits from the final products of a gruelling process of extracting, processing, and refining of raw materials which ironically contributes to climate change.

This supply chain between the Global North and South has a disproportionate environmental and social impact on the Global South states, which reinforces neo-colonial structures in the international system. This is particularly clear as the processes that go into providing the Global North with the raw materials necessary for their green transitions contributes to exploitation of labour, land grabs, environmental degradation, and forced displacement. These acts contribute to local environmental injustice in the Global South as these processes also result in increased carbon emissions and intensive water usage, which further increase the environmental costs that the Global South states must bear so that Global North states can reap the benefits of renewable energy. While these environmental costs increase, so do the social costs. This is evident as local communities and workers impacted by these processes are not consulted, which contributes immensely to impacts on communities that depend on the land for survival. Therefore, the green transitions of the Global North contribute to increased environmental and social costs for the Global South, thus mirroring colonial structures of the past.

Therefore, when it comes to the question of who the green economy is for, it is clear to see that the processes that making the green economy tends to benefit the Global North at the expense of the Global South. It is clear to see the Global North fuels its green transition by setting up extraction, processing, and refinement operations in Global South states, which allows them to gain access to the resources necessary to power green technologies that would allow Global North states to advance their green agendas and mitigate climate change. However, in doing so, the Global North maintains colonial structures by extracting the raw materials from mineral rich countries for their own benefit, while these countries are left to deal with the environmental and social costs. In the end, this dynamic is neocolonial in nature and shows that the world is currently experiencing an era green colonialism.

Beyond the hidden geopolitics of the green transition and its colonial nature, one can make the argument the colonial divide between the Global North and South comes down to who has industry control and who gains the most value as opposed to territorial gain. As mentioned before, the Global South is home to 70% of the world’s transitional mineral reserves with a high concentration of these reserves being in Africa, South America, and Asia. For example, the DRC is home to the largest cobalt resources, as with approximately 6 million MT of cobalt in their reserves, which makes up more than 50% of the world’s cobalt reserves. Besides owning the largest cobalt reserves, the DRC also control’s 72.1% of potential mining production capacity. Beyond the DRC, South American countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile (known as the Lithium Triangle) hold vast lithium resources, while Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia are home to vast nickel reserves. On the surface, one can assume that ownership of critical mineral and rare earth reserves would reap economic rewards for those countries in charge of extraction and processing.

Despite maintaining ownership of strategically important mineral reserves, the Global South nations do not capture much of the economic value of the global value chain. According to Oxfam, “…the majority of the investments in renewable energy are concentrated in the Global North (50%) …,” while Latin America captured 3%, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa captured just 2% in 2024. These statistics expose how the critical mineral value chain is tied to colonial economic structures, as the Global South countries, which are mineral rich and are responsible for extraction operations, capture a small percentage of the final value. On the other hand, the countries in the Global North who sponsor these operations not only get the materials needed to hasten the green transition but also garner much of the wealth from their investment.

This is best shown in the case of the DRC, as the cobalt-rich country is responsible for extraction processes and exportation of raw materials, where the refinement and manufacturing stages are completed abroad. While this piece is mainly centred on Global North-South colonial dynamics, it should be noted that the largest refiner of cobalt is China, as in 2024, 79% of global cobalt was refined in China, while “…exports from the DRC to China accounted for 91% of global trade volume in cobalt ores and concentrates” in 2022. Although China controls much of the Cobalt refinery in the world, European countries such as Finland are considered the second largest cobalt refiners in the world with a 7.2% share of global refinement. Moreover, European companies are also involved extensively in the refinement process as seen through Swiss mining company Glencore and Belgian refinery company Umicore. This shows although Chinese have a controlling stake in the refinement of Congolese cobalt, there are Global North states that also have a stake in the refinement and processing of such resources.

Regardless, current structure of the value chain bears consequences as African countries lose out on the value of the final product, while Europe reaps the benefits, mirroring “…colonial economic structures, where raw materials are extracted from Africa and the economic benefits are reaped in Europe, reinforcing dependency and preventing African nations from moving up the value chain”. Therefore, the value chain produced by the Global North’s need for a green transition reinforces colonial structures, as the overall value of the final product is primarily captured the states implementing green economic policies, while the states responsible for extraction are left with a small percentage of the value and no means to develop their own local industries for refinement and processing to make their own products and pursue their own green initiatives.

Thus, the colonial nature of the critical mineral and rare earths value chain explicitly shows the extent in which green colonialism is a reality in the modern day. Although mineral-rich countries house the mines and control the extraction operations of the raw materials, ultimately the Global North controls the entire value chain and the usage of the final product. This reduces the Global South to a supplier role that does not benefit from the value of their own mineral reserves, while the Global North becomes the industrial and technological centres that promotes green initiatives and the transition to the green economy. Therefore, one can argue green colonialism is a current reality, as the colonial divide between the Global North and South is not decided on territorial occupation but rather on a value chain that leaves mineral-rich states with less economic rewards, while the Global North captures a majority of the wealth associated with the green transition.

Although the green transition can be interpreted as a new form of colonialism, there is an argument to be made that this premise portrays mineral-producing nations in the Global South as passive actors. The concept of green colonialism and traditional colonialism diverges as mineral-rich states are beginning to develop the tools necessary to challenge their position in the value chain. This challenge represents a resource rebellion, where mineral-rich states in the Global South begin to utilise legal and economic tools to claim sovereignty over their own resources and improve their position in the value chain, while also developing their own means to industrialise and develop local industries.

The resource rebellion can come in many forms, one of which through export restrictions of unprocessed raw materials. There are mineral-rich states in the Global South who have placed export restrictions on their unprocessed critical minerals, which has the potential to allow these countries to develop their own processing and refinement facilities and boost their position in the value chain. A primary example of this is Indonesia, as in January 2014 the government placed a ban on the export of nickel ore with the aim being to “…strengthen domestic processing facilities, bring back the added value of nickel’s supply chain to the Indonesian economy, and spur job creation and economic development in Indonesia”.  While this ban was relaxed between 2017-2019 and focused on low-grade ore, a comprehensive ban was implemented in January of 2020. Laws such as Indonesia’s ban on the export of unprocessed nickel ore allow states to be in control of their own resources while also giving them the opportunity to develop their own processing facilities, which leads to job growth and economic opportunities.

Beyond export bans, countries in the Global South have also developed governance models designed to boost industrialisation and regional cooperation to secure higher positions on the value chain and boost economic resilience. For example, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile have adopted policies that link mining to industrial development, while Zambia has “…identified procurement policies, standards enforcement, and skills development as practical measures to strengthen links between mining and domestic manufacturing, and to reinforce the links between extractive activities and the wider economy”. Furthermore, Namibia identified “…training centres, industrial infrastructure, and support for small and medium-sized enterprises as essential to stimulate domestic production and regional trade”. Through the adoption of government models and identification of policies aimed at linking extraction activities to the value chain, these countries can develop greater bargaining power to restrict how much of their resources go toward fuelling the Global North’s green ambitions.

Overall, an argument can be made the world has entered an era of green colonialism, as the global green transition has produced economic outcomes that mirror colonial practices. This is clearly seen as the demand for critical minerals in the Global North grows, and the Global South becomes an exporter of the raw materials through mining, which contributes to increased environmental and social costs. While the Global South bears most of the costs of the green transition, the technological and economic value is captured by the Global North countries. This is evident as while countries in the Global South control the resource supply and the extraction capacity, it is the Global North and countries with production and refinement capabilities, such as China, who end up capturing the maximum value of the final product for use. Through this framing, the Global North-South dynamic within the scope of the green transition begins to resemble familiar colonial structures, where the demands of the Global North are satiated through the exploitation of the Global South.

However, green colonialism is challenged as countries in the Global South have implemented models and policies designed to gain control of their own resources and spur industrialisation aimed at improving their position on the value chain and expanding domestic production, manufacturing, and value creation capabilities. So, while the green transition produces an economic structure that resembles colonial dynamics between the Global North and South, mineral-rich countries can challenge this dynamic by continuing to place export controls on raw materials, expand production, processing, and manufacturing capabilities, and leverage their abundance of critical minerals to stake their claim in the green value chain.

To successfully upgrade their position on the value chain, the Global South states must make export restrictions conditional on industrial feasibility, market leverage and institutional capacity. Potential success in implementing such controls can result in value retention for Global South states, while also laying the groundwork for accountability. Furthermore, technological substitution and recycling could change future bargaining dynamics between the Global North and South, which potentially can lead to more responsible sourcing from the Global North, while reducing environmental and social costs in the Global South.

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