The Politics of ‘Green’ Extraction Frontiers: Mapping Metals and Mineral Mining Conflicts Related to the Energy Transition in the Americas

Abstract

We document how the extraction of metals and minerals, deemed critical for green growth and its energy transition, is expanding and being resisted in the Americas. Researchers and socio-environmental organizations co-produced 25 conflicts related to lithium, copper, and graphite mining. We examine mechanisms and discourses shaping the politics of ‘green’ extraction frontiers expansion. Governments and companies are promoting extraction in the name of an urgent planetary salvation. Socio-environmental movements claim that their territories are being turned into sacrifice zones, with an exacerbation of social vulnerabilities and impacts on sensitive and poorly known ecosystems, water, and cultural heritage sites. While criminalization and violence against local protestors is recurrent in the South, allegations of inadequate and poor decision-making and participation procedures occur across the continent. In Canada and the United States, fast-tracked permitting processes foster unrest. Global competition to secure access to critical materials is reconfiguring extraction frontiers, fueling resistance and creating tension on both globalization and deglobalization dynamics.