The coloniality of green transformation: Decarbonisation and extractivism in South America

The ‘green transformation’, with its focus on renewable energies and decarbonisation, has been criticised for intensifying resource exploitation in the Global South. In this article, we argue that a Latin American decolonial perspective is necessary to understand the historical continuities that allow these ecological modernisation projects to exacerbate (neo)colonial socioecological inequalities. It is also essential to understand why ecological modernisation is inherently linked to the extractivist, fossilist economy rather than putting an end to it. Our concept of the ‘coloniality of green transformation’ focuses, on the one hand, on the colonial continuities of ecological destruction linked to the unequal global division of labour and, on the other hand, new forms of commodification of nature in the context of ‘green transformation’. We illustrate this perspective using two case studies: mining in Chile and carbon offsetting in the Brazilian Amazon Basin.