As the climate and ecological crises accelerate, the Global North has promoted a range of so-called “green solutions” — including renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon trading, and green hydrogen — as pathways to sustainability. However, beneath this narrative lies a troubling reality: the energy transition is fueling new forms of extractivism that disproportionately impact the Global South, Indigenous territories, and other marginalized regions. The shift away from fossil fuels has driven a global rush for critical minerals and rare earths, essential for manufacturing the technologies that underpin the green economy. Rather than breaking with past patterns of exploitation, these processes reproduce colonial forms of dispossession, displacing communities, degrading ecosystems, and deepening existing inequalities under the banner of green growth.
This geopolitically driven transition unfolds within a broader polycrisis, marked by worsening climate impacts, resource depletion, geopolitical tensions, and the reconfiguration of global trade and power relations. As a result, many analysts and grassroots movements have described this phenomenon as a new phase of “green colonialism.” This webinar series seeks to critically examine the socioecological implications of the global energy transition by exploring its local manifestations across diverse regions of the world. It aims to highlight not only the conflicts and injustices emerging from this process but also the community-based alternatives and plural pathways that challenge extractivist development and propose truly sustainable and just ways of inhabiting the planet.