The challenges: 

• Urgent decarbonization is non-negotiable if we are to limit severe climate disruption. 
• Dominant green transition pathways are resource-intensive and often reproducing extractive harms (dispossession, pollution, labour exploitation, ecological degradation).
• Costs and risks are unevenly distributed, often borne by Indigenous and peasant communities least responsible for emissions. 
• Critiques of the green transition risk instrumentalization by actors seeking to delay climate action, especially fossil fuel incumbents. 
• The key issue is not whether to transition, but how, for whom, and at what cost—and whether the current model will be genuinely effective. 

The background and policy setting: 

My engagement with these issues builds on three decades of research on extractive sectors and socio-environmental conflicts, from earlier work on ‘conflict commodities’ and the ‘resource curse’ to more recent focus on critical minerals and decarbonization [ⁱ,ⁱⁱ]. Throughout, I have sought to bridge environmental justice and human rights concerns with questions of peace and security. 

A green transition is sorely needed, but its dominant framing remains narrow and unjust. Transition policy is often treated as a technical and market challenge: secure critical mineral supply chains, deploy renewables, electrify transport, and expand grids. Yet, there is also do doubt that beyond decarbonization there is a need for a deeper transformation of overconsumption, inequalities, and broad range of ecological harms. The current approach aligns with political-economic systems that privilege corporate returns, resource throughput, and geopolitical gains. 

I conceptualize this dynamic as climate extractivism: the expansion of extractivist logics legitimized by climate mitigation and green transition agendas [ⁱⁱⁱ]. Climate extractivism concentrates harms onto marginalized communities while sustaining the myth of perpetual resource-intensive growth. It risks becoming a great green grab: an unjust appropriation of land, labour, and political futures under the banner of decarbonization and greater sustainability. 

This is also geopolitical. Critical minerals are increasingly securitized through export controls, onshoring strategies, and industrial policies framed around national security and competitiveness, often sidelining justice concerns and feeding broader militarization. 

The engagement: 

Engaged scholarship in this context requires holding two commitments together: accelerating decarbonization while contesting the injustices embedded in dominant transition pathways. The workshop “Navigating the Complexities of the Clean Energy Era” reinforced how difficult yet necessary this balancing act has become. 

For the green transition to avoid reproducing extractive contradictions, at least three engagements matter. 

First, the energy transition must be an effective transition, not an energy addition exercise. I am engaged in efforts towards a just, orderly and equitable phasing-out of fossil fuels [^iv(Gaulin and Le Billon 2020). Renewables cannot simply be layered onto fossil fuel infrastructures and expanding energy demand. Without addressing fossil fuel supply, energy demand growth, and high-carbon consumption lifestyles there will be no transition. 

Second, though decarbonization is the priority, the transition needs to address its broader socio-environmental and (geo)political impacts. Critical mineral extraction has already expanded land dispossession, water depletion, toxic pollution, labour abuses, and conflicts in many regions. Recycling and circular economy approaches need to be expanded but a credible transition requires stricter environmental safeguards, meaningful enforcement, and reduced material throughput rather than endless substitution. 

Third, it must be explicitly just and integrate rights recognition, meaningful participation, robust accountability, and protections for those facing extractive expansion. A transition measured only by emissions risks reproducing colonial “sacrifice zones,” in which vulnerable communities bear the costs for the continuation of privileged lifestyles elsewhere. 

Prospects for a just transition have darkened amid democratic backsliding, weakened multilateralism, and policy agendas increasingly shaped by mercantilism and militarism. Yet sources of hope remain: falling renewable costs, expanding climate mobilizations, and growing international clarity on state responsibilities to prevent foreseeable climate harm. 

Critiques of green extractivism are not arguments against transition, but for a better one: fast, low-carbon, and advancing justice, ecological integrity, and democratic futures.

References

ⁱ Le Billon, P. Wars of plunder: Conflicts, profits and the politics of resources. Oxford University Press, 2014. 

ⁱⁱ Le Billon, P, Deberdt R. and Trombetta J. "From resource security to resource securitisation: Materialities, latent securitisation, and the politics of (in) security in low-carbon transitions." Critical Studies on Security(2025): 1-32. 

ⁱⁱⁱ Le Billon, P. The great green grab: Climate extractivism and the new resource imperialism. Hurst, 2026. 

^iv Gaulin, N., and Le Billon P. "Climate change and fossil fuel production cuts: assessing global supply-side constraints and policy implications." Climate Policy 20, no. 8 (2020): 888-901.