Green Extractivisms and Alternative Transitions
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Latin America is deeply entangled with the technologies and infrastructures of low-carbon energy systems, mostly through the mining for transition materials and the installation of renewable energy projects. This review article highlights the history, contemporary panorama, and future of green energy in Latin America. The article also attends to the production of alternative transition models from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, worker, and activist perspectives. We approach these interventions as emergent scholarship that challenges traditional extractive models. We also draw on our fieldwork in Colombia and Costa Rica as examples of energy conflicts and possible energy futures. Through these examples, we call for more visible critical social science scholarship on the green energy transition, especially on efforts that strive to restore justice and well-being in frontline communities.
Source: Environment and Society
Authors: Emma Banks, Emily Benton Hite, Steven Schwartz
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7102415375