Green Capitalism in the Americas: False Solutions, Real Threats

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Yves here. This post contains a full-throated takedown of the “green transition” and by implication, the Green New Deal. We have repeatedly criticized the Green New Deal as a headfake, as conning those who are worried about climate change into believing that green techno-hopium means they won’t have to make serious sacrifices, namely giving up modern lifestyles. We have argued that the only way out is radical conservation, which advanced economies can either implement voluntarily or will have it imposed on them in a collapse/Jackpot trajectories.

NACLA’s Report on the Americas says were weren’t cynical enough. They argue that the so-called green transition actually promotes more fossil fuel use while also backing new eco-colonialism and extraction in the form of environmentally destructive lithum mining and rare earth processing.

By Sabrina Fernandes,  a Brazilian sociologist and political economist, currently the Head of Research at the Alameda Institute. She is part of the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South, a member of NACLA’s editorial committee, and a Senior Research Advisor to the Oxford Technology & Industrialisation for Development (TIDE) centre;  and Breno Bringel, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and Senior Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he coordinates the Observatory of Geopolitics and Ecosocial Transitions. He is a member of the Ecosocial Pact of the South and co-editor of The Geopolitics of Green Colonialism (Pluto Press, 2024). Originally published in the Fall 2025 issue of NACLA’s quarterly print magazine, the NACLA Report. Syndicated in partnership with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)

The promise of a green transition has become a key narrative of our time. Despite persistent climate denialism, governments, corporations, and multilateral institutions present themselves as champions of sustainability, climate action, and environmental protection. In the Americas, this discourse has taken root with force, rebranding old forms of extractivism and accumulation under the guise of “green” development. But beneath the surface, the reality is stark: the transition being promoted today is not a break from fossil capitalism—it is its reinvention as a kind of fossil gattopardismo, in which energy demand expands and the extraction of hydrocarbons intensifies as part of the approach to energy transition, under the illusory umbrella of “net zero” policies. As Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote in his 1958 novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

In this special issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas, we critically examine the rise of green capitalism in the region. We analyze how its logics and instruments are shaping policy and territory, enabling new forms of dispossession, and deepening historical inequalities. We expose the traps of a corporate-led transition that claims to be clean and just, but in practice reinforces systems of exploitation and domination. And we highlight the movements, communities, and visions from below that challenge these false solutions and point the way toward just ecosocial transitions.

The idea that capitalism can solve the climate and ecological crisis it has created is not only misleading but also dangerous. Today’s green capitalism extends the reach of markets under the banner of sustainability, expanding profit frontiers while coopting environmental narratives under a new capitalist “decarbonization consensus.” Under this framework, nature is positioned as a financial asset, territories as green sacrifice zones, and Indigenous and traditional communities, once again, as obstacles to development. The result is a green colonialism that naturalizes dispossession, often in the name of climate justice, creating new dynamics of extraction and appropriation of raw materials, natural goods, and labor, all in service of a so-called “green” energy transition.

In this context, COP30—set to take place in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, in November 2025—is both a symbolic milestone and a political paradox. While grassroots organizations prepare to bring local demands and climate justice agendas to the global stage, corporate actors and states continue to define the rules of the game. As gina cortés valderrama and Isadora Cardoso remind us in this issue, the dominant frameworks of climate policy reproduce colonial and racist logics, marginalizing decolonial and intersectional approaches that center justice, autonomy, and care.

The Corporate Transition and the New Face of Extractivism

Green capitalism thrives on rebranding. Across the Americas, extractivism is being painted green to fit into the transition discourse. In Brazil, for example, the so-called “Lithium Valley” exemplifies this shift: a region marked by water scarcity, community resistance, and environmental degradation is now being promoted as a hub for sustainable development and climate leadership. As Bárbara Magalhães Teixeira and Marina Paula Oliveira demonstrate in their contribution, the violence of extractivism persists, even when disguised as energy transition.

A similar dynamic unfolds in Chile, where lithium extraction and green hydrogen initiatives are creating new modalities of sacrifice zones in Antofagasta and the Atacama Desert. In their article, Gabriela Cabaña and Ramón Balcázar Morales reveal how these projects reproduce patterns of territorial appropriation and environmental racism under the guise of decarbonization. The Caribbean, too, is facing new forms of green colonization, as Colin Bogle details in his article on the controversial push for deep-sea mining. This modality absorbs critiques of social conflict connected to mining to recast the ocean as the ultimate “conflict-free zone”—a space empty of social struggle where environmental destruction can proceed unchallenged, treating other species and ecosystems as even more disposable in the absence of humans.

The corporate transition is global in scope but deeply rooted in local contexts. Lital Khaikin documents how Canadian mining companies are expanding into the Colombian Amazon, claiming to advance climate goals while displacing Indigenous communities. In the Brazilian Cerrado, Morena Hanbury Lemos and Shanna Hanbury Lemos trace the unchecked advance of eucalyptus monocultures—another example of greenwashed agribusiness that rarely receives the scrutiny it deserves. Indeed, agribusiness often slips through the cracks in debates on climate and extractivism. Yet it is a key driver of emissions through animal exploitation, soil degradation, deforestation, and land use change. Across the Americas, land grabbing, water depletion, and biodiversity loss are increasingly greenwashed and repackaged under the labels “low carbon agriculture,” “bioeconomy,” and “climate-smart food systems” in a system that continues to perpetrate profound violence against campesino, Indigenous, and other traditional communities.

Debt, Finance, and the Trap of Green Sovereignty Loss

Green capitalism also reshapes the financial architecture of climate action. Beyond traditional loans and structural adjustment programs, new financial instruments are emerging that present themselves as benevolent solutions, including debt-for-nature swaps, green bonds, and climate-related development financing. While often framed as innovative and progressive, these mechanisms often produce new forms of dependency and erode both state and popular sovereignty. Nonetheless, they have been embraced by governments on both the right and the left.

Sophia Boddenberg’s piece on the Galápagos Islands provides a striking example. There, the largest debt-for-nature swap in history has introduced a form of green militarization, further restricting the autonomy of local communities while aligning conservation efforts with the interests of international creditors. In Honduras, as Jennifer Moore, Aldo Orellana, Karen Spring, and Luciana Ghiotto demonstrate, corporate lawfare is being used to suppress community resistance and secure green energy concessions, threatening the right to self-determination. Similar dynamics can be observed in Pará, Brazil, where Claudia Horn and Carlos Ramos examine how green infrastructure and carbon market schemes undermine democratic participation and perpetuate existing inequalities.

It is important to recognize that green capitalism does not always rely on new political actors. More often than not, the very corporations, elites, and institutions that fueled the fossil economy are now at the helm of the so-called green transition. In Brazil, the federal government continues to support offshore oil exploration even as it champions renewables and green hydrogen. In Colombia, despite some advances, President Gustavo Petro’s bold stance against new oil exploration has also opened space for new forms of megaprojects, including controversial energy ventures. In Jamaica, official support for deep-sea mining contradicts the island’s image as a climate-vulnerable nation. And while tourism is often touted as a cleaner source of income and even an opportunity to protect ecosystems, it is increasingly being used to justify land dispossession, loss of sovereignty, and the creation of green enclaves—as seen in the Galápagos and parts of Jamaica and Honduras.

Between Resistance and Ecosocial Transformation

Despite the aggressive expansion of green capitalism across the Americas, the story is not one of dispossession and false solutions alone. Across the region, powerful struggles and alternatives are taking root. Communities are resisting land grabs, denouncing the greenwashing of extractivist violence, and organizing to reclaim autonomy over energy, food, territory, and ways of life. These movements not only expose the cracks in the dominant transition model—they also offer grounded, collective visions of real alternatives.

In Puerto Rico, for instance, we find one of the most concrete and inspiring proposals for energy justice in the region. After years of corruption, blackouts, and the failures of utility privatizations that have deepened energy poverty, local communities have developed concrete plans and infrastructure projects towards a decentralized, community-based solar energy transition—one less tied to commodification. As Jesse Kornbluth shows in this issue, these struggles go beyond renewables: they constitute an anti-colonial fight for democracy and a people-centered model for energy futures across the Global South.

This spirit is echoed in the social movements and urban actors organizing for the right to the city in Belém, the host of COP30. Mariana Guimarães and Rosaly Brito document how grassroots resistance in Belém confronts the contradictions of a green summit hosted in a city marked by environmental injustice, deep inequality, precarious housing, and the marginalization of Black and Indigenous residents. In parallel, Claudia Horn and Carlos Ramos expose how carbon markets and green infrastructure projects in the state of Pará are undermining local democracy while concentrating power in the hands of economic and political elites.

In Honduras, the Garífuna struggle is also emblematic of the broader resistance to green capitalism’s territorial ambitions. As Giada Ferrucci details, Garífuna communities are defending their ancestral lands not only against tourism expansion and agroindustrial projects, but also against new green investment schemes that present themselves as sustainable while continuing to perpetuate dispossession. Their resistance is rooted in a long tradition of autonomy, cultural identity, and territorial defense that offers valuable lessons for other struggles across the Americas.

What unites these movements is more than opposition—they are building visions of collective life that reject extractivist paradigms altogether. These alternatives are grounded in diverse worldviews but share some key features: a commitment to relational understandings of nature, the defense of territorial sovereignty, and a belief in transitions that emerge from below rather than being imposed from above.

In this sense, resistance and the construction of alternatives are not separate processes. They are two sides of the same struggle: rejecting the commodification of life while creating other ways of organizing energy, food, land, and political power. These are not abstract utopias, but rather concrete and situated practices that emerge from lived experience, historical memory, and political experimentation. Many of the contributions in this issue illuminate this dual process of resistance and renewal. The testimony of activists in Pará, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Putumayo, and the Brazilian Cerrado speak to the creativity and persistence of popular struggles under immense pressure. Some fight in courts—others in assemblies, in the streets, and on occupied lands. They cultivate new forms of cooperation, revive ancestral practices, and build bridges across struggles—from Indigenous self-determination to feminist economies of care.

Importantly, these movements also raise fundamental questions about power that we center in this issue of the NACLA Report: Who controls the means of transition? Who defines what sustainability means? Who decides which territories are sacrificed and which are protected? These are not just technical or economic questions—they are political and ethical ones. Although these initiatives begin locally, they form the seeds of what we identify as an emerging eco-territorial internationalism.

Looking Ahead to COP30 and Beyond

As COP30 approaches, the Amazon will become a global stage for climate discourse. This moment brings both opportunity and danger. On the one hand, it offers renewed visibility for grassroots movements and highlights the region’s ecological importance. On the other, it risks becoming yet another green spectacle that deploys symbolic imagery of nature and Indigenous cultures while legitimizing false solutions, corporate capture, and new rounds of green extractivist investment—a growing trend at the COP meetings.

We must be alert to both dynamics. The Amazon cannot be reduced to a carbon sink for the Global North or a marketplace for green finance. It is home to vibrant societies, cultures, and ecosystems whose futures cannot be dictated by boardrooms or summit declarations. The same holds true for lithium-rich deserts, bioeconomy zones, and energy corridors across the region. These are not “resources”—they are territories of life, struggle, and possibility. This issue of the NACLA Report aims to contribute to this broader political debate. By documenting the mechanisms, impacts, and contradictions of green capitalism in the Americas, we seek to equip readers with critical tools to understand and challenge dominant transition narratives. At the same time, by lifting up the voices of those who are resisting and reimagining transitions on their own terms, we hope to amplify pathways toward truly just, democratic, and sustainable futures. Transitions will happen. The question is: whose transitions—and toward what kind of world?