Extractive transitions: contested framings of decarbonization and lithium mining in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile

This article makes the case for extractive transitions as an alternative or complementary framing of the means and consequences of existing proposals for decarbonization. Official energy transitions strategies in the Global North and Global South often promise a response to the climate crises accompanied by economic growth. According to this logic, new industries and infrastructure, electric vehicles, and battery manufacture have the ability to produce financial windfalls, new sources of employment, and revenues for development in both the Global North and South. Viewed from the territories in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile from which the raw materials for this new round of industrialization are sourced, however, the promises of decarbonization and development ring hollow. This article develops the concept extractive transitions in order to highlight the other side of decarbonization. In order to do so, it makes three key observations. First, that Energy Transitions are framed as development opportunities by policymakers. Second, that the lithium sector is following established extractivist patterns in which revenues are pursued through the rapid expansion of exports rather than capturing downstream production in related supply chains. Finally, development and extractivism have encountered hard limits in Latin America, which in turn engenders skeptical and critical reactions from peoples occupying territories marked for an intensification of extraction in the name of decarbonization.