Critical minerals as a Trojan Horse: The political ecology of green extractivism in climate governance

2026-01-21

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Annoni, Andrea *

George Barakos

DOI：10.1016/j.exis.2025.101845

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The climate emergency has been reframed as a moral summons to mine. Across policy, finance, and corporate discourse, extraction now parades as ecological salvation rather than ecological debt. This paper argues that the critical-minerals agenda serves as a Trojan Horse within climate governance, smuggling extractivist logic beneath the rhetoric of decarbonization. Drawing on political ecology, post-extractivist, and degrowth traditions, we integrate a PESTLE-Force-Field analysis of ninety-five policy and industry texts (2019-2025) from Canada, the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Chile. Findings reveal a moral economy of speed in which urgency, techno-sovereignty, and ESG finance transform acceleration into virtue and restraint into failure. Under this logic, decarbonization becomes accumulation by decarbonization-an intensification of material throughput disguised as responsibility. Authentic transition requires embedding ecological limits in law, institutionalizing Indigenous co-governance, and redirecting finance toward sufficiency rather than expansion. Decarbonization cannot be mined into existence; it must be governed into balance.

Keywords:

Critical minerals

Green extractivism

Political ecology

Energy transition

Post-extractivism

Degrowth

ESG

Governance

Sufficiency

Critical minerals as a Trojan Horse: The political ecology of green extractivism in climate governance

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