On the coloniality of green finance: green capital landing and accumulation by decarbonization

Vast quantities of minerals are being extracted for the so-called “green transition”. Framed as climate solutions and motivated by geoeconomic competition, green extractive projects mobilize billions of dollars, particularly from Western and Chinese interests. Yet, such capital-intensive ventures disproportionately land in the Global South or Indigenous and agrarian territories of the Global North, reproducing (post)colonial dynamics of accumulation. Following three interlinked processes of capital landing—discursive, institutional, and operational—we show how value is produced within extractive zones by converting places, ecologies, and relations into “objects for the use of others.” Green capital landing and green financialization operate through a colonial logic, cloaking extraction in discourses of planetary salvation while perpetuating unequal geographies of sacrifice. By tracing the processes of green capital landing and accumulation by decarbonization, we argue that exposing these dynamics is essential for advancing a just energy transition.