The Other Side of Green: Germany’s Quiet Role in Environmental Harm Abroad
In the quiet suburb of Freiburg, solar panels glint atop nearly every red-tiled roof. The trams run silently, powered by renewable energy. Compost bins are as common as recycling containers. To many, Germany is the global poster child for sustainability — a nation that has made “Energiewende,” its transition to green energy, a moral mission.
But thousands of miles away, in the jungles of Indonesia, the deserts of Chile, and the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a different story unfolds — one Germany rarely tells.
The Hidden Footprint of Green Ambitions
Germany’s transformation away from fossil fuels and toward a green economy has required an enormous influx of metals and minerals. Lithium for batteries, cobalt for electric vehicles, rare earths for wind turbines — all extracted from the Global South, often under exploitative and ecologically disastrous conditions.
In Chile’s Atacama Desert, lithium mines have drained water from Indigenous communities’ ancestral lands. In the Congo, children have been found mining cobalt under inhumane conditions, the same cobalt that ends up in German-made EVs. In Indonesia, nickel mining — key to battery production — has stripped forests and poisoned rivers.
“Germany prides itself on being green, but it’s offshoring the environmental and human cost,” says Dr. Elena Muthesius, a political ecologist at Humboldt University. “We’re not reducing harm — we’re just relocating it.”
A Colonial Legacy in a New Form
The story is not new, but the players are. Where once the colonial empires extracted gold and rubber, today’s green giants extract lithium and cobalt. German companies, often through subsidiaries or supply chains tied to multinational firms, are active participants.
BASF, one of the world’s largest chemical producers, signed a deal with a nickel processing facility in Indonesia, linked to widespread deforestation and community displacement. Volkswagen, heralded for its shift to EVs, sources materials through suppliers operating in high-risk zones.
Behind the clean energy transition is a dirty truth: green technology depends on extractivism. And for many communities in the Global South, that means land grabs, pollution, and loss of livelihoods.
Policy vs. Practice
Germany’s official policies paint a progressive picture. The country passed a new Lieferkettengesetz (Supply Chain Act) in 2023, aimed at holding companies accountable for environmental and human rights violations abroad. But enforcement is weak, critics say.
“Companies can self-report. There’s no mandatory auditing, no serious penalties,” notes Alisha Kitenge, a Berlin-based human rights lawyer. “It’s more about image management than justice.”
Indeed, many German firms have lobbied in Brussels and Berlin to water down EU-wide due diligence laws, citing concerns about competitiveness.
Voices from the Frontlines
In the town of Kolwezi, in southeastern Congo, 16-year-old Jean-Claude works in a cobalt pit. He earns $2 a day, his hands raw from picking through toxic earth. “I wanted to go to school,” he says, “but my family needed money.”
His cobalt could end up in a BMW i3.
In northern Chile, Emilia Quispe watches the salt flats shrink and the flamingos vanish. “This was sacred land,” she says. “Now it is a sacrifice zone for someone else’s climate plan.”
Their voices are rarely heard in Germany’s climate discourse.
Toward Real Sustainability
Some activists argue for a “degrowth” approach — reducing consumption, rethinking mobility, and moving away from extractive economic models.
“There’s no such thing as infinite green growth,” says Muthesius. “If we really want justice, we need to ask uncomfortable questions: How much is enough? Whose lives are worth protecting?”
Germany, they argue, has the wealth, technology, and influence to lead a new model — one based not just on carbon neutrality, but on global fairness.
Until then, the solar roofs in Freiburg will continue to shine — powered, in part, by sacrifice in unseen places.