The global push for a ‘green transition’ has led to a dramatic acceleration in the search for mineral deposits and the opening of new extractive frontiers across the world. This is disproportionately impacting the territories of agricultural, traditional and indigenous peoples, exacerbating their long histories of exploitation and marginalization. Building on investigative work developed during the past decade on the Atacama Desert in Chile and in the mountainous region of Barroso, in Portugal, this essay will look at the forms that this new push of the extractive frontier is taking, but more importantly, to the forms of resistance that are emerging in response to it.