{"id":93952,"date":"2025-11-07T11:52:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dejusticia.org\/?p=93952"},"modified":"2025-11-07T11:52:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:52:39","slug":"transformative-bi-regional-cooperation-for-a-just-energy-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.dejusticia.org\/en\/transformative-bi-regional-cooperation-for-a-just-energy-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Transformative bi-regional cooperation for a just energy transition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a global context marked by climate urgency, the energy transition has become a shared priority between Latin America, the Caribbean, and the European Union. The two regions face the challenge of transforming their development models towards decarbonized, sustainable, and equitable economies, but also the imperative to do so from a perspective of social, territorial, and environmental justice. The upcoming CELAC-EU Summit in Colombia offers a historic opportunity to consolidate a bi-regional alliance that is not limited to decarbonizing the economy, but also ensures that this transformation is fair, inclusive, and democratic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Cooperation between Latin America and Europe has made progress in identifying strategic areas for joint action: renewable energy, critical mineral mining, technological innovation, green jobs, and climate finance. In recent years, mechanisms such as the European Union’s Global Gateway have been established, which includes an investment agenda for a green and just transition, as well as a 2023\u20132025 Roadmap, which integrates the notion of “just transition” as a guiding principle. Through these instruments, the EU has allocated resources to promote the energy transition in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile, supporting regulatory reforms, investments in renewable energy, and job training programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>However, these efforts still face deep tensions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the territories that today concentrate energy transition projects\u2014such as La Guajira in Colombia, the Bolivian highlands, or northern Chile\u2014are also longstanding scenes of poverty, ethnic-racial exclusion, and dispossession. In these contexts, <\/span>our research<\/span><\/a> has shown that the arrival of wind, solar, or mining megaprojects, often promoted with European capital, has reproduced historical inequalities and socio-environmental conflicts. Without robust mechanisms for participation, transparency, and equitable distribution of benefits, the transition risks becoming a new wave of green extractivism, where energy sources are replaced but the power relations that sustain inequality remain unchanged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>At the same time, the financial architecture that underpins bi-regional cooperation continues to be marked by a logic of indebtedness and conditionality. Access to climate and just transition funds is often mediated by restrictive financial criteria, which excludes local communities, indigenous peoples, and territorial organizations that directly face the impacts of the transition. Resources, mostly channeled through development banks or public-private partnerships, tend to reinforce corporate and technological concentration, without guaranteeing access to basic rights\u2014such as drinking water, energy security, or effective participation\u2014in the territories where projects are implemented.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Even so, the Latin American region has made regulatory and jurisprudential advances that can nourish bi-regional dialogue. Constitutional jurisprudence and recent advances in human rights, such as Advisory Opinion 31\/2025 of the Inter-American Court, recognize that development and transition policies must incorporate dimensions of justice. These decisions serve as benchmarks for cooperation based on human rights, self-determination, and the sustainability of life. In this context, the CELAC-EU Summit represents a decisive opportunity to reconfigure bi-regional cooperation towards an agenda of just transitions that simultaneously addresses climate challenges and structural inequalities. This implies a shift from investment-centered cooperation to justice-centered cooperation.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this end, it is essential that bi-regional cooperation:<\/span><\/p>\n