By Emma Banks, Bucknell University
When I stopped by the Colombia Pavilion during week two of COP28, I was greeted by a familiar name on the speakers’ list: Igor Díaz. Igor Díaz is the treasurer of SINTRACARBON, a trade union for coal mining workers. I have known him for a decade, as part of a network of academics who collaborate on community and labor solidarity in La Guajira, Colombia’s most important coal region. I took out my phone and sent Igor a WhatsApp message and then tracked him down for a quick meetup at an onsite café with his Colombian labor colleagues from USO (Unión Sindical Obrera de la Industria del Petróleo/Petroleum Industry Workers Union) and the Industrial University of Santander. Seeing a familiar face at COP was unexpected, but delightful. My meeting with Igor and several other Colombian colleagues during my week at COP showed me that Colombia’s coal region is at the center of just transition politics, not only domestically, but also internationally.
I spent this year’s COP tracking two main streams that often overlapped: just transitions programming and Colombia’s participation in negotiations. Colombia was the only major fossil fuel-producing nation to sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. My long-term fieldwork takes place in Colombia’s largest coal-producing region, La Guajira. The region has been devastated by the impacts of coal mining, including but not limited to thousands of displaced Afro-descendant and Indigenous people, contaminated and scarce fresh water, and health problems among the local population. Workers from SINTRACARBON also report abnormal rates of respiratory disease and kidney failure. In the first-ever “Health COP,” negotiators, including John Kerry, pointed to coal’s disproportionate impact on air pollution and associated diseases. While most of these discussions focused on coal-fired plants, it is clear that workers and communities impacted by coal mining also face health burdens. A just transition must focus on all links in the coal chain. For several years, communities, academics, and coal mining workers in La Guajira have been planning a just transition for the region. Until recently, these efforts have remained largely local.
Finding hope and connection
The next day in the Colomba Pavillion, Igor’s panel gave me hope; a stark contrast to my experience observing the official Work Programme on the Just Transition where negotiators argued over whether to incorporate labor rights into the text’s language. Igor and his colleagues acknowledge that Colombia is moving toward decarbonization, and as labor advocates, they want to shape that transition, not fight it1. Igor described the realities of life on the ground in La Guajira, stating that any just transition must include communities as well as workers2. Regions like La Guajira, he pointed out, have little social and economic development despite hosting coal mines. A just transition should recognize and repair “the sacrifices they have made” while bringing holistic development to the region. Professor Marely Cely from the Industrial University of Santander spoke of the necessity to curb corporate power that has oriented the country toward extractivism in order to implement a worker-led model of transition. Moisés Barón Cárdenas from USO also agreed that the extractive model must end and that a worker-led movement could lead to a green energy transition. A worker-led model involves collective bargaining for mine closure agreements, environmental remediation of mine sites, and investments in new industries to create better jobs and diversify regional development. I have always been impressed with the politics of Colombian organized labor, but it was this panel that made me realize Colombian unionists could be a model for organizing a just transition in fossil fuel regions worldwide.
Johana Rocha, Colombia’s Vice-Minister of Mining was in the audience. I had never met her before, but she used to work for Cajar, a lawyers’ collective that defends local communities’ human and territorial rights, including those in La Guajira. I have worked with Cajar on many occasions, including serving as a judge in a people’s tribunal holding the Cerrejón Coal Company accountable for human rights abuses and joining an international human rights observation team during the 2021 national strike. Two days earlier at COP28, I had caught up with a colleague at an ILO transition event, also learning that he had moved from NGO activist and academic researcher to the Ministry of Mining. Several people I have coordinated with on solidary events around coal mining in La Guajira now work for the government3. Bringing people from social movements into left-wing governments is not unusual, but President Gustavo Petro has taken this a step further by inviting them into the agencies they have typically fought against. As NGO activists, community leaders, and progressive academics occupy these positions, they are navigating the possibility of creating new programs and policies yet they also face immense challenges in achieving those goals as they confront political opposition, structural barriers, and a short four-year presidential term limit.
I was pleased to see Johana again on the last night of COP28, accepting the coveted “Ray of the Day award” from Climate Action Network. CAN called Colombia a “consistent shining light” stating that, “Colombia has been catalytic in building support for a full, fair, fast, and funded phase out of all fossil fuels.” This sentiment captured the importance of bringing regions like La Guajira into the international stage to highlight the urgency and possibility of a just transition.
A contentious transition
Colombia is up against many hurdles in enacting such a transition. La Guajira, long the center of Colombia’s coal industry, is fast becoming the epicenter of the transition, playing host to wind farms, solar installations, and potential copper mines. President Gustavo Petro’s insistence on green energy is concerning to many for its failure to incorporate local people and its reliance on corporate funding4. Wind projects in La Guajira are on Indigenous Wayuu land and have caused conflicts as they fail to provide economic support to resource-poor communities and continue a pattern of seizing Indigenous land with little regard for the Wayuu people. Previous administrations granted the licenses for these projects, and the Petro administration seems intent on expanding wind farms despite opposition from communities and activists. In the Northern Peninsula, Wayúu communities host wind farms without having electricity or running water in their homes. The southern region of La Guajira (the same area as the coal mine) also has massive copper deposits, one of the most important metals in building green energy infrastructure. Copper mining is notoriously toxic to water and soil, putting communities already impacted by decades of coal mining at further risk. The copper zone lies in the Serranía de Perijá, a mountain chain between Venezuela and Colombia that hosts immense biodiversity. As Colombia transitions to peace, many rural people displaced during the armed conflict are returning to farm there, including the Café con Sabor de Paz cooperative made up of women who have been victims of the armed conflict. Many communities and ecosystems stand to lose if La Guajira’s sacrifice zone expands to meet the mining and infrastructure needs of green energy. If Colombia’s just transition relies on extractivism, can it really be just?
These are questions I brought to Johana Rocha and her colleagues during just transition events. I met with Johana after Igor’s event to discuss copper prospecting companies’ lack of transparency in the Perijá. She understood my concern and told me her colleague (also a former NGO interlocutor of mine) would reach out. I knew Johana and her team would respond well because their academic training and solidarity work mirror my own. They, at the very least, acknowledge that the potential for more harm to communities in the pursuit of green energy is a real problem. Yet they also work for the Ministry of Mining, which cannot stop mining altogether. One of my former NGO colleagues challenged me asking what the United States is doing to help, and I had to concede, we deserved the Fossil of the Year award from CAN. He brought up an important point: Colombia cannot just transition alone; there is no just transition without a global effort.
A way forward?
I found inspiration in thinking of the just transition at many side events during my week at COP28. From Global South activists proposing debt forgiveness to meet climate targets to Indigenous speakers demanding territorial autonomy to organized labor’s commitments to researcher-community collaboration at the Just Energy Transition in Coal Regions Knowledge Hub. It was heartening to see the first ever official work programme on just transition unfolds at COP, but often disheartening to observe the negotiators squabble over commitments such as including references to labor rights and human rights in the official language. The high-level commitment to transition away from fossil fuels is a win, but without adequately including labor and community needs, there is no just transition.
Watching my fieldsite go global made me feel both hope and despair. Regions like La Guajira could lead the just transition movement. Yet, if the transition relies on extractivism, these regions face catastrophic environmental consequences. There must be a global commitment to transforming our systems of production and consumption for former coal regions to thrive and for our planet to survive.
Emma Banks is an assistant professor of International Relations at Bucknell University. Her research focuses on coal mining and the energy transition in Colombia. She works in solidarity with communities and workers impacted by the Cerrejón coal mine.
