Book / 2022-09-05
Co-creation of the energy transition agenda in the Colombian Caribbean
Rosa Santamaría, Andrea Cardoso, Carolyn Caselles
Throughout its production and marketing chain, the coal industry generates a series of impacts and damages on ecosystems, communities, local territories, and the environment. Coal is the most polluting energy source and one of the leading causes of the rise in the planet’s temperature, and it is one of the greatest threats to life and the environment. In this way, since 2017, the Semillero de Investigación en Transición Energética de La Universidad del Magdalena (Energy Transition Research Seedbed of the University of Magdalena) has been jointly studying the impacts and realities of mineral coal exploitation in the Caribbean region in Colombia, in order to build, together with different actors in the region an energy transition agenda. This document brings together the results and reflections of the four Decarbonization and Transition Forums from the mining-energy model. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the global coal chain, its history, commercialization, and implications. Chapter 2 incorporates the concepts of climate justice and climate change into the coal production and consumption chain. Subsequently, Chapter 3 addresses the impacts of the extraction and transportation of coal in Colombia, and then, in Chapter 4, we provide approaches to a just transition within local territories. Finally, Chapter 5 explores the co-creation methodologies of the Transition Agenda and the development of co-creation spaces. By way of conclusion, regional autonomy, the guaranteeing of leaders’ rights, economic resources and investment, fair and sustainable alternatives, health and social reparation, participatory closure plans, and territorial perspective were, from the communities’ point of view, six crucial points which should be considered in the process of transition from coal-based economies to a productive reconversion within the departments of Cesar, La Guajira, and Magdalena.