Event

In Mexico, the energy transition had a neoliberal face. Under the government of Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), a legislation to fight climate change was put in force along with the promotion of renewable energy projects in the form of large-scale wind farms in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. The neoliberal framework granted private companies the control of the transition creating conflict in those indigenous territories where these projects were implemented. With the election of nationalist AMLO in 2018, the energy transition lost track as the government is heavily oriented toward increasing oil production in the sake of national energy sovereignty. In parallel AMLO seeks to strengthen the role of the national agency of electricity CFE, to increase energy production through controversial hydroelectric projects. In 2022, the new administration failed to carry out the electricity reform that would grant the state greater control over energy production. Amidst polarized positions over private vs state centered models of clean energy production, a group of indigenous communities in Cuetzalan, Puebla are taking the production of renewable energy in their hands through a cooperative-centered model. This study sheds some light regarding the scopes and obstacles of a community-led energy transition in Mexico.

Existe una necesidad evidente de cambiar radicalmente el sistema energético actual. En lugar de mejorar la calidad de vida de todas las personas, es principalmente una máquina perversa de extracción de recursos. Los rezagos sociales generados por la injusta distribución de los recursos, la mercantilización de la naturaleza y el menosprecio de los derechos humanos y colectivos de las poblaciones más vulnerables hacen necesario pensar en procesos indispensables de revalorización de conocimientos, reconocimiento y democratización como elementos clave para la construcción de otra realidad energética. Mientras que la literatura sobre justicia energética ha llamado la atención sobre la necesidad de un sistema energético más “justo” y sostenible, estas teorizaciones siguen estando dominadas por concepciones universales de justicia y desarrollo de las corrientes de pensamiento neoliberales occidentales. La aplicación de estas teorizaciones de justicia energética en la formulación e implementación de políticas energéticas ha tenido resultados perjudiciales en todo el mundo, pero particularmente en los países del Sur Global, donde los legados del colonialismo están profundamente arraigados. No se ha prestado suficiente atención al desarrollo y la expansión de los enfoques empíricos y teóricos de la justicia energética que ponen en primer plano las ideas pluralistas de justicia. Basándose en un estudio de caso cualitativo que investiga las injusticias en la implementación de proyectos solares y eólicos a gran escala en comunidades rurales e indígenas en Yucatán, México, este trabajo tiene como objetivo contribuir a desafiar las narrativas de justicia energética dominantes, capitalistas y coloniales. Los hallazgos demuestran una necesidad fundamental de poner en primer plano las ideas pluralistas de justicia de abajo hacia arriba. Más que algo normativo, mi aporte busca ofrecer algunos ejemplos encontrados en mi trabajo de campo en México, compartiendo prácticas, formas de resistencia y sugerencias de alternativas de miembros de comunidades y movimientos de base que luchan por otra(s) realidad(es). Con estos ejemplos no busco evaluar la efectividad de las diversas formas de resistencia de las comunidades y movimientos sociales, sino mostrar que las articulaciones transformadoras entre alternativas son posibles y que pueden lograr golpes significativos a las estructuras opresivas y de devastación. Por lo que las alternativas antisistémicas no deben descartarse por pequeñas, locales o poco “reales y posibles” que parezcan en comparación con las estructuras dominantes (Escobar, 2020). En cuanto a la literatura, este artículo busca contribuir al diálogo sobre cómo ciertos conceptos relegados en los marcos de la justicia energética, como la autonomía, la autodeterminación (Castán Broto et al., 2018), el autorreconocimiento (Álvarez & Coolsaet, 2020; Coulthard, 2014) y otras manifestaciones emancipatorias pueden contribuir a promover una transición energética más justa y transformadora. Los pensamientos expresados aquí están inspirados en las ideas y acciones de comunidades y activistas de movimientos sociales que se movilizan en defensa de sus territorios y sus múltiples formas de existencia, o lo que podría llamarse el pluriverso (Kothari et al., 2019). Fundamentalmente, este trabajo busca contribuir al debate sobre cómo contrarrestar los marcos universales desempoderantes de pensar y traer al primer plano conceptos y prácticas que ayuden a comprender e impulsar transiciones energéticas emancipatorias moldeadas por los diversos contextos culturales, sociales y políticos. Palabras clave: justicia energética pluralista; autodeterminación; autorreconocimiento; transiciones emancipatorias. // Abstract There is an evident need to radically change the current energy system. Rather than improving the quality of life for all people, it is primarily a perverse resource extraction machine. The social gaps generated by the unfair distribution of resources, the commodification of nature and the disparagement of the human and collective rights of the most vulnerable populations make it necessary to think of indispensable processes of revaluation of knowledge, recognition and democratisation as crucial elements for the construction of another energy reality. While energy justice literature has drew attention to the need for a more "just" and sustainable energy system, these theorisations remain dominated by universal conceptions of justice and development from Western neoliberal currents of thought. Applying these theorisations of energy justice to the formulation and implementation of energy policies has led to damaging outcomes worldwide, particularly in Global South countries, where legacies of colonialism are deeply embedded. Insufficient attention has been paid to further developing and expanding empirical and theoretical approaches to energy justice that foreground pluralist ideas of justice. Drawing upon a qualitative case study that investigates injustices in the implementation of solar and wind large-scale projects in rural and indigenous communities in Yucatan, Mexico, this work aims to contribute to challenging the dominant, capitalist, colonial energy justice narratives. Findings from this study demonstrate a fundamental need to foreground pluralist ideas of justice from the bottom up. Beyond a normative approach, my contribution seeks to offer some examples found in my fieldwork in Mexico, sharing practices, forms of resistance and suggestions for alternatives from members of communities and grassroots movements that fight for other realities. With these examples, I do not seek to evaluate the effectiveness of the various forms of resistance of communities and social movements but to show that transformative articulations between alternatives are possible and that they can achieve significant blows to oppressive and devastating structures. Therefore, anti-systemic alternatives should not be discarded for small, local or little "real and possible" that they might seem in comparison with the dominant structures (Escobar, 2020). In the theoretical part, this paper seeks to contribute to the dialogue on how certain concepts relegated in the frameworks of energy justice, such as autonomy, self-determination (Castán Broto et al., 2018), self-recognition (Álvarez & Coolsaet, 2020; Coulthard, 2014) and other emancipatory manifestations can contribute to promoting a just and transformative energy transition. The thoughts expressed here are inspired by the ideas and actions of communities and social movement activists mobilising in defence of their territories and their multiple forms of existence, or what could be called the pluriverse (Kothari et al., 2019). Ultimately, this paper seeks to contribute to the debate on how to counter disempowering universal frameworks of thinking and bring to the fore concepts and practices that help understand and drive emancipatory energy transitions shaped by diverse cultural, social, and political contexts. Keywords: pluralistic energy justice; self-determination; self-recognition; emancipatory transitions.

Palabras claves; Cartografía crítica; Sistema Eléctrico Mexicano
Título: Presentación de la herramienta cartográfica “Geovisualizador Alumbrar las contradicciones del Sistema Eléctrico Mexicano y de la transición energética”
Los mapas, en tanto una herramienta útil para analizar la lógica espacial de procesos complejos, se torna un instrumento aún más potente cuando se emplea para dinamizar la discusión colectiva sobre los procesos que, a distintas escalas, está detonando y sosteniendo un agente constructor del espacio como el sistema eléctrico.
En 2021, el colectivo GeoComunes realizó un mapa interactivo de acceso libre que contiene más de cincuenta capas de información geográfica relacionadas al sistema eléctrico mexicano y repartidas en nueve temas, que ilustran tanto elementos directamente relacionados con el sistema eléctrico, como elementos que ayudan a explicar la lógica que su despliegue ha seguido hasta ahora (áreas de exploración y explotación de hidrocarburos, minerales metálicos en general y otros recursos con relevancia actual, como litio). Ver el mapa: http://geocomunes.org/Visualizadores/SistemaElectricoMexico/
Geovisualizador - Alumbrar las contradicciones del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional y de la transición energética | Geocomunes
Geovisualizador interactivo del proyecto Alumbrar las contradicciones del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional y de la transición energética.
geocomunes.org

La investigación relacionada con este mapa busca exponer de manera directa una crítica al modelo energético mexicano así como ser una plataforma para articular la discusión amplia sobre la urgencia de construir modelos civilizatorias no sólamente técnicamente viables y sustentables sino, ante todo, políticamente distintos al modelo de explotación y de consumo que este sistema energético sostiene. Esta investigación busca aportar elementos para una reflexión amplia y colectiva en torno a la dimensión técnica y política que subyace a los momentos que componen la producción de este valor de uso: la generación eléctrica (distribución de las plantas generadoras, tipo de tecnología, empresas asociadas y dimensión territorial implicada), distribución de la electricidad (ubicación de las líneas de transmisión y crítica al consumo desigual y altamente contrastante) y consumo (principales actividades consumidoras de electricidad, su distribución en el país, y crítica a la utilidad pública de las mismas).
Nuestra ponencia estará enfocada en presentar el geovisualizador y, haciendo uso de éste, mostrar la geografía de los principales hallazgos y reflexiones derivadas de esta investigación. Con ello, buscamos sumar a la discusión argumentos que dimensionan los efectos territoriales del actual sistema eléctrico, y reflexionar colectivamente sobre los alcances y límites de las herramientas digitales para discutir la forma actual y posible de bienes comunes como la energía.

To date much of the discussion concerning Mozambique’s energy transition pathways has been dominated by state agencies, corporate interests and the international donor community and has been premised upon a limited, neoliberal ideology of development. Given the availability of significant coal deposits and offshore gas, state actors have pursued modernist, extractivist approaches characterised by a penchant for large-scale infrastructural ‘mega-projects’ that are seen as the answer to energy access dilemmas in the country. This paper traces the colonial-extractive terms and metabolically unequal relations between different places that Mozambique’s energy transition has been based upon and explores the consequences for (a) the capitalist organisation of the energy landscape and (b) the way the energy-development nexus has come to be understood by donors and state agencies. The paper also argues that contrary to such ‘top down’ perspectives and trajectories, it is crucially important to pay attention to the emergence of several community-driven approaches to energy access and transition that have ambitions of enhancing energy democracy and sovereignty. In doing so the paper draws on collaborative, multi-institutional research funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) which explores the potential of community energy systems to accelerate inclusive, just, and clean energy transitions in Eastern and Southern Africa. It also outlines the experience of our research team to date in creating a Community Energy Laboratory - a non-commercial microgrid within the city of Maputo - serving as a practical demonstration site to deliver theoretical and empirical evidence into what works for community energy systems. The paper adopts an approach closely guided by decolonial and post-development thinking and argues that the emergence of alternative visions of energy transformation has the potential to disturb and disrupt prevailing models of development.

Keywords: Mozambique, community, dispossession, energy justice, post-development

Key words: Energy transition; Energy justice; Climate justice; Pluriverse; Yeknemilis.
There is an acute need for decolonial critiques of energy and climate justice in the face of the genocidal and ecocidal trajectories of climate coloniality (Dunlap 2021; Dunlap and Laratte 2022; Sultana 2022). Most corporate and governmental actors espouse “solutions” to global warming that amount to “green extractivisms” that rearticulate the colonial, capitalist, and extractivist logics that fuel climate change and underpin hegemonic power relations (Bruna 2022; Temper 2020; Verweijen and Dunlap 2021). While the concepts of energy and climate justice have been deployed to analyze and criticize these dynamics (Newell 2022; Silva Ontiveros et al. 2018), most conceptualizations of energy and climate justice rely on Western and universalistic conceptualizations of “energy,” “climate,” and “justice” and insufficiently account for spatio-historical structures of domination, risking the rearticulation of forms of ontological and epistemological violence (Bold 2019; Brock et al. 2021; Stock 2022; Tornel 2023). They have also insufficiently accounted for the ways in which energy and energy systems constitute forms of power (Knuth et al. 2022; Sovacool 2021). Yet, energy and energy infrastructure are not only conduits of power but also sources of power themselves as the material and infrastructural dimensions of energy both enable and disable certain configurations of political power (Boyer 2019). Importantly, energy infrastructures are not solely tools of empire and are always subject to contestation and potential transformation by counter-hegemonic actors. In fact, such infrastructures are “also the essential architecture of transition to a decolonized future” (LaDuke and Cowen 2020: 246). The conjuncture in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico illustrates this well. Over the past decade, transnational corporations and state actors have sought to impose large-scale renewable and hydrocarbon energy infrastructures in Maseual and Totonac territories in the Sierra Norte de Puebla in Mexico. In response, Indigenous Maseual, Totonac, and mestizo communities have articulated a common regional effort to defend their territories from these threats that they refer to as “Proyectos de Muerte” to indicate how these projects entail the erasure of Indigenous and nonhuman lives. Through regional assemblies that have attracted thousands of participants as well as the formation of organizations that can act as popular Indigenous representation like the Consejo Maseual Altepetajpiani (“Guardians of Maseual Territory”) or the Consejo Regional Totonaco, the imposition of these projects has been successfully resisted (Post, 2022a, Post 2022b). Building on a much longer history of forty years of building a communitarian, anti-capitalist, social economy organized around the Unión de Cooperativas “Tosepan Titataniske” (“United we will Overcome”) and four years of discussions and dialogues, the predominantly Maseual communities in the Sierra Nororiental have developed a Plan de Vida known as the “Códice Maseual.” The Códice proposes a forty-year strategic territorial plan to realize yeknemilis, which can be considered a particular vision of Buenos Viveres (González Rosales & Julián 2021), which implies Indigenous sovereignty, autonomy, and post-capitalist flourishing. Achieving “energy autonomy” and “energy sovereignty” (as distinct from energy justice) is a core element of the Códice. The project “Energía para yeknemilis (Buen Vivir) en la Sierra Nororiental de Puebla” aims to power the search for yeknemilis and achieve energy autonomy and sovereignty by appropriating and cooperatively managing renewable energy infrastructures, such as wood gardens, decentralized small-scale solar power generations, and micro hydropower plants. Based on ongoing participatory action research (Fals-Borda 1987) with Indigenous Maseual, Totonac, and mestizo community organizations in the Sierra Norte de Puebla in Mexico, this paper argues that energy infrastructures based on decolonial understandings of energy and energy justice are central to broader civilizational transitions towards a post-capitalist and post-extractivist pluriverse. Through a situated analysis of the understandings of energy, energy autonomy, and sovereignty in the Sierra Norte de Puebla and the positioning of energy infrastructures as integral to yeknemilis in the “Energía para yeknemilis (Buen Vivir) en la Sierra Nororiental de Puebla” project, the paper interrogates decolonial critiques of energy and climate justice and highlights possibilities and limits to transform hegemonic power relations through decolonial energy transitions. It thus seeks to contribute to the urgent task of demonstrating how “struggles over the meanings of energy and land and the relationships between landscapes and everyday life highlight the multiple ways in which energy justice can be (re) formulated from the ground up” (Tornel 2023: 59).
References:
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Dunlap, Alexander, and Louis Laratte. 2022. “European Green Deal Necropolitics: Exploring ‘Green’ Energy Transition, Degrowth & Infrastructural Colonization.” Political Geography 97: 102640. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102640.
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Knuth, Sarah, Ingrid Behrsin, Anthony Levenda, and James McCarthy. 2022. “New Political Ecologies of Renewable Energy.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 25148486221108164. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221108164.
LaDuke, Winona, and Deborah Cowen. 2020. “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure.” South Atlantic Quarterly 119 (2): 243–68. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8177747. Newell, Peter. 2022. “Climate Justice.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 49 (5): 915–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2080062.
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By exploring what we call the ‘Finance-Extraction-Transitions Nexus’, this article contributes to the academic literature in two distinct ways. Firstly, it contributes to the growing strand of critical literature studying the shift in development paradigm towards finance-led interventions in Global South countries. We argue that there is an urgent need to expand this literature to explore the role of finance capital in shaping dynamics of extractivism more generally and of mineral extraction in particular. Secondly, the article expands the critical literature on extractivism and transitions that has emerged from Latin American scholarship. By including the analysis of financialization into the conceptualization of extractive growth strategies in Andean countries, we provide a novel way to researching the way in which the subordinate position in global financial capitalism and the increased demand for transition minerals exacerbates existing and creates new dependencies. Exploring this finance-extraction-transition nexus helps to evaluate the interplay between finance capital, the extraction of ‘green’ metals and minerals, and the material and socio-economic implications of transitions.


Keywords: Finance, development, climate change, green transition, extractivism, minerals, Latin America

Abstract:

In Colombia, centralized political and economic institutions have systematically neglected rural landscapes, inhabited predominantly by black, indigenous, and campesino communities, in the provision of basic public services. As a result of this historical marginalization, religious leaders and missions have taken on the role of providing these services in some of these areas. These efforts resulted in significant cultural losses, especially among black and indigenous communities: Through the provision of public services, traditional practices and knowledge were replaced by western ontologies and epistemologies.

Currently, the Government of Colombia is committed to providing “access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all” by 2030, in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 7. To achieve this goal, the government is collaborating with and relying on for-profit entities, and non-governmental organizations to address the “energy access gap” and provide “clean cooking facilities”. Despite these efforts, religious leaders continue to provide basic services in some rural areas – for example, through the installation of solar panels. This raises an important question: can renewable energy systems, under the current modernist and development-oriented energy paradigm, support evangelization models that maintain identity loss dynamics in non-western rural communities?

Based on a case study of a ranchería belonging to the Wayúu indigenous community, this presentation will critically analyze the role of religious leaders (in this case, Catholic priests) in providing renewable energy systems. The analysis aims to identify and highlight potential cultural impacts resulting from linking the provision of electricity to beliefs that are traditionally unfamiliar to Wayúu communities. It will examine how local views have evolved over time, including what aspects have adapted to Catholicism and what elements remain unique to Wayúu culture. Additionally, the analysis will explore how the community’s beliefs have shifted regarding energy, the environment, and community well-being. Ultimately, the presentation will raise important questions about the potential long-term cultural effects of implementing renewable energy systems in rural communities under conflicting ontologies.

Studying this Wayúu rancheria is relevant from energy transition and decolonial perspectives. The Wayúu tribe has struggled to maintain their sovereignty and identity while being deprived of basic public services and impacted by large-scale energy infrastructure projects. Their lands are home to the largest open-pit coal mine on the continent, as well as most of the country’s wind energy projects. Given the rapid deployment of “modern energy systems” in rural Colombia, there is a risk that Sustainable Development Goal 7 and its implementation by governmental, private, or religious actors could lead to the (re)production of identity loss and structural inequality. Therefore, it is crucial to emphasize alternative energy conceptualizations based on non-western ontologies to ensure that local well-being is structurally improved in rural landscapes through energy services.

Key words: Energy evangelism, energy poverty, Wayúu indigenous community.