Title of the talk
Just energy transitions in the Global South. Between old inequalities and new green assets, the case of Colombia.

Speaker
Irene Vélez-Torres is Professor and activist researcher at Universidad del Valle, Colombia.

With an interdisciplinary background in Political Geography (PhD, University of Copenhagen), Cultural Studies (MA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia) and Philosophy (BA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Irene examines the capitalist expansion of agrarian and mining frontiers, and its intersections with historical processes of gendered, ethno-racial and class-based discrimination. In 2022-2023, she was Minister of Mines and Energy in the first left-wing government in Colombia, leading a vision for a democratic and just energy transition seeking to overcome existing extractivist logics in the country.

Abstract

The current climate crisis is a consequence of the hegemonic development model based on intensive consumption of fossil fuels over the last two centuries (IPCC, 2021). To counter the effects of this crisis, governments around the globe have set national targets to reduce their CO2 emissions and limit global warming (IEA, 2019). 

Efforts to counter this crisis, however, are enabled and materialised in different ways according to dissimilar trajectories of inequality. In the Global South, inequality gaps, colonial trajectories of dispossession, and the economic and fiscal dependence on carbon-intensive commodities are central aspects that limit the speed, available resources, and scope of energy transition pathways. 

At the same time, green markets are proliferating as a “solution” to the climate crises, raising questions about the risks of deepening old inequalities and enlarging existing distribution conflicts. This talk addresses the energy transition not only as a goal of technological substitution, necessary for the reduction of greenhouse emissions, but, above all, as the most important global challenge for the transformation of social, ecological and economic relationships. 

Analysing the case of Colombia, Irene Vélez-Torres problematises the politics of change from the opportunities and difficulties that a progressive government faces to materialise a just energy transition.

Roundtable discussion

A roundtable discussion focusing on just energy transitions in Colombia will follow after the talk.

Panelists: Irene Vélez-Torres, Full Professor, Universidad del Valle and former Minister of Mines and Energy (Colombia); Morten Gøbel Poulsen, Oxfam Denmark.

Organisers 

The event is organised by Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies.