The northwest region of Colombia is rich in natural resources, but its people have been long neglected. Colombia is at a crucial point as major projects led by Gustavo Petro’s government have hinged the country’s future on the promises of the energy transition. But this transition will not benefit people in Colombia by default. Esther Goodwin Brown and Eliana Lafone hear from environmental defenders working across the coal corridor to protect their territories and ensure no one is left behind as mines close and renewable energy projects begin.
In the north of La Guajira you’ll find communities without electricity, internet, technology; without water, education and food. And you ask yourself: if we’ve been producing energy for the world for nearly 40 years, why don’t we have it ourselves?
Juan Carlos
Located at the northern tip of Colombia’s mining corridor in La Guajira, Cerrejón is one of the largest open pit mines in Latin America. Employing over 13,000 local people directly and indirectly, it dominates the local economy. But with the coal mine’s planned closure by 2034, questions loom about what will happen to the people and land left behind.
Juan Carlos has spent the past three decades working at Cerrejón, operating trucks the size of two-storey houses. He is also a trade union organizer with Sintracarbón and even off-duty, he rarely stops organizing. Everywhere he goes he sees an opportunity to rally his coworkers to join him in holding the company to account. At the top of his agenda is securing a deal for his colleagues for when the mine closes. He wants to ensure they do better than those at nearby mines, where abrupt closures left workers completely abandoned:
‘To ensure we can survive as a community after coal is phased out, we need dialogue with the government, communities, workers, unions, and companies to plan how to diversify the region’s economy’, Juan Carlos tells LAB.
Although official closure could be nearly a decade away, workers and unions fear the mine could shut down sooner and without much warning. Juan Carlos is pushing Cerrejón’s management to commit to giving advance notice to workers, as well as fair compensation and upskilling, so they can move into different lines of work.
Juan Carlos’ fight for the responsible closure of Cerrejón is also about environmental justice and supporting local communities. Visiting families who live around the mine, he’s shown evidence of polluted water and cracked homes caused by mining detonations. He uses their testimonies to hold Cerrejón accountable for environmental damage they have caused as well as alleged human rights abuses.
Being a union leader means having many roles — worker, union member, leader, and defender of the land.. you become someone who speaks for both the community and the territory.
A land in transition
Juan Carlos lives in a town neighbouring Cerrejón called Fonseca (from the Latin fons sicca, meaning ‘dry spring’). Located in the fertile valley of the Ranchería River, Fonseca was once an agricultural community. However, its proximity to the Venezuelan border fuelled smuggling and drug trafficking in the 1980s, changing the local culture. Then when multinational mining companies arrived in the early 2000s, they targeted young people by recruiting directly from schools. Many dreamed of studying, but the lack of financial means and opportunity drew them to jobs like those at Cerrejón which offered nearly triple the average salary. Juan Carlos hoped to study medicine, but at 22, he joined the Cerrejón workforce — a decision that, like for many, quietly ended that dream.
Driving through the area today, it’s clear how deeply mining is woven into the local identity. Juan Carlos points out the bars, nightclubs, restaurants, taxis, and hardware stores all open around the clock to suit the non-stop nature of mining work. Employees work in shifts, meaning the town must operate day and night.
Colombia’s current government has made the closure of coal mines a centrepiece of its ambitious climate agenda, causing nervousness in the region. Since taking office in 2022, Petro’s government has been developing a bold plan to transition Colombia away from coal and gas, through what they hope will be a ‘just transition’ that protects workers and communities. In 2023, the departments of Cesar and La Guajira became part of the ‘special mining districts’ where coal is being phased out and renewables ramped up. That same year, Colombia became the first Latin American country and the largest producer of oil and gas to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, cementing the country’s regional leadership in renewable energy.
‘The decision to endorse the treaty marks a new path for Colombia,’ Andrés Gómez, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty LATAM Lead, explains. ‘It signals the prioritization of building economies with sustainable futures, in contrast to the dependence on fossil fuels, which has left deep scars across the country’s territories and has kept communities far from the promised development.’
But if Colombia is to succeed in delivering on these ambitious promises and to shift from fossil fuels to renewables whilst empowering its communities, it will need to learn from lessons of the past – especially the long-standing struggle for prior consultation and the history of human rights abuses linked to Colombia’s mining industry. There is a fear that new renewables projects could bring about similar issues, if they are not approached with the needs of Colombia’s people and land at their heart. The Just Transition process has already encountered issues with renewables projects being held up in complicated delays, in part due to social tensions.
Fighting with knowledge on their side
Learning from past rights violations and the disasters of a lack of prior and informed consent will be essential for rights defenders like Juan Carlos to arm themselves with the legal knowledge and skills needed to challenge multinationals.
‘Union work has changed globally. A union leader is no longer someone who throws stones and demands workers’ rights through violence. Nowadays, demands are made through legal channels. You need a solid professional grounding to confront multinational companies in court,’ Juan Carlos explains.
The same goes for Cindy. As a 29-year-old Wayúu leader, she is the first in her family to receive a Master’s education, putting her in a unique position to represent her community. Cindy is using her education to work with lawyers and negotiate a fair deal for her people amidst the potential construction of a wind farm in her community. Cindy represents a new wave of Indigenous leadership — one that is defending land and actively shaping how communities can benefit from the projects entering their territories by ensuring the right to prior consultation.
‘For years and years La Guajira has been stuck in poverty, not because we lack resources. But because we do not enjoy the royalties…We are demonstrating that as young leaders we can build a better future for our community,’ Cindy states.
One of Cindy’s main priorities in the negotiations is securing access to water. Her community, El Paraíso (paradise in English), is located in northern La Guajira, a desert-like region and one of the driest places in Colombia, making it challenging to cultivate crops. Protecting the land is central to Cindy’s culture, and goes hand-in-hand with ensuring her community preserves their traditions:
For us as Wayuu Indigenous people, we are governed by a worldview — a worldview rooted in nature: our Mother Earth, the wind, the water. We depend on those elements that define us, and our culture, and our dreams.
While Cindy’s community faces its own struggles to secure water, other Wayuu communities closer to Cerrejón confront an even harsher reality. Local climate conditions, combined with the diversion and overuse of surface and groundwater for mining, as well as contamination of what remains, have made the region’s already dry environment even harsher. Between 2010 and 2018, 4,770 Wayuu children in La Guajira died from malnutrition, fuelling disputes over the impact of coal mining in the area.
But, for environmental defenders, addressing these issues head-on does not come without risks. Globally, more killings are linked to mining and extractive projects than any other industry. Colombia is also one of the deadliest countries in the world to be an environmental defender: accounting for 509 of 2,253 killings of defenders between 2012 and 2024. Aldemar Parra García, a community leader and critic of coal mining in El Hatillo, Cesar, was assassinated in 2017. He was involved in speaking out about the air pollution from nearby coal mines. The Just Energy Transition in Coal Regions Knowledge Hub reports high levels of violence affecting Indigenous and Afro-descendant social leaders, with real risks of assassination, displacement, and threats connected to extractive industry activity.
Breaking the cycle
Right at the other end of ‘the coal corridor’, south of La Guajira, four municipalities in the departments of Cesar and Magdalena – La Jagua, Becerril, El Paso, and Ciénaga – recently won a landmark court ruling, following the abrupt closure of mines in the regions. This is the first verdict in Colombia to recognize communities’ and workers’ rights to due process and participation in the closure of coal mines.
The result of the ruling means renewed legal action will be taken against Glencore-Prodeco for failing to carry out proper consultation when it closed its mines. The court ruling also demands transparent, inclusive dialogue to agree compensation and plans to restore the land. Communities and organizations across these regions are hoping this can become a precedent for holding multinational companies accountable.
Local entrepreneur Yalexis’ late husband worked in the La Jagua mine before he died, as did her current partner before he was abruptly laid off during the aforementioned closures in 2021. In the face of a slew of unemployment for her family and other families in the community, she founded Choco Jagua, an all-female chocolate cooperative. She is considered in La Jagua as a ‘mother figure’, especially by the women who she’s provided with jobs, stability, and opportunities – all while raising her own children.
‘I’ve always been a defender of women, a role I take seriously as a single mother who raised my children alone. Choco Jagua has a powerful story — we’re committed to supporting women affected by violence, conflict, unemployment, and other adversities’, Yalexis explains.
Yalexis believes an all-female cooperative is perfect for creating a sustainable business: ‘Men want short-term results,’ she teases, ‘but to build a sustainable partnership you must be patient and stick with it’.
To date, Yalexis has not received any funding from schemes focused on green economies created by President Petro’s government. She did however receive a small grant from the Vice-President of the Republic created to support women entrepreneurs to buy the machinery they need to get set up. But she dreams of owning her own sustainable cocoa farm and diversifying the products they produce to include things like cocoa powder and a cocoa cream nut spread.
Like Fonseca, La Jagua used to be a farming region, but it now depends on mining. Yalexis believes it is possible to restore the land damaged by mining and return the tropical region to its agricultural roots – creating jobs for people through the sustainable farming and production of goods like coffee and chocolate.
‘We need to build a network where we — the communities going through the transition — and the government are connected and speak the same language. It may sound like a dream, but if we set our minds to it, we can create the conditions for a prosperous municipality — one where our children can raise their own children and live full lives,’ Yalexis says.
Ingredients for a just transition
With the presidential elections in 2026 now fast approaching, people in Colombia and across Latin America are bracing themselves for whether the political winds will shift.
As politicians write their manifestos and strategize to garner voters, they should look beyond their halls to leaders like Yalexis, Cindy, and Juan Carlos. Each of them is demonstrating what is needed to build Colombia’s ability to weather future storms. Business owners like Yalexis show that economic diversification and sustainable, regenerative practices are fundamental to resilience. She is making sure that what is good for the environment is also good for local livelihoods. Juan Carlos understands how to work with people caught in the transition to defend community and land rights, rather than imposing plans on them. And Indigenous leaders like Cindy are showing that a just transition must also restore lands and natural resources, and that consent must come with ensuring everyone has a seat at the table as their future is forged.
