Transformative bi-regional cooperation for a just energy transition

In a global context marked by climate urgency, the energy transition has become a shared priority between Latin America, the Caribbean, and the European Union. The two regions face the challenge of transforming their development models towards decarbonized, sustainable, and equitable economies, but also the imperative to do so from a perspective of social, territorial, and environmental justice. The upcoming CELAC-EU Summit in Colombia offers a historic opportunity to consolidate a bi-regional alliance that is not limited to decarbonizing the economy, but also ensures that this transformation is fair, inclusive, and democratic.

 Cooperation between Latin America and Europe has made progress in identifying strategic areas for joint action: renewable energy, critical mineral mining, technological innovation, green jobs, and climate finance. In recent years, mechanisms such as the European Union’s Global Gateway have been established, which includes an investment agenda for a green and just transition, as well as a 2023–2025 Roadmap, which integrates the notion of “just transition” as a guiding principle. Through these instruments, the EU has allocated resources to promote the energy transition in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile, supporting regulatory reforms, investments in renewable energy, and job training programs.

 However, these efforts still face deep tensions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the territories that today concentrate energy transition projects—such as La Guajira in Colombia, the Bolivian highlands, or northern Chile—are also longstanding scenes of poverty, ethnic-racial exclusion, and dispossession. In these contexts, our research has shown that the arrival of wind, solar, or mining megaprojects, often promoted with European capital, has reproduced historical inequalities and socio-environmental conflicts. Without robust mechanisms for participation, transparency, and equitable distribution of benefits, the transition risks becoming a new wave of green extractivism, where energy sources are replaced but the power relations that sustain inequality remain unchanged.

 At the same time, the financial architecture that underpins bi-regional cooperation continues to be marked by a logic of indebtedness and conditionality. Access to climate and just transition funds is often mediated by restrictive financial criteria, which excludes local communities, indigenous peoples, and territorial organizations that directly face the impacts of the transition. Resources, mostly channeled through development banks or public-private partnerships, tend to reinforce corporate and technological concentration, without guaranteeing access to basic rights—such as drinking water, energy security, or effective participation—in the territories where projects are implemented.

 Even so, the Latin American region has made regulatory and jurisprudential advances that can nourish bi-regional dialogue. Constitutional jurisprudence and recent advances in human rights, such as Advisory Opinion 31/2025 of the Inter-American Court, recognize that development and transition policies must incorporate dimensions of justice. These decisions serve as benchmarks for cooperation based on human rights, self-determination, and the sustainability of life. In this context, the CELAC-EU Summit represents a decisive opportunity to reconfigure bi-regional cooperation towards an agenda of just transitions that simultaneously addresses climate challenges and structural inequalities. This implies a shift from investment-centered cooperation to justice-centered cooperation.

To this end, it is essential that bi-regional cooperation:

• Recognizes the ecological and historical debt between the Global North and South and promotes accessible, unconditional climate finance with a focus on human rights, gender, and indigenous peoples.
• Ensures the effective and binding participation of local communities and ethnic peoples in all stages of the design, implementation, and evaluation of energy projects, including mechanisms for co-management and citizen monitoring.
• Incorporates environmental, climate, and human rights standards for companies, ensuring the centrality of human rights, transparency, and redress for damages.
• Strengthens local and territorial capacities through technology transfer, job training, and support for community energy, water, and food projects, with criteria of sovereignty and sustainability.
• Aligns cooperation policies with regional regulatory and jurisprudential frameworks, promoting coherence between energy transition, social rights, and environmental justice.

The approval of concrete commitments in these areas during the upcoming summit will not only strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the transition, but also enable cooperation between Europe and Latin America to become a real engine of social transformation. A just transition is not measured only in megawatts installed or tons of carbon reduced, but in guaranteed rights, strengthened territories, and communities that can decide their own energy future.

Economic Justice Line – Business & Human Rights