Presentation short abstract

Colombia's “just energy transition” attempts to reconcile copper extractivism with peasant-farmers’ autonomous agro-food territories. This presentation places a co-produced territorial video podcast (@LazosProfundosPodcast on YouTube) in dialogue with similar perspectives from Abya Yala.

Presentation long abstract

Since 2023, the Colombian government has coined a “just energy transition” that supports peasant-farmer (campesinx) economies but also authorizes further copper mining and processing in highly biodiverse areas. In El Carmen de Atrato, Chocó, El Roble Mine excavates and fills mountains with cement, then processes the copper-rich sediments and exports them to China, along with other concentrates from Peru and Chile. In this context, campesinx women from the surrounding villages have organized themselves into the Peasant-Farmer Platform, carrying out activities to strengthen campesinx identity among young people and children, thereby confronting the pressure to turn their body-territories into the next frontier of the energy transition. In 2024, we co-produced a territorial video podcast called Deep Bonds, available on YouTube @LazosProfundosPodcast. In it, the women shared their perspectives on the growing pressure to expand copper mining in their lands. Since we released this collaborative work, peasant movements throughout Colombia have strengthened the movement for peasant-farmers as rights-bearing subjects, and the women leaders have organized to title their lands as Agro-Food Peasant-Farmer Territories (TECAM). My presentation will explain this context in detail and engage in dialogue with the books Eco-territorial Feminisms in Latin America and the report on Women Defenders Against Mining Extractivism in Abya Yala, inviting future exchanges of knowledge and grassroots action. I will center on our primary relation to the sun, water, and land from a campesinx perspective, but also highlight the contradictions that emerge as public policies attempt to reconcile systemic refusal with mining extractivism.