Just Transitions From Coal in Colombia

This policy brief highlights challenges for a just transition from thermal coal in Colombia, in order to inform policy, development cooperation and private finance, research and on-the-ground projects and to offer insights for researchers and practitioners in other contexts. It is based on two reports from the project Just Transitions from Coal in Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa, which drew on workshops, interviews, quantitative analysis and literature reviews conducted between 2022 and 2024, with a focus on two departments that produce the majority of thermal coal for export: Cesar and La Guajira.

The transition from thermal coal in Colombia’s Caribbean region presents a complex set of economic, environmental and sociocultural challenges, demanding a multifaceted approach to ensure a just energy transition and attracting attention from a wide variety of civil society and development cooperation organizations. Workshop insights and case studies from the thermal coal-producing departments of Cesar and La Guajira highlight the challenges of unplanned mine closures, including economic dependencies, environmental degradation, sociocultural and institutional factors. The authors describe these, then address opportunities for a just transition that surmount these barriers, with recommendations to conclude.