Just Energy Transition Debates and Practices in Colombia’s Critical Mineral Belt

This research project focuses on how international initiatives can address disparities in extraction impacts on local communities and what sustainable practices are being implemented in the same regions asked to offer up critical minerals for clean energy transitions. Drawing from environmental anthropology and the social studies of science and technology, I propose a research project in the Andean-Amazonian region of Colombia where one of the continent’s largest copper and molybdenum deposits are located. Extraction of these metals is controversial, fomenting debates around what a just energy transition should entail. At the same time, clean energy models are being applied in areas of the Amazon degraded by the legacy of fossil fuel industries. This confluence of global interest in the extraction of critical minerals and experiments for clean energy is converting Colombia’s Andean-Amazonian territory into an important site from which to learn about just energy transition debates and controversies.

Kristina Lyons

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Kristina Lyons is an assistant professor of anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania.

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