A Compass for a Fair and Transformative Ecosocial Transition
In the 2023 Manifesto For a Fair Ecosocial Energy Transition for the Peoples of the South1, we stated that the problems of the Global South are different from those of the Global North, the European Union, and rising powers such as China. An imbalance of power not only persists because of a colonial legacy, but because the global capitalist model deepens the geopolitical and social divides rather than narrow them. In the context of climate change, ever rising energy needs, and biodiversity loss, the capitalist centers have begun the process of decarbonization, seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To that end, they have stepped up the pressure to extract lithium, nickel, silver, copper, cobalt, among a long list that includes 34 minerals that are critical for the energy and digital transition. They also push for more trade and investment agreements with Latin American countries to meet this need for resources.
This selective, incomplete and inequitable decarbonization, also promoted by large corporations and already endorsed by several Latin American regimes, is establishing a new phase in the environmental dispossession that will affect the lives of millions of people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, including indigenous communities. Not only does the well-known extractivist paradigm remain in force, but the North’s ecological and colonial debt to the South will increase with the expansion of this new “green colonialism”: Latin America will once again become a sacrificial zone, an immense open-pit quarry, a storehouse of seemingly unlimited resources for the countries of the North, now in the name of the “green transition”.
There is not one single possible ecosocial transition, nor is there a single path to energy transition, as the dominant narratives would have us believe. According to climate justice movements, “transition is inevitable, but justice is not”. It needs building. All this requires great imagination and political audacity. Along these lines, eco-territorial struggles and socio-cultural projects such as this seventh edition of [FINCA] are gradually shedding light on concepts-horizons, such as the rights of nature, good living, food sovereignty, territoriality and autonomy, care and interdependence. Together with the critical political and socio-ecological thinking of the South, these concepts and ways of life provide a compass, a map, as Juan Carlos Mariátegui would say, towards a fair and democratic ecosocial transition. We need to combine social justice with environmental justice (instead of pitting them against each other), and bring together egalitarian and democratic values with a holistic and resilient social policy (an Ecosocial State), to respond to environmental and political collapse in a multidimensional way, and to reestablish an ecological balance that is necessary for life.
