Here, too, however, progress comes at a price. La Guajira is home to Colombia’s largest indigenous community, the Wayuu [5], for whom the wind and the sun are living entities, with a spirit and temperament that are part of the community itself. The idea that private companies can build wind farms to turn a profit clashes with the worldview of those who inhabit and protect these very territories out of cultural and social commitment.
Added to this is a recent memory: decades of coal mining have diverted rivers, altered the landscape, and released dust that has impacted the health of local populations. The new era of renewables is seen as yet another threat, and the Wayuu have strongly opposed the region’s major wind projects.

Several international giants, including Enel, after investing millions of euros, have sold off their portfolios and withdrawn [6]. In their place has stepped in a Colombian company, Ecopetrol, historically tied to oil, which presents itself as a facilitator of dialogue between communities and institutions, despite a track record marred by accusations of environmental contamination in other parts of the country.

The conflict between the Wayuu and the renewable energy giants has been dubbed by many the “war over wind.” This phrase risks conveying a misleading impression: that indigenous peoples are opposed to the energy transition. The truth is that these communities are asking to be part of it, not to simply endure it.

Colombia demonstrates that the energy transition is not merely a process of technological replacement. It is a transformation that requires entire regions to restructure their economies and affects communities that derive their identity and livelihood from those territories. If this aspect is overlooked, there is a real risk that renewables will end up replicating the same extractive dynamics as coal, in the same territories and among the same populations, simply by exploiting a different resource.

This, ultimately, is the essence of the concept of “just transition”, at the heart of the discussions in Santa Marta: a transition that integrates environmental and social dimensions, and that grants those paying the highest price an active role, not merely that of a bystander.

The roundtable in Santa Marta is valuable precisely for this reason: it advances an issue in a world that risks confusing the energy transition with pure market logic. Without social justice, the transition misses an opportunity.

It is precisely from La Guajira, from the winds of the Wayuu and the coal mines, that the reminder comes: the transition must be just for everyone, otherwise it is merely a technological shift.

Cover and preview photo: Beach in La Guajira, Colombia. Author, 2025