Katharina Richter "Everyday insecurities, indigenous rights and green extractivism in the Colombian Amazon"

Renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, battery storage, wind turbines or heat pumps are key elements in our fight for a climate safe future. These technologies, however, rely on a wider range of minerals, metals and rare earth elements than fossil fuel energy. These so-called Critical Raw Materials are strategically important given they are difficult to substitute in industrial processes and sourced via geopolitically vulnerable supply chains.

At this seminar, Katharina Richter, lecturer at the University of Bristol, will present her work on a proposed copper-molybdenum mine justified with the energy transition in the municipal area and upper watershed of Mocoa, capital of the Colombian Amazon province of Putumayo.

This mine illustrates the contradictions created by the Global Energy Transition: the mined minerals can help accelerate decarbonisation, but their extraction would take place within a highly biodiverse area and adjacent to Indigenous communities whose political, territorial and cultural rights are protected at national and international level. The seminar will share preliminary findings from a qualitative research project conducted in summer 2026.

The findings will show how different stakeholders navigate and ultimately balance the tension between the need to strengthen Critical Raw Material supply chains and protect local, indigenous rights-based sustainable development outcomes in accordance with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and national rights frameworks in Colombia. Specifically, we interviewed institutional and community stakeholders in the wider Mocoa area to understand how they engage with the proposed mine, including its perceived opportunities and challenges, resource governance and management, and decision-making processes. The project also scoped how vulnerability to, decision-making power about, and responsibility for (mitigating) mining impacts are distributed and politically navigated. These findings will be of particular interest given the recently elected, right-wing administration is looking to accelerate mineral mining and oil and gas extraction.