Colombia’s wind farms deliver promise and ache for indigenous group | EUROtoday

When José Luis Iguarán steps outdoors his house in La Guajira, northern Colombia, he’s met with a line of 10 towering wind generators stretching throughout the cactus-strewn terrain towards the Caribbean Sea.

The Wayuu indigenous group, which Mr Iguarán belongs to, has lived on the arid peninsula area for hundreds of years, herding goats, tending to crops, mining salt, and fishing.

With a few of Colombia’s strongest winds, La Guajira has now grow to be the epicentre of the nation’s shift from fossil fuels to renewable vitality.

But this inexperienced ambition has confronted each resistance and reflection from locals, whose territory is deeply tied to tradition, custom, and a profound connection to nature.

“You wake up and suddenly you no longer see the trees. Instead, you see and hear the turbines,” Mr Iguarán says.

His group now shares its land with Guajira 1 – one among Colombia’s two operational wind farms. Another 15 wind farms are presently underneath building in La Guajira, and there are plans for dozens extra.

“At night, the noise from the turbines disturbs our dreams. For us, dreams are sacred,” Mr Iguarán provides.

The Wayuu, who quantity round 380,000 in Colombia and prolong into Venezuela, have distinct traditions and beliefs. Dreams are a bridge to the non secular world, the place they obtain messages from their ancestors which might be interpreted throughout the household.

Despite the cultural disruptions, Mr Iguarán says that his group has benefited from Guajira 1. The vitality firm behind it, Colombian agency Isagen, has paid for them to have entry to scrub ingesting water, higher roads, and durable brick homes, which have changed a few of the mud and cactus ones.

Isagen, which is owned by Canada’s Brookfield, additionally pays three native communities an annual charge for the wind farm to be there, a proportion of annual electrical energy revenues, and 20% from the sale of carbon credit. These are purchased by corporations wishing to offset their carbon emissions.

Mr Iguarán believes such vitality tasks may also help deliver important improvement to Colombia’s second-poorest area. But not everybody shares his enthusiasm.

“The wind farms produce clean energy, but they create division within the Wayuu communities,” explains Aaron Laguna, a Wayuu fisherman, who lives within the coastal village of Cabo de la Vela.

His group is presently within the strategy of consultations over a wind farm because of be constructed close by. He has seen others affected by tasks complain a few lack of transparency, poor compensation, a disrespect of cultural norms, and corruption.

“Bad negotiations are made, and the resources given [to us] aren’t well managed by locals,” he provides.

These issues have led to disputes with the vitality corporations, and even battle inside Wayuu communities. Some oppose the tasks, whereas others really feel excluded from negotiations that might deliver them advantages.

“There is still this idea that if it is green, it is automatically good,” says Joanna Barney, director of surroundings, vitality and communities at Colombian assume tank Indepaz. It has extensively researched the vitality transition and its results on the Wayuu.

“In Colombia… there isn’t a solid legal framework to properly assess the environmental impacts – and the social impacts are immeasurable.”

In December 2024, Spanish firm EDP Renováveis shelved plans for 2 wind farms in La Guajira, saying the tasks have been not economically viable.

One issue was the doubling of native indigenous communities who mentioned they might be affected, and due to this fact want compensation, from 56 to 113.

EDP’s choice adopted the May 2023 exit of Italian multinational Enel from one other deliberate wind farm within the area. Enel attributed its departure to “constant protests” that halted building for greater than half of the working days between 2021 and 2023.

Guajira 1 was additionally marred by roadblocks, a standard approach of protesting in La Guajira when locals really feel unheard.

And assume tank Indepaz has recorded circumstances of assaults in opposition to workers of the vitality corporations, together with armed robberies and kidnappings. And in some areas it has discovered circumstances of displacement and violence between native communities who disagree over neighbouring wind farms.

“We call it the ‘wind wars’,” says Ms Barney.

For Colombian anthropologist Wieldler Guerra, there’s a clear disconnect between the Wayuu and the wind farm corporations.

“There are two worlds talking, and they have not managed to understand each other,” he says.

This hole extends to the very approach they understand the wind – the aspect central to those tasks.

“For the Wayuu, the winds are people. It is not the wind, but the winds. There are eight different winds in Wayuu culture, mythological and ancestral beings with distinct temperaments that shape the surrounding environment and must be respected.”

By distinction, corporations and the Colombian authorities see wind as a useful resource to harness for environmental progress, revenue, and to deal with the nation’s vitality wants.

While Colombia has a comparatively clear home electrical energy matrix, with practically two-thirds coming from hydroelectricity, the nation stays weak to low reservoir ranges, which creates a threat of vitality shortages. Wind vitality presently contributes simply 0.1% of the vitality combine.

For vitality corporations investing within the area, the danger of conflicts with native individuals are a worrying prospect.

One such agency, AES Colombia is growing the nation’s largest wind vitality cluster in La Guajira, with six wind farms.

The firm insists it maintains an open dialogue with communities, providing truthful compensation, and guaranteeing advantages comparable to clear ingesting water and shares in carbon credit.

But it says good group relations will not be sufficient.

“We cannot do these projects alone,” says Federico Echavarría, normal supervisor of AES Colombia. “The government must help resolve conflicts between communities.”

On the windswept seashore in Cabo de la Vela, Mr Laguna says La Guajira has traditionally been uncared for by the state.

Education and healthcare are poor, and most rural communities don’t have working water.

Some individuals nonetheless stroll hours every day to gather water from jagüeys – reservoirs stuffed with rainwater.

His group has a small salt-water therapy plant that produces contemporary water and it desires the corporate planning to construct the close by wind farm to increase it, in order that extra locals profit.

Despite the speak of progress, he factors to a lingering paradox. “The worst thing is we won’t receive even a single kilowatt of the electricity produced here,” he laments.

The plan is for the wind farm’s electrical energy to as an alternative be despatched elsewhere, and that the village will proceed to depend on mills, not less than within the medium time period.

While the longer term may look vibrant for clear vitality, many Wayuu are nonetheless anxious they are going to be left at the hours of darkness.