The ABCs on TUED South’s Upcoming Regional Policy Meeting in Colombia

Next month, between May 7-9, TUED South will convene a Latin America & Caribbean TUED South Regional Policy Meeting on energy transition. More than 60 participants from 20 unions will gather in Bogotá, Colombia, to strategise around a Public Pathway alternative to the current “privatise to decarbonize” policy promoted by the rich countries and multinational corporations. . 

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The meeting in Bogotá will take place at a time when progressive governments and trade unions are finding ways to work together on overcoming challenges to a just energy transition in the region.

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TUED South: The First Eighteen Months 

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Since its launch in 2022, TUED South has operated on two scales: regionally and globally.

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By the end of 2024, TUED South will have held two Inter-regional TUED South meetings and three Regional Policy meetings (sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia-Pacific). The two types of meeting have distinct characteristics and objectives: 

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Inter-regional TUED South meetings aim to coordinate between trade unions across regions, identify challenges at a Global South scale, exchange analysis of trends, and discuss the next steps for the TUED South platform. The next inter-regional meeting will take place in Buenos Aires in mid-November 2024.

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Regional Policy Meetings aim to identify the leading challenges and opportunities for the Public Pathway in a given region, grounding this analysis on a regional assessment of the current energy landscape in the region. As the name suggests, the Regional Policy Meetings focus on the development of common policy programs, combining analysis from trade unions, researchers, and governmental and social movement allies. 

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General objectives for the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Policy meeting in Bogotá include:

1. Prepare for the Buenos Aires meeting in November 2024 and ensure the Latin American contingent can help deepen the discussion on the Public Pathway 
2. Develop a collective analysis shared by trade unions and allied researchers on the lessons of the four general periods between the 1960s and 2020s on regional development and energy policies 
3. Analyse the current moment and identify opportunities for pushing forward the Public Pathway in Latin America
4. Map, in concrete terms, the future energy plans and strategies of the different countries represented in the meeting to provide a good basis for strategic regional discussions in Buenos Aires. 
5. Introduce the idea of a regional research collective for the Public Pathway in Latin America to encourage the regular exchange of research findings and develop complementary analysis  
6. Introduce and exchange research methodology and tools on global energy trends (one session will be a research workshop) 
7. Address the limits of the TUED South Framework Document, as they pertain to Latin America and the Caribbean region. See: Part Two, starting with From Here to There: Public Pathway as a Theory of Transition (pages 107 to 116) 
8. Incorporate data and perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean and begin to develop “TUED South Latin America & Caribbean Position Paper” for the Buenos Aires meeting 

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TUED unions in Latin America have identified the region’s commodity export dependence as one of the main challenges to regional development and the development of a Public Pathway. This dependence (which varies by country) poses several questions: 

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• In broad terms, what could a regionally-coordinated industrial policy that supports economic and governance sovereignty look like in 2024? And what is its role within the construction of a public pathway? 
• How does the Latin American trade union movement promote the establishment of Public-Public agreements in the energy sector and its key supply chains? 
• What is our approach to reclaiming and restoring the utility companies that were privatised and/or corporatised during the neoliberal period? 
• How do we leverage the current political moment of several progressive presidents in office? 
• What international-scale political demands carried by progressive sectors could potentially align with the objectives of the public pathway? (e.g. financing a public pathway through fiscal justice, SDR demands, sovereign debt restructuring, etc.)
• Who are the social strategic actors in the Public Pathway to the energy transition?

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Allied representatives from the Petro administration, namely from the Ministry of Mining and Energy, will participate at the LAC Regional Policy meeting to share reflections on the administration’s agenda, challenges, and opportunities. We hope the meeting will also serve to argue for a “Reclaim and Restore approach” in the Petro administration’s energy transition work. 

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