In 2019, the Regional Center for Responsible Business and Entrepreneurship (CREER) and the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) began co-creating a documentary with various stakeholders from the Cesar mining corridor, aiming to reflect both the challenges of trust-building and the spaces that have opened for dialogue in the region.
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This narrative experiment offers the voices of the mining corridor—a region deeply affected by Colombia’s armed conflict and by numerous social, economic, and environmental issues—a platform to confront past tensions and imagine new spaces for collaboration and territorial problem-solving in the future.
Within this context, the CBI and CREER teams explored the traditional preparation of sancocho, a local stew, as a metaphor for the ways in which different actors—communities, companies, and authorities—might come together to explore the “recipe” for building trust and advancing dialogue.
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The documentary premiered on March 19 in La Jagua de Ibirico (Cesar, Colombia), using a participatory visual storytelling methodology that engaged the project’s audience in an active way. Among the attendees were local communities from the mining municipalities, mining companies, representatives of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, human rights organizations, and local, regional, and national authorities.
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The documentary will be shown again in Bogotá in May, followed by screenings in cities such as Washington, Boston, and Toronto.
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Report from the meeting with workers and trade unions
Testimony from workers and trade unions
The rapid expansion of critical minerals for the energy transition and other strategic industries (agriculture, defense, technology) presents us with a paradox: the decarbonization of the planet depends on an intensification of mining activity. For CREER, this rapid expansion carries critical risks regarding human rights, local economic dynamics, and ecosystem balance. Our work focuses on analyzing these dilemmas through the lens of a just transition, promoting governance frameworks that mitigate negative impacts and ensure that the mining of “minerals for the future” is carried out under rigorous standards of sustainability, equity, and respect for fundamental rights, through dialogue among different stakeholders.
We analyze the governance and sustainability challenges that arise in the implementation of decentralized generation models. Our work focuses on researching how local associative structures interact with regulatory frameworks and human rights standards. Through applied research, we assess the risks of rent capture, internal decision-making conflicts, and the conditions necessary for these self-management schemes to guarantee equitable and transparent participation in the territory.
With a focus on responsible land management and respect for local livelihoods, at CREER we apply our technical expertise in the photovoltaic sector to promote a solar transition with social integrity. Through the analysis of rural environments, the strengthening of local governance, and the design of participation mechanisms, we seek to ensure that large-scale deployment in Latin America not only contributes to the energy mix, but also strengthens the social fabric. Our purpose is to lead due diligence models that ensure solar infrastructure coexists with food security, strategic ecosystems, and the productive vocations of each community.
