The energy transition is a challenge and a necessity for Mexico’s economic transformation as, on the one hand, the country spends 7.6% of its GDP on fossil fuel subsidies and, on the other hand, in 2020 it was estimated that the economic impact of climate disaster increased by 202%. In order to achieve a successful energy transition and secure a sustainable growth path, Mexico needs to modernize its energy sector, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and ensure sustainability. However, it is necessary to start from the territory, involving communities in the co-construction of resilience and the strengthening of local productive chains. Community and cooperative models play an essential role in promoting the creation of collective businesses managed in a democratic and solidarity-driven manner.

An example of just transition opportunities are energy cooperatives. They are a clear and promising model that involves local communities in the production, distribution and consumption of renewable energy, promoting decentralization and democratization of energy, especially in those territories historically and systematically excluded.

However, research conducted in Mexico during the first phase of the Research Facility on Inequalities showed low wealth sharing and limited social mobility in the country. In this context, it is necessary to address the just energy transition from an intergenerational social mobility approach and a social perspective to ensure benefits for the whole society. 

This work is also part of AFD's dialogue with the Mexican authorities on options for diversifying the economy and reducing inequalities.

Find out more about the Extension in Mexico

In partnership with the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY) and in collaboration with the National Institute of the Social Economy (INAES), this research project aims to develop a conceptual and analytical research input for a better understanding of the role that renewable energy cooperatives can play in reducing inequality and increasing social mobility, and how they can be financed. 

This input will:

• Conceptualise the just energy transition approach in the area of existing structural inequalities;
• Make a diagnosis from the perspective of intergenerational social mobility, as well as from the perspective of social and solidarity economy, and its relevance in the framework of just transitions, in order to establish identification criteria, social selection and prioritisation of projects;
• Use this diagnostic to propose criteria for the identification and selection of projects that prioritise the populations with the greatest disadvantages of origin (with the least space for social mobility), given the requirement of «no losers» of the just transition;
• Review and articulate technical issues related to decentralised energy and distributed generation, given their importance in the social economy in the just energy transition;
• Review the current INAES projects related to the subject in order, where appropriate, to guide the construction of identification and selection criteria.  

The research team will first conduct an exhaustive review of literature focused on environmental justice, climate justice, social mobility applied to environmental justice and intergenerational environmental justice. The literature will be analysed from the perspective of the energy transition and the intersection of these issues.

Based on this review of literature, researchers will develop a conceptual framework to understand the just energy transition in the field of current structural inequalities. It will also explain how this conceptual framework can be relevant for public policy decision-making.

The research team will also identify information gaps and research needs, with a special focus on the study of just energy transitions.

You will find below the research paper related to this project: Just Energy Transition, Structural Inequities, and Social Mobility: The Case of Mexico

Download the publication
 

The care economy is a field in which commons-based approaches are essential to tackling inequalities in access, which disproportionately affect women. Public-Community Care Partnerships (PCCPs) can be understood as a model of social commons for addressing this issue. PCCPs involve collaboration between public actors and community-led care initiatives, such as community care centers. They focus on the complementarity of action between public and community actors, with the aim of delivering public action focused on care services that are accessible and collectively managed.

This project was selected as part of AFD’s “Commons and Citizen Participation” call for research projects. This call was aimed at research projects examining the contribution of commons to democratic practices and citizen participation; the interactions between commons actors and public actors; and the capacity of the commons to shape public action. It is part of AFD’s research program on commons.

The project studies Public-Community Care Partnerships in Colombia:

• By analyzing the extent to which they constitute a model for promoting access to care;
• By developing, testing, and evaluating public policy instruments to implement PCCPs, including a PCCP model contract.

This project is an action-research initiative that combines research activities with public policy dialogue in the city of Bogotá. The research is organized through learning communities, which bring together civil society actors from community care centers, project researchers, and public actors.

Through experimentation and learning by doing, the project will help answer the following research questions:

1. What are the conditions for the emergence of PCCPs? 
2. To what extent do they constitute public policy tools?
3. What governance, deliberation, compensation, and evaluation mechanisms underpin these PCCPs?
4. How do PCCPs reflect a complementarity between public services and commons in terms of access to care?

This participatory research, based on “learning communities,” involves public actors from both the Municipality of Bogotá and the national government from the outset of the project. The project will unfold in five stages:

1. Study of the ecosystem of actors and their interrelationships in the field of care within the context under study; 
2. Selection of four community care centers (two as pilot partnership sites and two as counterfactuals) and conducting a diagnostic of these centers’ internal and external practices and processes (legal, accounting, logistics, communication);
3. Establishment of “learning communities” in the two pilot centers conceived as spaces for dialogue and co-creation of the PCCP prototype, as well as legal and financial information and monitoring tools for the two partnerships. The pilots will run for 12 months;
4. Evaluation of the pilots through in-depth interviews and surveys of stakeholders (before/after; and between community centers);
5. Co-design and production of communication and dissemination materials.

The project will produce deliverables at each stage:

• A survey report (stage 1);
• A baseline report on the analysis of the community care centers, the collaborative digital platform for knowledge management and information-sharing within the learning communities (stage 2);
• A prototype PCCP contract (stage 3);
• A report on the challenges and opportunities of learning communities around PCCPs (stage 4);
• Dissemination of the project's findings and lessons learned (stage 5).

The teams are also involved in a collective effort led by Coop des Communs, the Casa Comum platform, and AFD. The goal: to build a transnational learning community by exchanging on the work carried out, drawing on each other’s experience, and generating knowledge on the links between commons, citizen participation, and the transformation of public action. This network brings together complementary profiles — researchers, civil society, and public decision-makers involved in these experiments — coming notably from Brazil, Colombia, and Europe. Supported by meetings held in Brazil and Italy, this effort will lead to a collective volume, currently being drafted, that will compare and put into perspective the various research projects underway.