Building a World-ship: A decolonial approach to just energy transitions

This article contributes to discussions on just energy transitions by analyzing a community project in the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Instituto Favela da Paz (IFDP) is an urban ecovillage created by slum-dwellers who develop projects and courses on renewable energies, urban permaculture, healthy food, and arts. We draw upon decolonial ecology framework (DEF) developed by Caribbean scholar Malcom Ferdinand to analyze their innovations. Based on participatory network mapping, participant observations, interviews, and focus groups, we address the following research questions: In what ways does IFDP promote just energy transitions? And how can the DEF help us understand these types of grassroots innovations that are emerging in the peripheries of the Global South? Instituto Favela da Paz promotes just energy transitions through the dissemination and democratization of renewable technologies, and by reframing narratives that keep in place the exploitation of cheap labor, especially from racialized groups. Instituto Favela da Paz and its partners engage in activities that reframe meanings associated with time, energy, money, and Black identity through their practices of aquilombamento. We conclude that the DEF enriches the theoretical tools available to analyze just energy transitions by bringing to the forefront the exploitation of human body energy—be it in the form of slavery, cheap labor, or gender inequality—that maintains unsustainable ways of inhabiting the Earth. It also helps to identify the emergence of alternative ways of living that contribute to the creation of a more just and shared world.