State capacities, energy transition and climate justice
"State capacities, energy transition and climate justice: regional research for mapping and analyzing innovative public policies with a focus on fiscal justice in Latin America and the Caribbean“ is the name of the research call for CLACSO teams focused on Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru
Registration closes: June 18, 2026
Winners will be announced in July 2026.
Project implementation: July 2026 to March 2027
Final report due: March 2027
Background
Within the context of profound and intertwined global transformations, Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing a juncture marked by the convergence of socio-environmental, climatic, economic, and geopolitical crises and reconfigurations that are straining existing development models. Climate change, the energy transition, and the restructuring of global value chains are intertwined with hegemonic struggles, new environmental regulations, processes of production relocation, and the advance of trends toward green reindustrialization in the Global North.
In this evolving landscape, countries of the Global South face a historic dilemma: reproduce extractive, dependent, and socially unequal models, or build development pathways that acknowledge the planet's ecological limits, strengthen their state capacities, and link the energy transition with climate and fiscal justice. This challenge entails addressing the tensions between energy security and energy sovereignty, as well as advancing industrial policies that promote productive transformation, income redistribution, and the reduction of structural inequalities.
At the same time, the rise of climate change denial, both in the Global North and the Global South, weakens the consensus needed to promote socially just energy transitions. The region, one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, is also a strategic territory for critically rethinking dominant economic models and promoting interpretive frameworks that integrate the notions of energy inequality with the distributive dimension of fiscal justice.
In this context, the analysis of state capacities to design, implement, and sustain innovative public policies that link energy transition, climate justice, and progressive tax reform becomes central. Likewise, it is crucial to understand how new industrial policies driven by global actors—such as the United States, the European Union, China, and India—impact the development strategies of Latin American and Caribbean countries, and what opportunities exist to strengthen South-South cooperation, regional integration, and the development of autonomous agendas.
In the face of these tensions, it becomes urgent to produce rigorous, comparative knowledge that allows us to identify, map, and systematize successful public policies developed at the local and national levels in the region. Recognizing concrete experiences in Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Peru will not only document institutional innovations and accumulated lessons learned, but also contribute to building analytical frameworks and proposals that strengthen energy sovereignty, fiscal justice, and socio-ecological transformation within a democratic framework.
Considering this background, this call is presented as part of the effort to consolidate a regional ecosystem of critical thinking and public action that articulates energy transition, climate justice and economic transformation from a perspective situated in the Global South.
At a historic moment of dispute over the meaning and direction of the ongoing transformations, this initiative calls on research teams to actively contribute to building alternatives that integrate environmental sustainability, social equity and fiscal justice as pillars of a new development horizon for Latin America and the Caribbean.
SEE CALL FOR APPLICATIONS RULES
