ABSTRACT
This chapter considers aspects of energy justice and spatial justice in large-scale plantation agriculture for bioenergy crops in rural Yucatan, Mexico. The government promoted bioenergy projects for rural revitalization benefits while simultaneously producing feedstock for renewable biofuels. This research reveals how local communities were disenfranchised from their access to common property resources. We show how unsuccessful renewable energy projects further aggravated precarity conditions in rural communities as they bore the unequal burden of the projects’ failure. Additionally, affected communities were unable to participate in the projects’ planning to express their opinions on the impacts of the projects. Moreover, their energy poverty challenges remained unmitigated. Therefore, we argue that attaining the tenets of energy justice and just transition, especially in the rural areas of the global South, remains unmet.
