The human rights implications of the Brookfield-Isagen Sogamoso dam and La Guajira wind farm in Colombia
Photo: Opposition to the Brookfield-owned Isagen “invad[ing] Wayuu indigenous territories and desecrat[ing] sacred sites to install wind power projects without consultation.”
The Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. describes itself in a recent media statement as “a leading global alternative asset manager headquartered in New York with over $1 trillion of assets under management…”
While the decision in October 2024 to move the head office of Brookfield from Toronto to New York “to make its shares more attractive to US investors” has garnered some recent media attention, its investment decisions are also of interest to defenders in Colombia accompanied by Peace Brigades International.
On January 13, 2016, The Globe and Mail newspaper reported: “Brookfield buys Colombia’s Isagen stake for $2.8-billion.”
The Brookfield website highlighting “renewable power generation in Colombia” notes: “Since our acquisition of the business in 2016, Isagen has executed several strategic initiatives that will provide additional growth opportunities. In 2021, the company signed the acquisition of its first two solar generation projects, which when complete, should add 138 megawatts of capacity. The company is also developing its first wind farm, with an installed capacity of 20 megawatts that is expected to be completed in 2022.”
Brookfield and the Sogamoso hydroelectric dam
Isagen owns the Sogamoso Hydroelectric Power Plant in the department of Santander in Colombia, and is in the jurisdiction of several municipalities including Barrancabermeja and Puerto Wilches.
In May 2016, the European news website Euractiv reported that, according to a report by Oxfam, German companies “are complicit in human rights violations through hydroelectric projects in countries such as Brazil and Honduras.” That article also cites: “The Sogamoso dam in northern Colombia, where, between 2009 and 2014, six activists have been killed and many more disappeared without a trace.”
Among the environmental concerns about the dam, in March 2020 El Espectador reported: “The fishermen of the San Silvestre wetland, in Santander, denounce that since the middle of February there is a fish mortality in the place. According to them, this emergency is due to the fact that Isagen, a company in charge of the Sogamoso dam, opened the floodgates to feed the river that bears the same name.”
PBI-Colombia accompanies the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) that in turns accompanies the Federation of Artisanal, Environmentalist, and Touristic Fishermen and Women of Santander (FEDEPESAN) who fish in the San Silvestre wetland impacted by the Sogamoso dam.
Photo: PBI accompanying FEDEPESAN and CREDHOS leaders on the San Silvestre wetland, June 2022.
Brookfield and the La Guajira wind farm
On March 20, 2021, Colombian environmental defender Oscar Sampayo tweeted: “The Canadian investment fund @Brookfield owner of @ISAGEN in Colombia, violent and disrespectful sacred sites of the Wayúu community in northern Colombia.”
Sampayo’s tweet follows the tweet from the Nacion Wayuu ONG that says: “Isagen invades Wayuu indigenous territories and desecrates sacred sites to install a wind project in an inconsistent and arbitrary manner.”
At that time, Nación Wayuú ONG called “on the Colombian State, national and international control bodies and Isagen, to refrain from continuing to implement their project until the fundamental right to free and informed prior consent to which indigenous peoples are entitled is fulfilled.”
On February 20, 2025, the Associated Press reported: “Construction started on the La Guajira 1 wind farm — which looms over the cemetery near Cabo de la Vela [in the northern region of La Guajira] — in 2020 after a mix of legal processes, government backing, and controversial negotiations and unsatisfactory prior consultation. It faced significant opposition from the Wayuu and has been producing electricity since 2022, but is not yet hooked up to the interconnected system.”
Image of social media post highlights additional concerns.
PBI-Colombia accompanies the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CAJAR) that supports the efforts of the Wayúu Indigenous people of La Guajira to bring legal actions to protect themselves from the impacts of the Cerrejón open-pit coal mine. CAJAR may also be supporting the Wayuu in relation to this wind farm.
Photo: PBI with CAJAR lawyer Rosa Maria Mateus in Bogota, July 2022.
PSI report on Isagen privatization
In May 2024, Public Services International (PSI) and the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR), together with the Colombian trade unions SINTRAISAGEN, ORGANISA, SINTRAE, SINEDIAN produced a report on the consequences of this purchase, “the second largest privatisation deal in Colombian recent history.”
In the media release about that report, Mark Hancock, the President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), commented: “CUPE has always opposed the privatization of public assets in Canada and around the world. We support the unions in Colombia in calling for a re-evaluation of Brookfield’s troubled privatization of a key electricity provider in Colombia and its impact on workers, communities, consumers and financing of public services.”
We continue to follow this.
Photo: PBI accompanied defenders from CREDHOS and the CCALCP legal collective outside the Brookfield office in Toronto, November 2019.
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