The neoliberal consensus that shaped development policy for more than three decades has fractured. For too long, countries of the Global South have been told that development requires familiar sacrifices: wages held down, labour protections weakened, public investment constrained, extractive industries protected and climate ambition deferred. Colombia has begun to chart another path. It is showing that an emerging economy can raise incomes, reduce poverty, strengthen labour, pursue democratic agrarian reform, recover industrial policy and begin a just energy transition at the same time. Its significance lies not in importing a model from elsewhere, but in building a path aligned with the country’s own realities and the needs of its population.
Poverty fell from 36.6 percent in 2022 to 31.8 percent in 2024. By March 2026, Colombia’s national unemployment rate had fallen to 8.8 percent, down from 9.6 percent a year earlier; the lowest it has been in over 25 years while labour-force participation and the employment rate both increased. Labour’s share of national income rose from 38.9 percent in 2022 to 42.5 percent in 2024.
These figures mark a change in direction. Colombia’s previous growth model concentrated wealth, weakened workers, deepened informality and left the country vulnerable to financial pressure and extraction. The Petro government has sought to move the centre of gravity of the economy: moving from a model based on financial speculation to one centered on production, from the concentration of rents to the strengthening of labour, from territorial dispossession to the democratization of land, and from dependence on fossil fuels toward a just energy transition.
Agrarian reform has begun to confront one of the historic foundations of Colombia’s inequality and violence: the concentration and insecurity of land. By the end of 2025, more than 2.5 million hectares had moved through the reform. More than 750,000 hectares had been secured for access to land by peasant families, Indigenous communities and Afro-Colombian communities. A further 1.878 million hectares had been formalised, giving rural families legal security over land they live on and work. In practice, the reform means land for those excluded from it, title for those denied it, and a stronger basis for food production, rural investment, peace and territorial justice.
The government has also restored industrial policy to the centre of development strategy. Colombia’s National Reindustrialisation Policy seeks to diversify production, strengthen value chains, close productivity gaps and incorporate micro, small and popular economy units into a broader national project. Export data points in the same direction: in 2025, non-extractive goods exports reached US$26.39 billion, up 20 percent on the previous year, and accounted for 52.6 percent of the country’s goods exports.
Colombia has also begun to show that climate responsibility and development need not be placed in opposition. In 2022, the country had only a few hundred megawatts of operating solar and wind capacity. By February 2026, clean energy generation had reached 4 gigawatts, equivalent to 17.09 percent of the national electricity matrix. The transition is evident even within the state-owned company Ecopetrol itself. While still rooted in the hydrocarbons sector, the company has begun redefining itself as an integrated energy enterprise, acquiring the 205MW Windpeshi wind project and signing an agreement to purchase up to 1.3GW of solar and wind energy projects from Statkraft.
None of this removes the constraints Colombia faces. Fiscal pressures, debt, inflation, weak private investment and an international financial architecture organised around creditor power all remain real. But these constraints are not an argument for returning to the model that produced dependence, exclusion and vulnerability in the first place. Austerity, wage suppression, indiscriminate liberalisation and deeper extractive dependence would only deepen Colombia’s structural problems.
The continuation of Colombia’s progressive economic project is of international importance. Iván Cepeda, selected as the presidential candidate of the Historic Pact, has pledged to carry forward the reform agenda opened by the Petro government. The choice belongs to the Colombian people. But Colombia’s democratic debate carries significance beyond its borders: whether a country of the Global South can consolidate a development strategy that joins redistribution, productive transformation, territorial peace, economic democracy and climate justice.
Latin America’s history is full of reforms interrupted before they could mature, often in the name of “economic responsibility” — a phrase that has frequently concealed the restoration of privilege. Colombia now stands at such a crossroads. To reverse the gains of recent years would mean returning to dependence, exclusion and rent extraction. To carry them forward would mean advancing a different trajectory: prosperity built through dignified work, democratic land reform, diversified production, public capacity and protection of the conditions of life.
Colombia has begun to show that another economic path is possible. That path should be defended, deepened and carried forward.
Signatories
Thomas Piketty
Jayati Ghosh
Ha-Joon Chang
Yanis Varoufakis
James K. Galbraith
Isabella Weber
Isabel Estevez
Jason Hickel
Prabhat Patnaik
Philip Alston
Raj Patel
Kohei Saito
Richard Kozul-Wright
Ann Pettifor
Fadhel Kaboub
Rafael Correa
Manuel Zelaya
Axel Kicillof
Andrés Arauz Galarza
Alberto Garzón Espinosa
Bettiana Díaz Rey
Christian Duarte
Jahiren Elizabeth Noriega Donoso
Rixi Ramona Moncada Godoy
Cecilia Rikap
José Miguel Ahumada
Gilad Isaacs
Louis-Philippe Rochon
Matias Vernengo
Martín Abeles
José Dari Krein
Bruno De Conti
Monica Bruckmann
Daniel Chavez
Devika Dutt
Joel Wainwright
Guillermo Matamoros
Ladan Mehranvar
Will Stronge
Mat Lawrence Jen Hassum
Neil Coleman
Duma Gqubule
Matti Kohonen
René Ramírez
Pablo Vommaro
Andrés Chiriboga
Consuelo Ahumada
Jaime Zuluaga
Marco Antonio Martins da Rocha
Gabriela Gallardo Lastra
Luciana Ghiotto
Orietta Favaro
Sabrina Fernandes
Pedro Páez Pérez
Christian Robles-Baez
Kristina Karlsson
Andres Bernal
César Alberto Sione Esther Bemerguy de Albuquerque
Ira Regmi Marie Therese Kane
Mercedes D'Alessandro
Marlon David Ochoa Martínez Ana Rodriguez
Thamar Tuta Tovar
Emiliano González Giraldo
