Dams, political framing and sustainability as an empty signifier: The case of Belo Monte

Atkins, Ed

doi:10.1111/area.12364

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Despite harsh criticism of large hydroelectric projects by the World Commission on Dams (2000), it is widely acknowledged that dam infrastructure experienced a resurgence in the first two decades of the 21 st century -with numerous states in the Global South turning to dam projects to address the twin challenges of energy insecurity and climate change mitigation (Moore et al 2010;Dye 2019;Schulz and Adams 2019). Whilst the hydroelectric infrastructure of the 20th century was offered as a route for economic development, contemporary dam projects are often presented by their proponents as representing 'sustainable' energy that contributes to global goals related to climate change mitigation and sustainable energy transitions (Ahlers et al 2015;Atkins 2018;Huber and Joshi 2015). The International Energy Agency (2018) has estimated that hydropower currently provides for approximately 16% of the world's total energy supply -with 32 countries, including Brazil, Mozambique and Norway -sourcing 80% of their electricity from hydropower.…”

Section: The Resurgence Of Hydropowermentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower: insights from Bolivia and Brazil

Atkins

Hope

2021

Journal of Political Ecology

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Twenty years after the World Commission on Dams published an oft-cited critique of hydroelectric projects across the globe, the energy infrastructure has experienced a renaissance. Dams, however, remain a highly contested energy source. In this article, we use two iterations of political ecology to challenge and complicate contemporary framings of hydropower as 'sustainable.' Focusing on political ecology's grounded, empirical reading of broader environmental and epistemological claims, we identify two different ways that insights from political ecology can reveal the contemporary relevance of the local scale in critiquing global hydropower infrastructure and its claims to be a part of global decarbonization agendas. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia and Brazil, we adopt frames of 'plurality' and the 'production of space' to analyze how local-scale dynamics of dam building challenge dominant definitions of sustainable hydropower. With the 'green-ness' of contemporary hydropower based on a narrow, CO2-centric definition, these insights complicate, challenge and broaden this definition by illuminating how the impacts of this energy infrastructure and power networks contradict claims of 'sustainability' and widen the relevance of respective projects' impacts, in terms of socionatures and ontologies. We argue that these hydropower projects limit the generative capacity of the local scale, in terms of place-based politics and socio-natures, and remake land-and waterscapes in the image of state and transnational extractive regimes. Together, our analysis opens up new trajectories for political ecology, to question the socio-environmental politics generated and enabled by the reworked environments of green energy production.

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Section: The Resurgence Of Hydropowermentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower: insights from Bolivia and Brazil

Atkins

Hope

2021

Journal of Political Ecology

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“…This dovetails with the 'national champions' policy that promotes those construction companies that constitute Brazil's major dam builders. Brazil's international dam building extends domestic policies as, during the 2000s, the PT government pursued the Belo Monte Dam and other dams on the Tapajos river (Fearnside, 2014;Atkins 2017Atkins , 2018. This also applies to finance; since the sector's privatisation, state banks, most prominently Brazil's development bank (BNDES), have been funding dam construction domestically, while BNDES replicates this internationally.…”

Section: The Boom and Bust In Brazil-africa Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Holds Back Dam Building? The Role of Brazil in the Stagnation of Dams in Tanzania

Dye

2020

SSRN Journal

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Across Africa, a number of major dam projects have been resurrected, often with the backing of the so-called emerging powers. However, many are yet to reach construction and are stuck in the early phases of implementation, with studies ongoing. This paper examines this issue in Tanzania, where eight dam projects were pursued between 2005 and 2017 yet only one reached construction. Beyond the literature on anti-dam activists, there is little analysis of the more technical, financial and policy-making processes that cause such stalling of dam projects. Therefore, this paper focuses on the Brazilian government and two companies, Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão, as the international enablers of two dams in Tanzania, the Stiegler's Gorge and Mnyera projects. It demonstrates the significance of two drivers in undermining these dams construction. One was the inconsistency resulting from Brazil's heavily presidential foreign policy that oscillated from strong support for Africa relations and infrastructure projects between 2010-2012, to a withdrawal of diplomatic and financial support since. The second driver was the degree to which Brazilian governmental and private sector actors misread Tanzanian politics, not understanding the degree of fragmentation in the ruling party and how this affected policymaking. These two factors help explain why the widespread resurrection of dam projects has not entailed an equal boom in dam construction. Additionally, the paper makes a secondary contribution to understanding the factors behind the collapse in Brazil-Africa relations over the last decade, particularly beyond a core group of Lusophone countries.

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“…Examples include assertions of society's 'conquering' of nature, infrastructure as providing a techno-fix for social problems (such as water scarcity) [4,5], the relations between hydropower and statehood [6,7], and the characterization of dams as 'green', sustainable energy [8][9][10][11]. Assertions of the sustainability of contemporary dam projects provide a common storyline of legitimacy, with hydropower presented as providing clean, affordable energy that represents an alternative to fossil fuels [9,10,12,13]. However, this greening of hydropower is disputed, with recent studies highlighting the environmental impacts of the energy infrastructure-related to biodiversity loss [14,15], greenhouse gas emissions [16,17], and disrupted sediment flows [18].…”

Section: The Importance Of Pro-and Anti-dam Storylinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However As a result, it is tied to additional issues and priorities present on the political landscape, including economic development and energy security [8,51]. Whilst previous research has uncovered numerous pro-dam storylines forwarded to legitimize the Belo Monte project, including assertions of the project's sustainability and its role as a solution to issues of energy insecurity [8,12,62], this study focuses on a particular storyline-that of the national interest. It is argued that this storyline provides a significant site of contestation-with the role of the project in the political subject to dispute.…”

Section: Belo Montementioning

confidence: 99%

Disputing the ‘National Interest’: The Depoliticization and Repoliticization of the Belo Monte Dam, Brazil

Atkins

2019

Water

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The construction of a hydroelectric project transforms the watershed in which it is located, leading to a moment of contestation in which the scheme is challenged by opposition actors. This paper explores the interplay between pro- and anti-dam coalitions contesting the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil by discussing how each group inscribes the project with a particular resonance in policy. Drawing upon the work of Chantal Mouffe on agonism and Tania Murray Li on ‘rendering technical’, the subsequent discussion analyzes semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and primary documents to explore how the storylines advanced by pro- and anti-dam actors contest the political character of Belo Monte. It is argued that within these storylines, Belo Monte’s positioning within the ‘national interest’ represents a key site of the project’s depoliticization and repoliticization—which are understood as the respective denial and illumination of the project’s location within a wider terrain of political antagonism and conflict. Whilst pro-dam actors assert the apolitical character of the project by foregrounding it within depoliticized questions of economic benefits, anti-dam actors reground the project within a context of political corruption and the circumvention of dissent. With this paper providing evidence of how contests over dam construction are linked to the concealing and/or illumination of the project’s political content, it is argued that the repoliticization of a project by a resistance movement can have consequences far beyond the immediate site of construction.

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Dams, political framing and sustainability as an empty signifier: The case of Belo Monte

Cited by 18 publications

References 18 publications

Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower: insights from Bolivia and Brazil

Contemporary political ecologies of hydropower: insights from Bolivia and Brazil

What Holds Back Dam Building? The Role of Brazil in the Stagnation of Dams in Tanzania

Disputing the ‘National Interest’: The Depoliticization and Repoliticization of the Belo Monte Dam, Brazil

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