Identifying Ecological Distribution Conflicts Around the Inter-regional Flow of Energy in Turkey: A Mapping Exercise

Abstract

The consumption of more energy in Turkey is seen as a precondition for the economic and social development of the country in line with its comprehensive ideology of modernization and progress, and hence, a rather aggressive strategy in energy infrastructure investments is adopted since mid-2000s. Because of this aggressive strategy involving expropriation and enclosure of commons societal unrest against the electricity plants at local scale escalated even further, creating numerous local environmental justice conflicts all over the country. While electricity generation in Turkey is mostly carried out at the rural setting, electricity is consumed mostly in the urban setting, where both the household and industrial consumption levels are higher. A comparison of the regional distribution of electricity generation and consumption in Turkey shows that while the electricity generation capacity is concentrated in some cities-Izmir,

Exploring Limited Capacity in the Grid: Actors, Problems, and Solutions

“…The reason to include the regulative arena is to capture the codified practices that validate or restrict certain actions and actors (Battaglini et al, 2012;Aydin, 2019;Sareen, 2020). In the studied cases, regulations were often present as an important background parameter for the discussions, explaining why an issue was implemented or not, and decisive if a measure was considered cost-efficient or not (compare also Agrell et al, 2013;Crispim et al, 2014).…”

Interweaving Industrial Ecology and Ecological Modernization: A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis

“…International trade and production shifts explain the phenomenon that economic growth in developed countries is accompanied by environmental degradation in less developed countries. For instance, it can be discussed in terms of the shift in the production and consumption of electricity in Turkey [101]. Electricity is vastly consumed in central cities, whereas the rural areas where the power plants are located become "ecological sacrifice zones" [101].…”

“…For instance, it can be discussed in terms of the shift in the production and consumption of electricity in Turkey [101]. Electricity is vastly consumed in central cities, whereas the rural areas where the power plants are located become "ecological sacrifice zones" [101]. Expanding worldwide, there is a possibility that the place of energy waste generation (pollution) is in less developed countries, whereas the growth of consumption (economic development) occurs in developed countries.…”

“…The third area of study is environmental ethics. Environmental ethics involve the exploration of ecological distribution conflicts and environmental justice as a result of the uneven geographical and social distributions of environmental problems [101,102]. Additionally, intensive resource extraction, waste disposal, and land acquisition are often accompanied by heavy, regionally-based environmental and social burdens [103].…”

“…For example, an increasing amount of research on IE focused on policy standards, institutional capacity building, and parks are beginning to consider multifunctionality, networked information sharing, and shared innovation institutions [112,113]. Some scholars have also begun to focus on the issue of multiparticipation in the ecological transformation of industrial parks [114] to avoid the emergence of ecological distribution conflicts [101]. Meanwhile, EM is also exploring concrete, practical approaches, such as the ecological transformation of enterprises and green supply chain management, to address increasingly critical global climate change challenges [39,40].…”