Open Knowledge, Decolonial, and Intercultural Approaches to Communication Technologies for Mobility: The Achuar Kara Solar Project

Solidaric solarities: Governance principles for transforming solar power relations

“…The scalar bias towards utility-scale solar is an example of such a dynamic, as it is often upheld by power asymmetries between large-scale actors who secure requisite capital and licences, and smaller-scale actors who require longer timeframes and face greater institutional barriers to advance solar development (Sareen and Haarstad 2021). Dispossession is a common corollary to capital accumulation, produced again through unequal power relations between marginalised rural inhabitants and project developers with high social and financial capital (Yenneti, Day and Golubchikov 2016).…”

“…The global imperative to implement large-scale solar infrastructures to swiftly mitigate the climate crisis has led to a ‘global land rush’ (Scheidel and Sorman 2012), often exacerbating land-use conflicts by ‘green grabbing’ productive spaces for marginalised producers (Avila et al 2022; EJAtlas 2019; Franco and Borras 2019). Acquiring space for utility-scale solar projects has often entailed the dispossession of land from marginalised farmers (Bedi 2019; Stock and Birkenholtz 2021; Yenneti, Day and Golubchikov 2016). Large-scale solar infrastructures can be conceived of as energy plantations, fraught with colonial-capitalist production relations that racialise alienated peasants (Stock 2022a).…”