Strangers on Their Own Land: Examining Community Identity and Social Memory of Relocated Communities in the Area of the Bui Dam in West-central Ghana

Abrampah, David Akwasi Mensah

doi:10.17730/0018-7259.76.4.291

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Households that are displaced to make way for hydropower infrastructure are often resettled as part of a compensation program, but they may not be resettled near friends and family in their new location and experience a loss of social capital [38,48,49], they also may be resettled in settlements that do not have the same natural capital (losing access to common pool resources such as rivers) they use to have around, or move to a location that has land of worse quality than what they have before which creates a loss in people livelihoods [50][51][52]. Thus, resettled households may need to learn new skills and find new livelihoods and sources of income to be able to make a living in their new location.…”

Section: Displacement and Compensationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large hydropower projects increase stress despite compensation efforts: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

et al. 2023

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Large hydropower projects continue to be built in developing nations, despite their known negative impacts. Large-scale energy projects strain local infrastructure and reduce access to infrastructure for households that live near them. Here we investigate the link between large-scale hydropower projects and stress. Our results suggest that these projects create stress through two mechanisms: strains on community resources and through the process of displacement. We also ask how compensation and resettlement programs condition these relationships. Using data from the Madeira river basin in the Brazilian Amazon, we find that hydropower projects increase stress by reducing access to energy, water, sanitation and land. Compensation provided was not sufficient to moderate this effect.

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Section: Displacement and Compensationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large hydropower projects increase stress despite compensation efforts: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

et al. 2023

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“…In some cases, replacement may be attempted, but is de facto impossible, where religious, sacred, or historical sites are concerned. One example is the flooding of cemeteries and ancestral shrines, which can never be adequately compensated, and which may be traumatic for project-affected people [53]. Likewise, the submergence of archaeological sites is problematic (even if some have argued that submergence may raise needed funds for archaeological fieldwork) [54], and compensation can never properly replace what is lost, leaving mitigation as the only option in such cases.…”

Section: Cultural Religious or Sporting Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Hydropower benefit-sharing and resettlement: A conceptual review

Schulz

Skinner

2022

Energy Research & Social Science

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Globally, hydropower developers are increasingly expected to share benefits with people living in projectaffected areas. Nevertheless, hydropower benefit-sharing has not found sufficiently widespread application, and the concept is not yet widely understood. The present paper aims to make the following contributions: First, we clarify the commonalities and differences between benefit-sharing, compensation and related concepts, which refer to processes in which developers transfer resources to project-affected people. We suggest that benefitsharing can be understood as a 'sustainability intervention', i.e. the focus is on making an additional and positive long-term development impact, beyond replacing or marginally improving on lost assets. Further, we propose that benefit-sharing is defined by the transfer of resources and services that are 1) substantively different from those serving as compensation for lost assets; 2) determined via participatory processes with projectaffected people and 3) delivered in the later stages of the timeline from dam planning to operation. Second, we explore some governance challenges on the pathway towards 'good' benefit-sharing, highlighting: (i) that effective participation by project-affected people requires capacity building over time, involving a gradual transfer of control over spending decisions; and (ii) that the appropriate institutional set-up for benefit-sharing may be dependent on the existing capacity of governments in the dam-hosting location. Legally mandated benefit-sharing mechanisms to raise funds may be more appropriate in the context of high existing state capacity, whereas developer-led mechanisms will be required where the existing capacity is low. In practice, a mix of multiple institutional arrangements and benefit-sharing mechanisms is possible and desirable.

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“…Second, from the dimension of mental space, factors such as community identity, sense of relative deprivation, sense of resentment, land emotion, and community memory are the psychological roots of community spatial conflicts [5,13,25,26]. For instance, community identity is an element of social cohesion that can reduce community conflict [13].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Transformation of Resettled Communities for Landless Peasants: Generation Logic of Spatial Conflicts

Gao

Bao

et al. 2021

Land

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Urbanization in China has resulted in serious conflicts. Landless peasants are resettled between urban and rural areas in transitional communities. where their rural lifestyles often lead to spatial conflicts. We proposed a conceptual model to provide theoretical guidance for the governance of spatial conflicts and the sustainable transformation of resettled communities. Using field observations and semi-structured interviews, we examined 10 resettled communities in Hangzhou, China. The use of grounded theory to code the interview texts yielded 71 initial concepts and 22 categories that we then refined into six main categories: community physical environment (e.g., quality of private housing), community communication environment (e.g., heterogeneity of community population), landless peasants’ risk perceptions (e.g., impacts on social psychology), community governance capacity (e.g., trust in community’s self-governing organizations), residents’ space perceptions (e.g., awareness of space rights), and space competition behavior (e.g., fighting for public space). Finally, we applied social combustion theory to construct a logical relationship between the core category and main categories. The results show that changes in the physical and communication environments are the root elements (“combustion substances”) of spatial conflicts; the driving factors are landless peasants’ risk perceptions and community governance capabilities; direct elements (“ignition temperature”) are residents’ space perceptions and space competition behavior. Strategies for sustained transformation in resettled communities should prioritize gradual transitions of community space, improve support mechanisms for landless peasants, optimize community governance mechanisms, and cultivate awareness of community rules. This study aids the understanding of the inner mechanism for the sustainable development of resettled communities and has implications for other countries and regions in similar contexts.

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Strangers on Their Own Land: Examining Community Identity and Social Memory of Relocated Communities in the Area of the Bui Dam in West-central Ghana

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Large hydropower projects increase stress despite compensation efforts: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

Large hydropower projects increase stress despite compensation efforts: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

Hydropower benefit-sharing and resettlement: A conceptual review

Sustainable Transformation of Resettled Communities for Landless Peasants: Generation Logic of Spatial Conflicts

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