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"This book focuses on how local, national and international civil society groups opposed the Belo Monte and São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric projects in the Brazilian Amazon. In doing so, it explores how contemporary opposition to hydropower projects demonstrate a form of 'contested sustainability' that highlights the need for sustainable development agendas to take more into account than merely greenhouse gas emissions. The assertion that society must look to successfully transition away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy sources often appears assured in contemporary environmental governance. However, what is less certain is who decides which forms of energy are deemed 'sustainable'. Contesting Hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon explores one process in which the sustainability of a 'green' energy source is contested. It focuses on how civil society actors have both challenged and reconfigured dominant pro-dam assertions that present the hydropower schemes explored as renewable energy projects that contribute to sustainable development agendas. The volume also examines in detail how anti-dam actors act to render visible the political interests behind a project, whilst at the same time linking the resistance movement to wider questions of contemporary environmental politics. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Sustainable Development, Environmental Justice, Environmental Governance and Development Studies"--

This book focuses on how local, national and international civil society groups opposed the Belo Monte and São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric projects in the Brazilian Amazon. In doing so, it explores how contemporary opposition to hydropower projects demonstrate a form of 'contested sustainability' that highlights the need for sustainable development agendas to take more into account than merely greenhouse gas emissions. The assertion that society must look to successfully transition away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable energy sources often appears assured in contemporary environmental governance. However, what is less certain is who decides which forms of energy are deemed 'sustainable'. Contesting Hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon explores one process in which the sustainability of a 'green' energy source is contested. It focuses on how civil society actors have both challenged and reconfigured dominant pro-dam assertions that present the hydropower schemes explored as renewable energy projects that contribute to sustainable development agendas. The volume also examines in detail how anti-dam actors act to render visible the political interests behind a project, whilst at the same time linking the resistance movement to wider questions of contemporary environmental politics. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Sustainable Development, Environmental Justice, Environmental Governance and Development Studies.

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.

AbstractThroughout history, the planning and construction of a dam has become symbolic of wider political events and processes. This paper investigates how the Tryweryn scheme in north‐west Wales in the 1950s and 1960s became a central signifier within the emergent Welsh nationalism of the period. The project, providing water to the city of Liverpool, flooded the village of Capel Celyn and displaced its 48 residents. However, the opposition to the project extended beyond this rural community, with the scheme becoming a focal point for Welsh nationalism. This paper explores this significance, arguing that the Tryweryn scheme was articulated in a number of ways that elevated the project from a local issue to a national outcry, resulting in the term 'Tryweryn' having a resonance that continues to this day.

Throughout history, the planning and construction of a dam has become symbolic of wider political events and processes. This paper investigates how the Tryweryn scheme in north‐west Wales in the 1950s and 1960s became a central signifier within the emergent Welsh nationalism of the period. The project, providing water to the city of Liverpool, flooded the village of Capel Celyn and displaced its 48 residents. However, the opposition to the project extended beyond this rural community, with the scheme becoming a focal point for Welsh nationalism. This paper explores this significance, arguing that the Tryweryn scheme was articulated in a number of ways that elevated the project from a local issue to a national outcry, resulting in the term 'Tryweryn' having a resonance that continues to this day.

The construction of a hydroelectric dam involves the prolonged contest between pro- and anti-dam coalitions adopting various storylines to provide the project with meaning. These representations of dams are often open to reinvention and transformation, allowing for the introduction of new portrayals. This work adopts Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Analytic framework to explore how supporters of the Belo Monte project in Brazil have integrated narratives of environmental sustainability into the positioning of the facility. Following recent scholarship, these appeals to sustainability are cast as a tool to legitimize construction whilst concealing negative social and environmental consequences. In doing so, this work asserts that the ambiguity - or emptiness - of the concept of sustainability has allowed for the pro-dam coalition to adopt such a storyline to legitimise a project that possesses questionable environmentalist credentials.

Belo Monte is one of the most divisive dams in Brazilian history, becoming entangled in a thirty-year struggle between pro- and anti-dam interests over the role of the facility within a complex web of Brazilian development and the future of the Brazilian Amazon. This research explores how the proponents of Belo Monte have adopted a number of policy frames as a means of deflection, to divide the opposition and legitimize the project. It investigates this claim by analyzing speeches given within the Brazilian Câmara dos Deputados and the public speeches of high-level politicians. These sources, organized around a framework previously identified by Ahlers et al. (2014), show that the government and individual politicians have used a number of framing devices to legitimize the hydroelectric facility. Principal methods of framing used also demonstrate how contemporary narratives (e.g. sustainability) have been employed to deflect opposition criticism and widen the scheme's perceived beneficiaries. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how the transformation represented by Belo Monte encompassed not only a process of engineering but also a re-articulation of the complex and its role in modern Brazil.

Twenty years after the World Commission on Dams published an oft-cited critique of hydroelectric projects across the globe, the energy infrastructure is experiencing 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 claims to a global transition. 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 contemporary hegemonies of sustainability. 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 socio-natures 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.

This research was supported by an ESRC Doctoral Studentship (Atkins, grant no: 1325180), RGS Environment and Sustainability Grant (Hope) and Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellowship at the University of Bristol (Hope). ; 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. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have garnered significant attention in scholarship and beyond. Geographical work on cryptocurrencies has focussed on how their energy demand interacts with local communities and economies. Less is said about the organization of cryptoasset firms and their associated demands. This paper illuminates the complex geographies of one such firm, Bitfury Group, to investigate the global and national forms and structures such companies take and the factors encouraging them to concentrate operations in certain areas. To investigate the latter, we adopt the case study of Bitfury's operations in Georgia, a South-Caucasian country where its presence is significant. We adapt Haberly et al.'s analytical framework to explore Bitfury's geographical dimensions. We highlight how cheap electricity, regulatory and taxation regimes, personal encounters and personalities, and the materialities of hardware and energy-saving technology define these geographies and illuminate how Bitfury actively curates advantageous regulatory spaces. We encourage future work exploring Blockchain and Bitcoin technologies to understand the companies involved as simultaneously material and virtual, and as centrepieces in global networks interweaving production and finance.