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ITS3.10/ERE6.2 | Hydropower dams: systemic changes & emerging patterns of inequality in access to natural resources
EDI
Hydropower dams: systemic changes & emerging patterns of inequality in access to natural resources
Convener: Rossella Alba | Co-conveners: Tobias Krueger, Letícia Santos de LimaECSECS
Development and economic growth increase energy demand worldwide. In the quest of renewable energy sources a resurgence of large hydropower projects has been documented. Hydropower and multipurpose reservoirs are proposed with the aim of improving water, food and energy security, reducing volatilities in resource access and thus, in theory, alleviating existing inequalities in access to water, energy, and food. Yet, large infrastructure projects come with their own politics, and are underpinned by specific natural, social and moral orders. The costs and benefits of reservoirs are unevenly socio-spatially distributed, typically advantaging affluent urban populations and powerful industries at the cost of vulnerable groups in the affected river basins. Communities displaced by dam projects face radical livelihood changes, while the land surrounding reservoirs becomes subject to price speculation. Downstream fisheries are impacted by dam’s alteration of the flow regime, and flood plain subsistence farming is impacted by the disruption of fine sediment and nutrient replenishment.

In this session, we invite contributions from the various disciplines of knowledge, particularly if combined in the form of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. We aim to explore the myriad of systemic changes induced by hydropower dams, taking into consideration the various physical processes interacting in space and time with the social system as well as the impacts imposed by these changes, such as perpetuating or amplifying existing local inequalities in access to fundamental natural resources.