ADDRESSING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF HYDROELECTRIC DAMS IN RURAL COLOMBIA - An actor-based approach of the El Quimbo and HidroItuango

Abstract

Grassroots organizations have increasingly contributed to pathways towards more sustainable energy systems by shedding light to the human cost of unsustainable resource uses. In light of a global boom of 3700 major dams underway in predominantly developing and emergent countries due to growing renewable energy demand, this research set out to examine how social actors rationalize and interact with the social impacts of hydroelectric dam projects in Colombia, specifically the Quimbo and HidroItuango. The data was collected through observational research and in-depth interviews with affected communities, a social movement and government-led entities including a dam operator. The analysis of collected data contributes to the literature by providing a bottom-up understanding on the social impacts caused by hydroelectric dams in rural Colombia, across Upstream, Reservoir and Downstream areas. The study furthermore identified how social mobilization has taken shape in Colombia, its achievements in pursuit of social change and the constraints that have prevailed to the communities’ aspired sovereignty over natural and cultural assets. It argues that the voices of the Quimbo and HidroItuango communities have been overwritten and repressed by a notion of ‘development’ as part of an extractivist and neoliberal model that aimed at ‘integration of the territories’.