This article reviews how global hydropower assemblages catalyze socioecological change in the world’s rivers. As a quintessential megaproject, massive dams and the hydropower they generate have long captivated the modernist development imaginary. Yet, despite growing recognition of the socio-ecological consequences of hydropower, it has recently assumed a central role in supporting renewable energy transitions. We highlight three trends in hydropower politics that characterize global hydropower assemblages: mega-dams as markers of nation-state development; river protection by territorial alliances and social movements opposed to hydropower; and transitions from spectacular, centralized hydropower installations to the propagation of small and large hydropower within climate mitigation schemes. We offer insights on how global hydropower assemblages force examination beyond traditional categories of “mega” through more holistic and grounded analyses of significance.
What Makes a Megaproject?
A Review of Global Hydropower Assemblages
Grant M. Gutierrez, Sarah Kelly, Joshua J. Cousins and Christopher Sneddon
Central American integration through infrastructure development
A case study of Costa Rican hydropower
Denielle M. Perry and Kate A. Berry
the regional leader in energy production. Costa Rica’s economic and social development success stands out as an anomaly in the Central American equation. Much of the country’s success is attributable to its “hydropower capital.” Water in rivers that
Meshworks and the Making of Climate Places in the European Alps
A Framework for Ethnographic Research on the Perceptions of Climate Change
Sophie Elixhauser, Stefan Böschen and Katrin Vogel
villages and hamlets with a total sum of a little over two thousand inhabitants. People earn their livings from tourism, the crafts industry, and agriculture, as well as energy production through hydropower. A few years ago, as a result of increasing media
Egor Antonov and Venera Antonova
Translator : Tatiana Argounova-Low
(Viliuiskaia hydropower station); scholars Nikolai Cherskii and Yuri Shafer; the writers Semen and Sofron Danilov’s, Ivan Gogolev, and Semen Kurilov; the artists Afanasii Munkhalov and Afanasii Osipov; the singers Anegina Il’ina, Matvei Lobanov, Ivan Stepanov
Where to Now?
Germany Rethinks its Energy Transition
Josephine Moore and Thane Gustafson
and larger (5–20 mw ) hydropower plants. In addition, the eeg gave “dispatch priority” to electricity from renewables, mandating its delivery into power systems ahead of power from conventional sources. Since then, Germany’s renewables policy has
Tracey Heatherington
), Ozzie Zehner has attempted to evaluate the possibilities of solar cells, wind power, biofuels, nuclear energy, hydropower, hydrogen power, “clean coal,” and other technologies touted as solutions to our current energy dilemmas. Zehner’s research task was
Too much time
Changing conceptions of boredom, progress, and the future among young men in urban Ethiopia, 2003–2015
Daniel Mains
investment in roads, hydropower dams, education, and urban microcredit schemes aimed at creating jobs. Particularly after 2005, much of this investment occurred in cities. Although causal relationships are difficult to determine, it is likely that government
Delta Ontologies
Infrastructural Transformations in the Chao Phraya Delta, Thailand
Atsuro Morita and Casper Bruun Jensen
, Suong Seng , Le Anh Tuan , and Duong Van Truc . 2009 . “The Promise of Flood Protection: Dikes and Dams, Drains and Diversions.” In Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region: Hydropower, Livelihoods and Governance , ed. François Molle
The Many Faces of the State
Living in Peace and Conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin and Eva Gerharz
400,000 people) to the CHT, resulting in the demographic marginalization of the Pahari adivasi . This exacerbated an already existent land shortage, originally aggravated by the construction of a large hydropower dam in Kaptai in the 1960s, while
Alla Bolotova, Anastasia Karaseva and Valeria Vasilyeva
located along the federal highway. The only surviving settlements beyond the highway are the district capitals or the urban-type settlements based around strategic enterprises, like the Kolyma Hydropower Plant (Kolyma HPP) in Sinegor’e or the regional