Engineering Reality : The Politics of Environmental Impact Assessments and the Just Energy Transition in Colombia

Engineering Reality offers unprecedented insights into the power of environmental impact assessments in engineering a reality favourable to any investment, focusing on the highly contested environmental study of a large hydroelectric dam project in southern Colombia, El Quimbo. The inclusion of environmental impact assessments to project proposals of environmental influence has been an undeniably important step to environmental governance in many countries around the world. Regarding the science behind these studies as objective and their results as the closest in representing reality, however, is misleading. Many activists and scholars made it their mission to uncover the limitations and work towards filling the gaps. Participation processes are considered key to any successful evaluation, but local knowledges and alternative perspectives are still often disqualified through more widely accepted scientific methods. Engineering Reality systematically walks through andaccounts for the shortcomings and injustices associated with environmental monitoring. It compares the reality as presented in the dam’s environmental impact study with first-hand accounts from the local and affected populations and observations gathered through two periods of fieldwork in 2012 (before) and 2016-17 (after the dam started operating). It explores how the knowledge of the study was used politically and to what end. Bringing the findings in conversation with the wider environmental impact assessment literature, the book proposes a new framework to assess energy projects -Energy Data Justice- that regards the environmental impact assessment a strictly political tool aimed at reaching the just energy transition in Colombia and worldwide. Resisting the Dam Contents List of Figures Part I Setting the Scene 1 Introduction 1.1 Yuma—River of Friends Notes References 2 The Power of Water 2.1 Damming the World’s Rivers 2.2 Hydroelectricity in Colombia 2.3 The El Quimbo Dam 2.4 La Gaitana, Huilan Heroine Notes References 3 An “Oasis of Peace” in Huila 3.1 Matambo, the Giant References 4 The People and this Research 4.1 Theobroma cacao L. Notes References Part II The EIA in the Making 5 Environmental Impact Assessments: The Problem 5.1 A Note on Knowledge Notes References 6 Blind Spots 6.1 The God Trick 6.2 Short-Sightedness 6.3 Weak Peripheral Vision 6.4 Convergence Insufficiency Notes References 7 Simplification 7.1 Fragmentation 7.2 Abstraction 7.3 Equivalence Notes References 8 Serving Power 8.1 Enclosure 8.2 Creating Anticipation 8.3 Identification of Alphas 8.4 Corporate Control Notes References 9 What About Accountability? 9.1 Participation: From Technicality to Mode of Contestation 9.1.1 A Technicality 9.1.2 A Mode of Contestation 9.2 Licencing Environmental Harm 9.3 State Support of El Quimbo 9.3.1 The Weak State 9.3.2 Securitisation 9.3.3 Serving Global Capital 9.4 Pitcairnia huilensis Notes References Part III Engineering Reality 10 Detachment—Materialising Fragmentation 10.1 Physical Detachment I: Ecosystem Fragmentation 10.2 Physical Detachment II: Infrastructural Violence 10.3 Social Detachment I: Dispossession 10.4 Social Detachment II: Territorial Alienation 10.5 Social Detachment III: Ruins of the Future 10.6 Political Detachment: Marginalisation Notes References 11 Resistance—Defending Territory 11.1 Activism and Science 11.2 Civil Disobedience and Confrontations 11.3 Judicialisation of Conflict 11.4 Anti-Dam Discourse and Scale 11.5 Political Effect 11.6 Territorial Sovereignty Notes References 12 Justice—Developing a Tool for Change 12.1 Energy Justice 12.2 Data Justice 12.3 Energy Data Justice—Framing the EIA a new Notes References 13 Conclusion 13.1 The Peasant Reserve Notes References Index