A river runs through it? Exploring the contestation of Environmental Impact Assessment procedures for small hydropower projects

Abstract

The use of renewable sources of energy is increasingly promoted to achieve sustainability and mitigate climate change. The watercourses of the Carpathians preserve a high natural biodiversity, especially for aquatic organisms, unique in Europe due to naturalness of the area. Nevertheless, in the past decade the construction of several hundred small hydropower plants (SHP) on the Carpathians rivers, along with the development of the access roads and deposits of construction materials continue to cause serious environmental problems. Among those frequent are habitat morphological alterations, degradation or fragmentation of aquatic ecosystems through disruption of the natural connectivity of watercourses. This study aims at evaluating problems raised by the SHP debate and their reflection in mass-media. Using two case studies in Romania, we constructed a two-level database: (i) the official documentation of the EIA procedure and (ii) mass-media reflection of the SHP debate. For each case study, we created a matrix and investigated the structure of the collaboration network. We highlight the network of most common types of actors that were involved in the SHP debates, the dichotomy between public institutions directing the EIA procedure and NGOs and public opposing it, as well as the close connection between the economic agents and public institutions. Our findings will directly inform environmental policy by describing the conflictual patterns, network weaknesses, opportunities for greater involvement of key actors and perspectives of building new bridging communication hubs to avoid or reduce environmental conflicts.