Deserts of Wind: Aeolian‐Pastoralism and the Limits of Climate Finance in Jordan

Abstract

AbstractAround the world, a growing cadre of investors are banking on profitability of climate change through the interface of national energy transition programmes. In Jordan, national energy transition ushered in over US$1 billion in investment capital to construct 621 MW of new wind power along the arid hilltops of Tafila and Ma'an. This article situates the contested dynamics of Jordan's wind farm development within the shifting landscape of global climate finance and land futures. The transformation of southwestern Jordan's hillsides illustrates key tensions at work within the emergence of a new, renewable asset class: utility‐scale commercial wind farms, as they materialise through the unfolding project of extracting value from increasingly marginal landscapes. I argue that the transformation of Jordan's deserts reveals a key limit to the growth of climate finance, as anticipated returns on bankable projects can only be realised through contingent negotiations that entangle social, political, and electrical grid stability. At the margins of the new wind farms, local herders were able to negotiate partial usufruct rights to maintain access to grazing lands around the turbines. This arrangement reveals the subtle paradox of toiling in the margins: while hybrid land arrangements may sustain rural livelihoods for some groups, this partial amelioration permits the expansion of financial architectures that hollow out the foundations of rural‐urban life. Beyond Jordan, this article advances insights towards grounding scholarship on energy transitions, climate finance, and agrarian change through contradictory processes of de/stabilisation and ongoing negotiations over land and livelihoods at the climate finance frontier.