How do environmental impact assessments fail to prevent social conflict? Government technologies in a dam project in Colombia

Claudia Puerta Silva,Susana Carmona Castillo

doi:10.2458/v27i1.23223

Claudia Puerta Silva, Susana Carmona Castillo

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.2458/v27i1.23223

Copy DOI

Abstract

We analyze environmental impact assessment (EIA) for infrastructure development projects in Latin America through the case of the "El Cercado" dam on the Rancheria river in La Guajira Province of northern Colombia. We argue that social and environmental conflicts regarding development projects are not only the result of deficient EIA implementation but also of historically established power relations and deep-rooted beliefs concerning the economy and socio-spatial relations, of which EIAs are a constituting and enabling element. We focus on governmentality practices from an ethnographic political ecology perspective to trace how the EIA uses the concept of "areas of influence" as a standardized inclusion/exclusion technique, limited by its static nature and functioning as a legitimizing device for governmental interest to expand neoliberal economies in natural resource-strategic regions. Our analysis aims to understand how EIAs used for infrastructure development projects in Latin America have failed to prevent socio-environmental conflicts. At the same time, we question the notions of "space", "influence", and "affected population" behind EIA practices. We conclude that EIAs are a government technology of neoliberal environmental governance that has the potential to exclude the socio-spatial dynamics of local populations while depoliticizing the interests behind the project. With this article, we contribute to the ethnographic approach to governmentality in the context of infrastructure development projects in Latin America and to the understanding of the role of expert knowledge and technologies of government in neoliberal hydro-politics.Keywords: Environmental Impact Assessment, dam, hydro-politics, government technologies, social conflict

Highlights

In Latin America, the last three decades have seen a mushrooming of mining, oil, hydropower and agroindustry projects in areas inhabited by peasant and Indigenous communities
Based on the case of the Ranchería dam and inspired by literature in the political ecology of water in Latin America, we suggest that the Estudios de Impacto Ambiental (EIA) as a government technology has the potential to reproduce current structures of power and inequality that characterize neoliberal water management and economic policies, and that generate conflict around projects
The second and more critical reflection that we can draw from the Ranchería dam project is that EIAs fail in their attempt to prevent or manage impacts because they work as a governmental technology that helps to consolidate a system of exclusion

Summary

Introduction

In Latin America, the last three decades have seen a mushrooming of mining, oil, hydropower and agroindustry projects in areas inhabited by peasant and Indigenous communities. Based on the case of the Ranchería dam and inspired by literature in the political ecology of water in Latin America, we suggest that the EIA as a government technology has the potential to reproduce current structures of power and inequality that characterize neoliberal water management and economic policies, and that generate conflict around projects. This happens because the EIA's technical definitions of socioenvironmental impacts, people affected, and geographical space often clash with local worldviews and sociospatial dynamics, turning the instrument into an arena of political struggle. We draw some conclusions about how EIAs operate as technology of government

Case study and methodology

The construction phase: the same management plan for dissimilar situations

Filling the dam: facing the unexpected

Discussion: environmental impact assessment as a government technology

Findings

Conclusions