Just sustainabilities: lessons from the Lake Turkana Wind Power project in Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the light of increasing socio-ecological crises, there has been a surge in the promotion of renewable energy in the Global South. Previous theories and research often hail these developments as a breakthrough. Yet, just sustainability theorists have pointed to logically plausible problems in these alternatives, suggesting that they do not go far enough and could, indeed, worsen the present crises. Africa’s largest wind power plant, the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project in Kenya, provides a useful case study for this purpose. This article focuses on two questions: which are the dominant discourses on the LTWP project and what are the prospects of these discourses to drive just sustainability in Kenya? Drawing on interview data and using critical discourse analysis (CDA) set within a political-economic framework on just sustainabilities this article argues that the project is realised within the dominant capitalist frame, guided by a reliance on market forces, new technologies and a search for new frontiers of capital accumulation, processes that are erected on, and typically drive, local and global inequalities. Thus, the project has not been able to address wider concerns of inclusion in Northern Kenya. Analytically, this evidence shows that mainstream conservative and liberal theories of development and energy are insufficient for analysing the transition from fossil to alternative fuels. This evidence provides further basis to put the case for understanding alternative energy projects, and particularly the LTWP, within a broader framework of alternative, radical theories of just sustainabilities centred on concepts such as just land.