Sites, funds and spheres of exchange in a Clean Development Mechanism project

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the implementation and operation of a wind farm in ancestral indigenous lands in Colombia. A wind farm operates at different levels: creating energy, social programmes, jobs, carbon credits and revenues. However, such emerging objects are distributed unevenly. To understand the hierarchy in place in the carbon market, this article explains the disconnection between clean energy production sites and carbon funds in which credits are created. Given the fundamental need to understand the creation of objects of property that are, nevertheless, not fully interchangeable between the site and the fund, this article aims to draw renewed attention to the concept of spheres of exchange. The argument is built upon ethnographic fieldwork undertaken on-site in the Utility Company’s offices and the World Bank headquarters.