Student: Lydia Bleifuss
Graduation date: May 2016
Capstone type: Thesis
Capstone project:
Hydropower or Private Power: Forging Effective Resistances to River Development in the Chilean Landscape
Capstone file(s): Show file | Show file
This thesis centers on hydropower development and questions its continuing expansion as subsequent ecological and social challenges compound. Connected through the political ecology context, these issues present themselves through hydropower impacts, privatized water management obligations, and social power relations. Although hydropower can be generated in an ecologically unobtrusive and locally beneficial manner, factor dependent, the global trend exposing the contrary to this ideal cannot be ignored. Like many others, the Chilean government continues to promote hydropower as their dominant "renewable" energy despite contention of this portrayal. This dispute is due not only to river fragmentation ramifications and community degradation, human and other, but also to underlying profit motivations. I establish the core of this study, which focuses on the numerous strategies social resistance movements utilize in combating hydro developments in Chile, through the semi-structured interviews I conducted there in January 2016.