Researchers Mateo Valderrama Arboleda and Hernán Darío Pineda Gómez of the CSS project “Water conflicts, violations and forms of self-protection” have published a new book chapter (in Spanish) entitled “Hydroelectric licensing, territorial functionality and social violations”, based on a case study in eastern Antioquia, Colombia. The book that contains the chapter can be accessed online HERE.
The chapter provides insights into the purpose of territorial reorganisation and the type of ‘major programme’ or ‘model’ of society that these transition processes are embedded in. It also explores how they may lead to other types of conflict, such as socio-environmental conflict, in the long term.
In their analysis of hydroelectric extractivism from the perspective of territorial functionality and its violations, the authors reflect on how these types of interventions affect the spatialities historically produced by rural communities in the countryside. They observe that the construction of this type of project is based on an approach in which the locations where hydroelectric infrastructure is installed are conceived as empty or adaptable spaces.
This perspective is present in both the regulatory framework authorising environmental licensing and the political action driving construction. It results in the negation of rural communities’ life projects and territorial ties as implementation focuses on ‘the monetisation of rivers as resources to be exploited’, leading to various types of violations — physical, social, economic, environmental and legal.
In the face of hydroelectric extractivism that threatens the aspirations of local communities, social movements are emerging to defend their autonomy and promote alternative uses of the territory, such as agriculture or community-based tourism.
Reference
Valderrama Arboleda, Mateo, and Hernán Darío Pineda Gómez, Licenciamientos hidroeléctricos, funcionalidad territorial y vulneraciones sociales: Estudio multicaso en el Oriente antioqueño (Colombia), in: Anhelos y derivas de los procesos de paz en Nicaragua, El Salvador y Colombia, ed. by Hélène Roux and Luis Antonio Ramírez Zuluaga, pp. 211-246 (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2026).