Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context

by Alexander Dunlap, Alexander Dunlap Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment Uni

Renewing Destruction examines how wind energy projects impact people and their environments. Wind energy development, in Mexico and most countries, fall into a ‘roll out’ neoliberal strategy that is justified by climate change mitigation programs that are continuing a process of land and wind resources grabbing for profit. The result has been an exaggeration of pre-existing problems in communities around land, income-inequality, local politics and, contrary to public relations stories, is devastating traditional livelihoods and socio-ecological relationships. Exacerbating pre-existing social and material problems in surrounding towns, wind energy development is placing greater stress on semi-subsistence communities, marginalizing Indigenous traditions and indirectly resulting in the displacement and migration of people into urban centers.

Based on intensive fieldwork with local groups in Oaxaca, Mexico, this book provides an in-depth study, demonstrating the complications and problems that emerge with the current regime of ‘sustainable development’ and wind energy projects in Mexico, which has wider lessons to be drawn for other regions and countries. Put simply, the book reveals a tragic reality that calls into question the marketed hopes of the green economy and the current method of climate change mitigation. It shows the variegated impacts and issues associated with building wind energy parks, which extends to recognizing the destructive effects on Indigenous cultures and practices in the region. The book, however, highlights what to consider or, more importantly, what to avoid if one is working with industrial-scale wind energy systems.

244 pages, Hardcover

Published June 25, 2019

Reviews

[Juniper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a clear, concise, very well written and eye opening book that will change how you look at wind energy, and so called "green" energy, forever. After spending months in Mexico embedded in the local culture, gathering information on the ground from locals, Dunlap, a PhD in Anthropology is highly critical, and rightly so, of capitalism's Big Energy promises and 'green' energy's destruction of ecosystems and indigenous cultures. A new favorite author. Lots more to say about this book but i'm in a hurry to get off the internet and read more...