Presentation short abstract

This paper analyses epistemic and socio-territorial struggles in Colombia’s energy transition through the Hidroituango hydropower megaproject, examining how grassroots movements contest dominant narratives and advance critical political ecologies in the Cauca River basin.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines epistemic and socio-territorial struggles within Colombia’s energy transition through the case of the Hidroituango hydropower megaproject in the Cauca River basin. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with grassroots movements defending water and territory, it brings political ecology, critical infrastructure studies, epistemic justice and debates on hydrosocial territories into dialogue.

The paper asks how state and corporate actors frame hydropower as a consensual and necessary climate solution, and how these narratives travel through planning procedures, environmental licensing, security discourses and development promises. t then analyses how campesino communities interpret these interventions and articulate counter-narratives grounded in riverine livelihoods, collective memories and claims to autonomy and dignity.

These struggles over knowledge and authority are not only about a single dam. They show how large-scale renewable energy projects can reproduce, reconfigure or contest longstanding patterns of militarisation, dispossession and exclusion in regions marked by armed conflict and shrinking civic space. Forms of resistance, such as collective organising, public contestation and storytelling, are examined as expressions of political and epistemic agency within Colombia’s energy transition.

In dialogue with Latin American political ecologies and grassroots research, the paper reflects on the possibilities and tensions of engaged, action-oriented research in conflict-affected territories. It argues that centring community knowledges and hydrosocial relations is crucial for understanding how energy transitions shape pathways toward more or less just and peaceful socio-ecological orders.