Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the contemporary global "tsunami" in hydropower dam development through a study of how new dam construction is financed, legitimated, and contested in Georgia, a former Soviet country in the Caucasus that gained independence in 1991. The paper traces the ways in which Soviet and post-Soviet historical context, market discourses, and global finance opportunities produced this dam-based development agenda over the last decade. More specifically, based on preliminary field research in Tbilisi and analysis of documents by government offices, NGOs and the press, I find that government officials and media frame this aggressive dam-building agenda as crucial to achieving energy independence through renewable energy production, and implement it by facilitating the creation of new, complex export markets and domestic consumers of cheap electricity. Yet this agenda has increasingly clashed with competing understandings of environmental stewardship and cultural rights, and local organizations have collaborated with international organizations to challenge certain dam projects. This paper thus exposes the tensions and paradoxes manifest in the expansion of renewable hydropower power production in this particular post-Socialist context.

NOTE to organizers: I placed this in the energy/environment category, however, the paper could also go on a panel related to the politics of development, or political economy and global politics.