Presentation short abstract

We map contested hydropower development in Georgia, where over 100 HPPs are already built, and 200+ planned to 2034, to expose hidden networks of capital, class and ecological inequality behind “green transition” infrastructure, showing how (semi-)peripheries are structurally tied to core economies.

Presentation long abstract

The European Green Deal envisions a climate-neutral EU by 2050. Yet, it relies heavily on its Southern and Eastern neighbourhood as externalized sites of energy production: a dynamic intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this context, large connectivity projects such as the Black Sea Submarine Cable reinforce peripheral roles assigned to neighbourhood countries like Georgia. At the same time, grassroots movements contest the socio-ecological impacts of green transition infrastructures. This presentation reflects on an ongoing mapping project focused on hydropower, Georgia’s most visible and contested green transition pathway. While around 100 hydropower plants (HPPs) – some of which have been considerably contested – have been built since EU-led liberalization in the early 2000s, current plans foresee more than 200 additional HPPs by 2034. Recent authoritarian legislation in the country provides the state with more tools to suppress grassroots mobilization. Our mapping aims to support grassroots actors by uncovering and visualizing the class and capital interests behind hydropower development. Treating infrastructure not as neutral physical artefacts but as capitalogenic formations, we trace relational networks of equity, debt, supply, and de-risking involved in individual HPPs through combined researcher-driven and participatory data collection. This approach foregrounds the often-invisible circuits of value transfer, class interests, and unequal ecological exchange connecting (semi-)peripheries to EU cores. We use the presentation to discuss the analytical and political openings and limitations of this mapping work, and reflect on how relational geographies and mapping can enrich political ecology debates on green transitions, action research and grassroots mobilizations.