Ecocide and Contested Imaginaries of Renewable Energy: Ökozid und umstrittene Vorstellungen von erneuerbaren Energien

In the context of a surge of infrastructure investment in the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia , hydropower projects are rapidly increasing in the Andean Amazon due to rising energy demands and abundant untapped potential. Consequently, renewable energy projects are redefining the political landscapes and social understandings of sustainable energy development at the national and local level. New imaginaries, emerging from subaltern resistance and critiques of environmental crimes and disasters, are challenging the Cartesian colonial conceptualisation of the natural environment which has for centuries determined the division between nature and society, distinguished between modern and non-modern indigenous peoples and defined progress as a unidirectional linear path. In Ecuador, the characterisation of hydroelectric dams within the context of development mega-projects and ‘green energy’, as well as their role in socio-environmental conflicts concerning environmental protection, indigenous rights, and differing perceptions of what a Buen Vivir (living well) development model should be, demonstrates the tensions between the three pillars - economic, social, and environmental – of sustainable development. Through the conceptual lens of ecocide, this chapter analyses the case of the Coca Codo Sinclair Hydroelectric Project in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as the crown jewel of Ecuador’s Plan Maestro Electrification. It facilitates an exploration of the contested imaginaries of so called ‘renewable energy’ projects and the experiences and political reality of environmental harm and its consequences in affected populations and territories that have already been made vulnerable by extractive activity. This chapter will advance ecocide scholarship beyond analysis of the potential legal offence and definitional debates to examine an under discussed case study through the conceptual lens of ecocide as a product of its institutional and intellectual history.