“This energy is clean, but here, on the dunes, it would be dirty”: Renewable sources of energy and socio-environmental conflicts in Galinhos-RN, Brazil


Abstract


This study was carried out in the town of Galinhos, RN, Brazil, and aimed to analyze popular opposition to the implementation of the wind farm Rei dos Ventos I in 2012, taking into account the meanings of place and local attachment. Methodologically, an ethnographic approach was adopted, supported by historical-dialectical materialism. It was found that the relationship with nature conforms a set of knowledges central to local life, promoting a local ethics, and three main local discourses that mediate people-place relations. Besides, to understand meanings and attachment to place, significant local historical moments that emerged from analysis were crucial. Also, four aspects were highlighted in the discourses to explain the struggles: the mobilization of the identities of the place, the conflict, the enterprise and its operators; the mobilization of a sense of community; the centrality of the land as an element of this dispute; conflict as a conflict between different ethics. The analysis showed the class and socio-spatial characters of the conflict as local knowledge and experiences allowed to unveil the wind farm contradictions, challenging the sustainable varnish of the wind farm, and that energy transition must come alongside a broader social transition.

DOI Code: 10.1285/i24212113v6i2-2p110

Keywords: RSEs; place attachment; social-environmental conflicts; etnography; class strugles

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