Since 2000, there has been a surge in hydropower development globally. This contemporary hydropower boom is distinguished from earlier periods by four key dynamics:
Despite these shifts, hydropower development continues to spark fierce social resistance. We conducted a systematic review of 116 peer-reviewed articles and 180 Environmental Justice Atlas profiles to better understand the nature of contested hydropower development and the dynamics of social resistance to it.
From this dataset, we gathered information about 265 unique hydropower projects that have sparked conflicts. We found that there was relatively little overlap among the cases featured in the peer-reviewed and EJ Atlas datasets, suggesting opportunities for further exchange between scholarly and social movement actors. Both datasets included projects of all types and sizes, demonstrating that many small and alternative forms of hydropower remain contentious. We found very few cases that discussed social movement actors engaging directly with the shifting global dynamics of hydropower development. We found only 12 cases of anti-dam activists evoking climate justice discourse or engaging with climate justice movements. In most cases, contested projects were backed by multiple types of funders, with a notable shift toward public-private and bilateral finance. The sensitivity of these emerging funders to local opposition remains unclear. We found few cases in which international standards had been used or invoked to hold hydropower developers accountable for social and environmental impacts. Ultimately, there remains a disconnect between local struggles and the shifting global dynamics shaping hydropower development, highlighting potentially fruitful future directions for both scholars and social movement actors.
April 1, 2026
Historians Robyn d’Avignon (NYU) and Matthew Shutzer (UC Berkeley) coordinated the Forum section for a volume of the journal Environmental History, in which novel archival sources and approaches take center stage. Situated in case studies in Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, and the United States, the essays call attention to how underutilized archival knowledge has begun to reframe environmental historians' approach to subterranean histories.
July 23, 2025
In this article for the journal Political Philosophy, BESI climate affiliate Anna Stilz argues that to make climate governance legitimate and compatible with collective self-determination, future legislation should be voted on and authorized by a global assembly and enforced via carbon tariffs applied by cooperating states.
February 18, 2026
In a paper for the May 2026 issue of the journal Energy Policy, BESI climate fellow Kathryn Chelminski and her co-authors Guixing Wei and Gian Pietro Bellocca investigate how utility governance structure affects electrical grid reliability in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.
