Sustainability and Governance Regimes in Hydropower Territories: Multiple-Case Study in Colombia

Intense disputes between companies and the local population have led to new governance regimes, raising concerns about the hydropower business's sustainability, social instability, and violence in emerging economies. New approaches to these issues must go beyond a critical view to be more adaptative and result oriented. This paper explores how the hydropower business's sustainability influences governance regimes on the territory. A cross-case study is applied in the Samana River basin in the Colombian Andes through a qualitative-quantitative mixed methodology to generate a grounded theory of sustainability and governance in hydropower territories. A qualitative approach was used to produce a framework about territorial factors based on 45 in-depth interviews. The quantitative approach was used as a machine-learning data compression and prediction method. It served as an additional test to extend and reshape the prediction power of the coding. The results suggested three territorial factors of hydropower business as drivers of governance regimes: (1) context variation, (2) the spatial configuration of governance, and (3) the importance of long-term stakeholder interactions. Implications of findings involve addressing power asymmetries and adapting the collaborative dynamics to the territory. This analysis validated a previous interpretative model and proposed sustainability and governance patterns useful in similar hydropower territories in emerging countries.

Automated summary

Intense disputes between companies and the local population in emerging economies have resulted in new governance regimes in the hydropower business, raising concerns about sustainability, social instability, and violence. This paper examines how the sustainability of the hydropower business influences governance regimes on the territory, identifying three territorial factors as drivers of governance: context variation, spatial configuration of governance, and long-term stakeholder interactions.