GSSC Seminar Series
10 December 2024
Electrified Rhythms: Riverine Dwellers' Experiences of Dry Events in a Colombian Dammed River
Laura Betancur Alarcón (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
12:00-13:00
River flow control by hydropower infrastructure is critical to millions of people living downstream of dams. Streamflow alteration can vary the water available to downstream communities for everyday living. In particular, rainfall deficits can be exacerbated as energy companies strive to meet electricity demands and riverine dwellers struggle to maintain river-based livelihoods. Hydropower infrastructure can mitigate the severity of dry events or, conversely, increase their frequency and magnitude downstream. We offer a relational approach to describing the tensions between dams and downstream people by drawing on river rhythmicity, a conceptual lens that bridges the temporal dimension of rivers' movement and socio-ecological local practices. We advance the framework by integrating it with critical infrastructure insights and apply a methodology for interdisciplinary collaboration that combines ethnographic research with hydrological and electricity data analysis. Our study focuses on the Lower Sogamoso River in the Colombian Andes, dammed in 2014 by the Hidrosogamoso Dam. The dam commissioning has significantly changed riverine dwellers' practices. These transformations were particularly pronounced during the El Niño 2015-2016 drought, which coincided with the initial years of the dam's operation. We show how the temporal logic of pricing and electricity generation reassemble riverine dwellers' experiences around dry events at hourly, daily, and seasonal scales. We demonstrate that the El Niño (2015-16) phenomenon became more illegible for riverine inhabitants due to the company's strategy of energy dispatch aiming to comply with State-promoted financial incentives to secure the national electricity supply. Overall, we highlight the value of studying the multiple rhythms ensembled in dry events as spatiotemporal hydrosocial phenomena and not as mere hydroclimatic events. This approach can foster a nuanced understanding of water, energy, and food relations in dammed rivers and a more inclusive relational perspective on riverine dwellers' experiences.
Laura Betancur Alarcón is a Doctoral Researcher at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research explores the transformation of riverine subsistence and knowledges in light of climate extremes, biodiversity loss, energy infrastructures, and armed violence. Currently, she is embarked on an exciting journey of working interdisciplinarity with riverine leaders, hydrologists, and climate scientists to better understand riverine transformations in two rivers with large hydropower dams in Colombia. This is part of the research project "Water security for whom? Social and material perspectives on inequality around multipurpose reservoirs in Colombia". She hold a master's in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University (Sweden). Before diving into her doctoral project, she worked for several years as a researcher, writer, and journalist for universities, international NGOs, and media outlets.