Conclusion. Shaping the Debate on Hydropower and Sustainable Energy in south America
! staggering rise of Brazil’s economy over the last few years also makes it unlikely that the country compromise on the way the country enacts its infrastructure-led development agenda. While Ecuador and Perú should uphold Chinese and Brazilian partners to at least as strict regulations as they have enacted in their home country, this will not be enough to avoid the risks of south-south development ventures. It will be up to the national governments to play the role of double mediator: first, it will have to ‘walk the talk’ of sovereignty and confront geopolitical partners whenever their operations results in unacceptable impacts, such as the displacement of the Ashaninka communities near Pakitzapango for the sake of profits from the export of electricity to Brazil. Second, it will have to resolve conflicts with local governments, the sites where south-south development ventures actually play out. Put differently, the governments and communities of Napo in Ecuador and Cusco, Madre de Dios, and Puno in Perú, and others like it, will continuously challenge the national government’s unilateral notion of sovereignty and integration. In other words, the state will have to enact better distribution of costs and benefits not just within its borders, but also with its bilateral partners. Mediation with local actors is also at the heart of the problem of territorial contestation. There is no way for Ecuador, Perú, and Chile to avoid the fight over resources that is already taking place in some of the most environmentally and socially vulnerable regions of the continent—the Amazon region and Chile’s Patagonia. Competing interests over these areas’ future will be the ultimate test for these countries’ democratic processes. First and foremost, the state needs to justify, and quantify the full costs and externalities of, its preferred choice for future energy generation. This undoubtedly calls for the settling of conflicting view on whom and why will absorb the externalities of hydropower development. In recent months, large number of indigenous communities in both Ecuador and Perú marched from these countries’ provinces to the capitals, Quito and Lima, to show dissatisfaction with the way the state governs and allocated the costs and benefits of water use. As part of these protests, communities raised important questions about the countries’ development agendas, which !
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