Open thread: British Columbia’s Site C Peace River dam

There’s already a thread on dams and climate change, but B.C.’s Site C project raises many different subjects of interest: how different climate-safe energy options compare, what purposes new generation will be serving, and who gets to make the decisions, with particular regard to Indigenous rights.

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Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

5 thoughts on “Open thread: British Columbia’s Site C Peace River dam”

  1. Site C dam budget nearly doubles to $16B, but B.C. NDP forging on with megaproject | CBC News

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/site-c-announcement-friday-1.5928719

    B.C. Utilities Commission says alternative energy projects could match Site C, but risks come either way | CBC News

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/site-c-bcuc-report-1.4382106

    ‘A Monstrous Monument to Greed and Stupidity’: Critics React to Site C Decision | The Tyee

    https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/02/26/Critics-React-Site-C-Decision/

  2. Rendering Technical, Rendering Sacred: The Politics of Hydroelectric Development on British Columbia’s Saaghii Naachii/Peace River

    Caleb Behn and Karen Bakker

    This article analyzes debates over the Site C Dam on the Saaghii Naachii/Peace River in northeastern British Columbia (BC), Canada. After heated debate over the past several decades, construction on the CN$10 billion hydroelectric project—the largest in the province’s history—recently commenced. The article focuses on debates over the analysis and adjudication of cumulative effects, and concomitant treaty rights infringement, within the environmental review process. The shortcomings of the regulatory review process used to assess cumulative effects are analyzed in two ways: first, by a conventional academic assessment, and second, by a Dunne-Za teaching of the interrelationships between land, water, and animals in the dam-affected region. Through juxtaposing these two modes of analysis, the article engages with scholarship in political ecology and Indigenous political theory.

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