Author
Listed:
- Lind, Jeremy
- Rogei, Daniel Salau
Abstract
Investment in large-scale renewable-energy projects has risen significantly as governments focus on green energy solutions. The general view is that renewable energy investments are beneficial, increasing national energy production from renewable sources and contributing to economic growth. However, the benefits for communities near project sites can be unclear, with less emphasis placed on the impacts on social cohesion or the rights of local populations. This paper contributes to discussions about community perspectives and responses to large land and resource based investments, stressing the role of local agency. Using the example of the Lake Turkana Wind Power (LTWP) project in northern Kenya, it examines how various stakeholders involved with specific resource-based investments perceive and challenge the development process and the distribution of project benefits and harms. It employs an ‘intersecting methodologies’ approach that includes community-based participatory research (CBPR), participatory video, and qualitative and ethnographic methods, conducted in small settlements around the LTWP area between 2017 and 2019. As the largest single private investment in Kenya’s history, life remains insecure for many residents near the LTWP wind farm. By revealing different local perspectives, the paper outlines the broader impacts and forms of contentious politics related to the LTWP project. The study finds that community strategies to seek recognition and associated rights highlight deeper conflicts involving governance and authority concerning everyday lives and livelihoods. Local agency underscores the limitations of efforts to formalize rights within a statutory legal and regulatory framework and other processes through which community stakeholders assert their inclusion in large-scale investments.
Suggested Citation
Lind, Jeremy & Rogei, Daniel Salau, 2025.
"Contestation, conflict and claims-making around the Lake Turkana Wind Power windfarm, northern Kenya,"
World Development, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
Handle:
RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:188:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x2400384x
DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106913
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:188:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x2400384x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.