The Dirty Side of Clean Energy: Environmental Injustice and Wind Energy in Oaxaca, Mexico
The Wind Energy Boom in Mexico
As countries around the world realize the need to dramatically reduce their carbon emissions, many are rapidly transitioning from fossil fuels to low-carbon, renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. Mexico was one of the first countries to enthusiastically join the renewable energy “revolution” and is relying heavily on wind energy to reach its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. In 2009, President Felipe Calderón made a commitment to produce more than one-third of its energy from renewable sources by 2024. With international support, President Calderón began the development of wind farms in the southern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the state of Oaxaca. The Isthmus is a narrow strip of land between two oceans, and this unique geographical location creates a funneling effect, allowing for extremely high wind speeds. The area has optimal conditions for wind turbines, with an estimated potential of 40,000 megawatts of energy (MW). The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is known for its cultural and biological diversity, but it is also one of the poorest and undeveloped regions in Mexico. The indigenous Zapotecs, Huaves, Chontales, Zoques, and Mixes are the main inhabitants of the region.
At face value, bringing renewable energy to indigenous communities seems to be a win-win scenario: Mexico moves closer to decarbonizing its energy sector while impoverished rural communities experience economic development and gain access to “green” jobs. Unfortunately, instead of bringing prosperity to the region, the wind industry has caused conflict, and even violence as local communities protest the building of wind farms on their land. The indigenous peoples of the Isthmus say that the development of the wind industry is replicating the injustices of the fossil fuel industry. Instead of modernization or sustainability, they see wind energy as a continuation of a long history of outside forces intruding in and exploiting the natural resources of indigenous land for their own profit. Carlos Sanchez, Zapotec activist, and leader of the resistance against a wind farm in Barra de Santa Teresa Park argues that capitalist interests are trying to “profit from the same disease they have caused to Mother Earth…Under the pretext of reducing global warming, they come to our territories to control our forests, mountains, our sacred places, and our water.” In fact, indigenous locals call the wind industry “La Nueva Conquista”, or the “new conquest” because the pattern of extraction is so familiar.
Although the Mexican government framed the development of the wind industry as an economic boon to the underdeveloped area, indigenous communities have seen very little growth in income or jobs. Employment booms for a short time as workers are needed to help build the turbines, but after they are built, the turbines require very little maintenance, and the jobs disappear. The wind farms also take up space from the region’s main source of income, which is small-scale farming. Another one of the primary complaints of the indigenous protestors is that they were not adequately consulted before the wind farms were built, even though Mexican law requires that projects receive “free, prior, and informed consent” from local communities. When they do receive information about wind projects, it is often incomplete or misleading. For example, information is often given in Spanish rather than the local indigenous language, rendering it useless. Guadalupe Ramirez signed a contract to lease her land for wind turbines in 2009, and now she deeply regrets her decision and has become an anti-wind activist. She says that she was not made aware of the negative impacts of wind farms. For example, the oil used to lubricate the turbines runs off and contaminates waterways, and migrating birds are hit by the spinning blades. There might also be harm caused to human health as well: preliminary research suggests there might be a connection between wind farms and health issues like insomnia, hearing loss, and headaches. To make matters worse, when protestors speak out about these issues and oppose the development of new wind farms, they are often met with violence. The Business & Human Rights Resource Center has recorded 136 cases of human rights abuses in Mexico, including attacks and murders.
Finally, the rise of the wind energy industry has incited social divisions within indigenous communities themselves. When wind projects do bring benefits, these benefits are unequally distributed, causing resentment and deepening inequality in an already impoverished area. In a survey conducted in 2017, the majority of respondents stated that only farmers who leased their land to wind energy companies received economic benefits. Juan Pineda Lopez, a farmhand living only 300 yards away from a wind turbine, receives no money whatsoever. Ironically, Lopez lives near wind turbines generating electricity, but he has no electricity himself since he fell behind on payments and the provider cut him off. Meanwhile, Fernando Mimiaga Sosa, the director of sustainable energy for Oaxaca, is adamant that wind energy alleviates poverty and provides a path to a brighter future. Sosa dismisses indigenous complaints as a result of miscommunication and misinformation perpetuated by the Internet.
Environmental Injustice in the Energy Transition
Environmental injustice is the concept that some people experience disproportionate exposure to environmental dangers like pollution and receive less of the benefits of environmental protection. The environmental justice movement began in the 1980s and 1990s in response to the growing realization that low-income communities of color were experiencing the worst health impacts from environmental pollution. Critical environmental justice, a theory developed by David Pellow, goes one step further and considers how larger systems and structures of power like colonialism, racism, or classism are at work in situations of inequality. In other words, the unequal distribution of environmental harms and benefits should not be seen as a “glitch” but rather an intentional and integral part of how our society functions. Critical environmental justice argues that the political economy is built to favor white, affluent individuals, while it regards the poor and people of color as “expendable”. Pellow argues that the reason why working with the state to achieve environmental justice has often been unsuccessful is that the state itself has a large role in perpetuating these structural injustices. Take the example of the Flint, Michigan water crisis: the state was unwilling to protect the health of communities of color but all too ready to accept the profit that resulted from budgetary cutbacks under neoliberal policies. Similarly, water infrastructure in California prioritizes white lives by providing water for lawns and golf courses but denying it to over a million poor people and people of color.
Traditionally, the environmental justice framework was used to examine how polluting industries and toxic waste storage are disproportionately located in low-income communities of color. Many people consider renewable energy fundamentally “clean”, both in terms of environmental pollution and negative social impacts. In the past, resource extraction and environmental degradation have been used by the state to disempower indigenous communities and prevent resistance. The case study of wind energy in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec proves that renewable energy sources share many of the same problems as their fossil fuel predecessors. By viewing the wind industry of Mexico through the lens of critical environmental justice, it becomes clear that the industry is perpetuating the historical trend of colonial resource extraction and oppression of indigenous communities.
Historically, the indigenous communities of Oaxaca have had to fight repeatedly to retain land sovereignty. First, they experienced land dispossession under Spanish colonization, and then, extractive industries like mining moved in to exploit their land, making a profit for themselves but providing no benefits to the indigenous population. Now, international wind companies, mostly from Spain and France, have built wind farms that provide electricity for corporations like Walmart and Coca-Cola, allowing them to “offset their manufacturing costs and environmental impact.” Researchers Zoi Christina Siamanta and Alexander Dunlap argue that far from being ‘green’, wind development is a “Trojan horse” that hides corporate land grabbing and allows unsustainable consumption to continue.
Political theorist David Scholsberg describes four different types of environmental justice: distributive justice, procedural justice, justice as recognition, and justice as capability. By examining the case study of wind energy in the Isthmus, we can see that indigenous communities are experiencing environmental injustice in multiple forms.
Distributive justice is perhaps the simplest type: are environmental harms and benefits equally distributed? One of the most striking injustices in his case is how unequally the economic benefit of wind energy is distributed when compared to the environmental burdens. The Zapotec and other indigenous groups experience the constant noise and pollution of the wind turbines while international companies make billions off the land. Even the few landowners who do lease land for the wind turbines aren’t paid what the land is actually worth. According to the Tepeyac Human Rights Center, the value of land isn’t regulated in Mexico, so energy companies can generally pay what they like.
Procedural justice is the inclusion of all affected communities in decision-making activities. One of the common complaints of residents living near wind farms is that they were not adequately consulted about the installation of the wind turbines or informed of the possible environmental and health consequences. Activist Carlos Sanchez described the decision-making process as a “discourse between businessmen…[they] do not explain anything to Indigenous peoples.” Similarly, Juan Mayorga, a Mexican journalist who covered the wind energy conflict, explained that the energy transition in Mexico is a “top-down process in which the state allows only big, trans-national corporations to take part in the business”. When communities attempt to reclaim control over the process, they are ignored. For example, a group of indigenous farmers had a proposal for a community wind farm but were unable to create it because of the lack of support from the state. For their part, wind companies Électricité de France (EDF) maintain that they have complied with all Mexican laws requiring indigenous consultation and that they respect the right of indigenous communities to withhold their consent.
“Justice as recognition” involves valuing the diverse perspectives of a group and its social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences. The wind energy industry’s resistance to indigenous participation in decision-making has resulted in a dismissal of their cultural perspectives. In fact, the way that the wind companies consolidated land for their wind farm projects disregarded an important aspect of indigenous Mexican identity. Wind companies like Desarrollos Eólicos Mexicanos (DEMEX) approached members of the community to sign rental contracts as if these individuals were smallholder farmers when they were actually members of an ejido, a communal land management system. Any decisions made about the land held in common must be made by an assembly of ejidatarios, so individual contracts are actually invalid.
“Justice as capability” measures the ability of members of a group to live “healthy, safe, and dignified lives.” This includes the ability of an ecosystem to function healthily. In this case study, the wind energy industry has caused environmental and social dysfunction, which threatens the health and stability of the community. The exacerbation of economic inequality has pushed some families further into poverty and forced others to leave the community to find work. The tension between those in support of wind farms and those in opposition to them has led to social rifts and conflicts among neighbors. Environmental and noise pollution has also impacted the community’s farms and health.
Although the stated goal is decarbonization and climate mitigation, the critical environmental justice framework reveals that the structural inequalities of the wind industry make it so that the same people (international corporations mainly from the Global North) who benefitted from the fossil fuel industry will also benefit from the renewable energy transition. Similarly, those who have suffered the most from fossil fuel extraction, including indigenous peoples and low-income communities, will have the most to lose from the growth of renewables.
In the past, opposition to wind development has been understood as a form of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard). In other words, home or landowners were thought to object to wind for aesthetic reasons, because they didn’t want the unsightly turbines ruining their view. This case study reframes the indigenous communities’ opposition to wind energy as resistance to colonial oppression and capitalist resource extraction. Analyzing this case problematizes our conceptualization of “clean” energy as a “silver bullet” to the climate crisis and deepens our understanding of critical environmental justice. Rosa Lehmann & Anne Tittor (2021) point out that indigenous communities face the “triple inequalities of decarbonization policies”: they face some of the worst climate impacts even though they have not historically contributed as much carbon emissions as other communities, and now they bear the heaviest burden of climate mitigation policies.
This case study also helps to expand the definition of critical environmental justice to include not only the social categories of race, class, and gender but also the rural/urban divide. Environmental justice research often focuses on inner-city communities of color, but the indigenous people of Mexico live in a sparsely populated, rural area that is physically and culturally isolated from the urban centers of the country. In this case, the Mexican government and urban elites are exploiting rural areas in order to reach their decarbonization goals. Social scientists Chad Walker, Sarah Mason, and Daniel Bednar (2018) point out that the rural is “the new setting for a new type of environmental injustice…whereby the tyranny of the (urban) majority is bullying the rural.” National policy processes are controlled by the urban elite, so the unique contexts and needs of rural communities are ignored.
A Way Forward
With the crisis of climate change looming, a transition to low-carbon, renewable energy sources is both inevitable and necessary. But we cannot assume that renewable energy will automatically benefit either the environment or society. Our strategies for transitioning to renewable energy can either challenge or codify historical injustices. Currently, the demand for wind and solar power is fueling land dispossession, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses. Climate anthropologist Cymene Howe calls the transition to renewables an “epochal shift” which will change how “we imagine landscapes, what land is to be used for, who lives there and who has responsibility.”
Renewable energy has the potential to further environmental justice by putting power back into the hands of indigenous communities. But this won’t happen by accident: it will require an active restructuring of the energy industry. One way forward is to support community-owned energy in indigenous communities. Wind is a natural resource like timber or rare minerals, and the indigenous owners of the land should have the final say in how it is used. Enabling local control of renewable energy will not only reduce conflict but also provide opportunities for job development and economic growth in the community. The conflict between international wind energy companies and indigenous communities in Mexico is slowing down and impeding progress toward decarbonization and climate mitigation in the country. Addressing climate change in a way that centers indigenous energy sovereignty will make the renewable energy transition faster, more efficient, and ultimately more sustainable.
By: Isabella Eclipse
