Roopali Phadke

Steel forests or smoke stacks: the politics of visualisation in the Cape Wind controversy

While wind power is now considered both technologically mature and economically feasible, it faces bitter opposition from local communities on the grounds of visual pollution. The role that visual impact analyses play in policy debates about the siting of wind energy facilities is critically examined. The production of viewshed simulations and their reception by members of diverse publics are examined in the context of the Cape Wind project in the United States. The official public comments record for this project is used to explore how viewshed controversies challenge administrative politics. Some ways in which visual impact assessments can better register cultural rationality and enroll civic epistemologies are suggested.

Assessing Water Scarcity and Watershed Development in Maharashtra, India: A Case Study of the Baliraja Memorial Dam

In the drought-prone regions of Maharashtra State, a growing social movement for equitable water distribution is engaging the help of engineers to build technical projects. This movement aims to challenge the state’s agroindustrial development model favoring water-intensive sugarcane farming by redistributing water. This article examines the Baliraja Memorial Dam, located in southwestern Maharashtra. Through the dam, 400 families in the villages of Balawadi and Tandulwadi will receive a share of water for irrigation and domestic needs. This article explores the Baliraja Dam as an appropriate technology project designed jointly by village farmers, engineers, and social activists. Through this unique alliance, Baliraja was designed to meet the needs of ecological restoration, community empowerment, and democratic technological design. The pioneering success of the Baliraja effort has prompted other communities to pressure the state irrigation bureaucracy to address the ecological and human costs of prolonged drought and water misuse.

Public Deliberation and the Geographies of Wind Justice

The Obama Administration has consistently promised that green energy investments will jumpstart the economy and protect the environment. Just weeks after the President’s first inaugural address, the 2009 America Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided the Department of Energy (DoE) with

People's Science in Action: The Politics of Protest and Knowledge Brokering in India

167 billion for new grants and loan guarantees for clean energy projects, dwarfing its overall annual budget of

Defending Place in the Google Earth Age

27 billion. The wind energy industry, dominated by multinational giants such as General Electric and Duke Energy, greatly benefited from these new investments. These federal policies presumed broad public support for a new green energy economy. Yet, national opinion polls often mask strong local resistance to the siting of renewable energy projects. Energy policy scholars have referred to this phenomenon as the “social gap” in energy planning (Bell et al., 2005, p. 461). The local politics of renewable energy development are hardly unique to the USA. Across the industrialized world, from the UK to New Zealand, utility and community scale renewable energy projects are increasingly struggling to get their environmental permits because of local protests. Local opponents are challenging the transparency and accountability of government and corporate decision-making, which often takes place in faraway boardrooms disconnected from the people and landscapes that will be directly affected. In the USA, an important point of contention is whether renewable energy projects, particularly on federal lands, should bypass environmental impact assessments in service of Science as Culture, 2013 Vol. 22, No. 2, 247–255, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2013.786997

Resisting and Reconciling Big Wind: Middle Landscape Politics in the New American West

ABSTRACT After extended political protest against the Indian governments design for the Uchangi dam, nongovernmental engineers and social activists aided project-affected villagers in producing an alternative dam design that provided the same quantity of water storage without the need for village submergence. This alternative plan, which compelled the irrigation agency to redesign the dam, resulted from data gathered through a participatory resource mapping effort. Through detailed ethnographic analysis, this article explores the factors that are necessary to spur government bureaucracies into including locally generated data in technical planning. In particular, the article argues that nongovernmental engineers play an important role in hybridizing local knowledge and bureaucratic expertise.

Making it personal: Diversity and deliberation in climate adaptation planning

Virtual globes, like Google Earth, are increasingly being used by experts and lay publics in the process of ‘defending place’ against rapidly shifting energy geographies. Drawing upon the fields of visual studies, landscape architecture and geography, this article examines the use of geospatial tools by conservation campaigns challenging new developments. With a focus on wind energy, the article describes the strategic advantages and risks associated with using virtual globes in campaign work. The article suggests that conservation campaigns need to make more judicious use of visualization technologies. While Google Earth may enable distant viewers to ‘witness’ change, it may add limited value to how local citizens experience their own topographies.