DAMSECIS · DAMS: Environmental Conflicts between Italy and Spain in an environmental history perspective

Renewable energy has become a crucial issue in the current socio-ecological crisis, but in recent years its generation through large wind and solar farms is causing environmental conflicts, as has happened with dams. However, the hegemonic narratives about dams tend to be very positive and there are few analyses of them as conflict and “sacrifice zone” from an environmental history and environmental justice perspectives that consider their impact on local communities along time. There is also a lack of studies on the construction of dams in a country as a whole and comparison between countries to get an international overview. This project aims to fill these historiographic gaps, identifying the elements that turned dams into environmental conflicts, analysing their impact on local communities since their planning or construction onwards, and constructing an overview of dam building in Spain and in Italy since 1900 to the present time, adopting a comparative and international perspective and revealing what hegemonic narratives have hidden and silenced. Both southern European countries are similar in terms of climate and rainfall pattern, internal territorial differences and political history last century, and they are the 1st and the 3rd more damned countries in the EU. The reconstruction of a comparative history of dam building can allow a better understanding of the current resistance phenomena to renewable energy projects and a territorial mediation in these conflicts. The research will be based on information gathered in archives, media, written and audiovisual materials and through interviews and field trips. Carrying out the project DAMSECIS at UniBg, I will enhance my training with new skills, as territorial mediation, and methods, as prosopography, comparative history, mapping and the construction of multidisciplinary digital research infrastructure such as databases with georeferenced historical series, and it will open new career opportunities in Europe.