How Georgian villagers halted construction of power plants

“It's easy to see the external conditions for a large investment project and often that's enough. However, sometimes you have to dive deeper – you have to understand whether the people most affected will ever accept the development,” he says.

I thought, how can small villages with a few hundred inhabitants stop giant investments like this?

Nick Baigent

The idea for the PhD project came when he was working on establishing hiking trails in Georgia and heard about people's concerns about the dams. Given that the projects were supported by the government, international banks, the EU, and South Korea, he assumed they would be realised.

“But then time passed, and nothing happened. And I thought, how can small villages with a few hundred inhabitants stop giant investments like this?” says Baigent, who is based at the Department of Global Political Studies.

In his research, he has interviewed both experts and people directly affected by the plans for the Namakhvani, Khudoni and Nenskra hydropower plants in the Svaneti and Racha/Imereti regions of Georgia. Baigent also conducted field studies during extended stays. In his thesis, he describes two main reasons for the cancellation of the projects:

The first is political and institutional; the gap between the perception of what it is like to conduct business in Georgia (ranked as the 7th on the ease of doing business index) and the reality of working in the country. “The gap between the theory of working in Georgia and the reality is significant. There are a number of institutional issues around development – high bureaucratic turnover, informal business practices, and challenges with enforcement of contracts,” says Baigent.

Affected areas are also quite isolated in the mountains where the government has somewhat limited power, and police presence is low. The second reason is social; he describes the local identity as super strong, sometimes with its own languages, a distinct history, local stories, and traditions.
Resistance centres on a lack of trust in the state and developers, and concerns about the impact of power plants on agriculture and wildlife.

“There is also a concern that they will lose their homes and, further, the memories associated with the land, their ancestors and cultural practices,” says Baigent.

Conditions can of course change quickly, but as one of the conclusions Baigent emphasises:

“If you are going to make large international investments in infrastructure, you need to put a lot of emphasis on examining the local context in which this is to be done.”