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Right‐wing variants of populism are on the rise across the globe, creating new patterns of interaction between society and the environment. These new socio‐ecological relationships – dubbed "populist ecologies" – are not homogenous and, instead, can vary from country to country and populist to populist. In this paper, we adopt two illustrative case studies to outline two particular right‐wing populist ecologies. First, we turn to the government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (2019 onwards) and detail the ways in which Bolsonaro's anti‐science agenda is evident in his response to patterns of deforestation and the "burning of the Amazon" in 2019. Second, we explore the politics of Matteo Salvini in Italy, highlighting how, in this form of right‐wing populism, the environment has become a container for wider political ambitions. In doing so, this work highlights the complexity of the relationship between contemporary right‐wing populism and the environment – and the ways in which populist ecologies may act to conceal the more‐nefarious elements of the populist moment. This paper details how right‐wing variants of populism create new socio‐ecological patterns of interaction. Drawing on case studies of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Matteo Salvini in Italy, we advance a conceptualisation of "populist ecologies" to explore and make sense of how ecology is represented within far‐right populist projects. In doing so, we highlight an important complexity in which populist ecologies may function to conceal broader, more nefarious elements of far‐right populist projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of a hydroelectric dam involves the prolonged contest between pro- and anti-dam coalitions adopting various storylines to provide the project with meaning. These representations of dams are often open to reinvention and transformation, allowing for the introduction of new portrayals. This work adopts Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Analytic framework to explore how supporters of the Belo Monte project in Brazil have integrated narratives of environmental sustainability into the positioning of the facility. Following recent scholarship, these appeals to sustainability are cast as a tool to legitimize construction whilst concealing negative social and environmental consequences. In doing so, this work asserts that the ambiguity - or emptiness - of the concept of sustainability has allowed for the pro-dam coalition to adopt such a storyline to legitimise a project that possesses questionable environmentalist credentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belo Monte is one of the most divisive dams in Brazilian history, becoming entangled in a thirty-year struggle between pro- and anti-dam interests over the role of the facility within a complex web of Brazilian development and the future of the Brazilian Amazon. This research explores how the proponents of Belo Monte have adopted a number of policy frames as a means of deflection, to divide the opposition and legitimize the project. It investigates this claim by analyzing speeches given within the Brazilian Câmara dos Deputados and the public speeches of high-level politicians. These sources, organized around a framework previously identified by Ahlers et al. (), show that the government and individual politicians have used a variety of framing devices to legitimize the hydroelectric facility. Principal methods of framing used also demonstrate how contemporary narratives (e.g. sustainability) have been employed to deflect opposition criticism and widen the scheme's perceived beneficiaries. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how the transformation represented by Belo Monte encompassed not only a process of engineering but also a re-articulation of the complex and its role in modern Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of hydropower projects across the globe, with the energy source an integral part of contemporary sustainable energy transitions. Yet, the environmentalist credentials of hydropower remain contested by anti-dam movements. This paper details the cases of the Belo Monte and São Luiz do Tapajós dams in the Brazilian Amazon to explore how the development, submission and acceptance of an Environmental Impact Assessment provides a key site in the contestation of hydroelectric projects. Whilst the provision of this document – and the wider environmental licensing process – represents a key component in the asserted 'green-ness' of hydropower, opposition groups extend the scope of analysis to include indirect and cumulative impacts that remain understudied in official assessments. This paper analyses interviews and questionnaires with and documents provided by national and international civil society organisations to trace this process of challenge and critique. It details how civil society actors forward alternative assessments of the impacts of the projects studied, uncovering and illuminating overlooked and understudied externalities of hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon. An analysis of this process not only demonstrates that the 'green' credentials of hydropower remain far from assured but also highlights how anti-dam actors advance new 'sustainabilities' to discredit the terrain upon which such credentials are set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]