UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Renewable Energy and the Politics of Flow: Sovereignty, Ecology, and the Ethics of Water in the River Basin.

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.5281/zenodo.18114147

Authors

Nuno Domingues · Daiva Stanelytė

Reported year

2026

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-10T13:56:29.758220+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-10T13:56:29.758806+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Documentary abstract — original language

This article develops the concept of ecological sovereignty toexamine how states negotiate legitimacy, control, and ethical responsibilityin the governance of renewable energy and riverine systems. Centred onPortugal’s 2023–2025 proposals for hydric resilience in the Tagus River Basin,it interprets these initiatives as an event through which the boundariesbetween ecology, infrastructure, and politics are redrawn. Drawing frompolitical theory, environmental humanities, and hydropolitics, the studyshows how the dominant language of sustainability and resilience oftenreinforces infrastructural sovereignty—an ethos of control that subordinatesecological flows to economic and energy imperatives. In contrast, ecologicalsovereignty is proposed as a relational and ethical mode of authoritygrounded in the capacity to sustain the conditions of shared life across humanand more-than-human communities. Through interpretive analysis ofgovernmental documents, environmental NGOs, and civic memoranda, thepaper traces how competing discourses of water and energy articulatedivergent imaginaries of justice, responsibility, and belonging. It argues thatrecognising rivers as agents of political life transforms the conceptual terrainof sovereignty and environmental governance, suggesting that politicallegitimacy in the Anthropocene depends on sustaining, rather than mastering,ecological relations. The Tagus case thus illuminates a wider transformationin the politics of renewable energy, inviting a redefinition of sovereignty ascare, reciprocity, and coexistence across planetary ecologies.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W7117988779

DOI

10.5281/zenodo.18114147

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Natural entities mentioned

River

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2 · Record 3

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18114147
• Document · http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/23163
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W7117988779

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w2097308785 · CITES
• New Transitions from Human Rights to the Environment to the Rights of Nature · CITES
• openalex:w2941880951 · CITES
• openalex:w2992820108 · CITES
• openalex:w3093367522 · CITES
• openalex:w3109865133 · CITES

0 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

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