• Energy Research

AbstractTwenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

Abstract For the last six decades, Turkish governments have been advocating the construction of a nuclear power plant (NPP) on the grounds that it is necessary for the development of the country, that the country needs nuclear energy for economic growth, and more importantly, that an NPP would mark a milestone in Turkey's journey of modernisation. However, national and local opposition has also existed from the beginning on. The first attempts to build an NPP in late 1970s were met with an immediate reaction from the civil society, concerned about potential problems such as NPP's impact on environment and health, waste management, and risk of nuclear accidents, giving rise to a long-standing conflict that is yet to be settled. In order to better understand Turkey's previous and current motivations to build a nuclear power plant, this study will first recount the country's history of nuclear power followed by a discourse analysis using a multidimensional environmental justice framework, which will investigate different stakeholders' views and perceptions, and the alternative policies proposed by them. The discourse analysis built on the historical narrative is helpful in identifying sources of conflicts between stakeholders, and in presenting these conflicts in a transparent and comprehensible manner.

This chapter discusses the politics of energy in post-1980 Turkey from a social science perspective. In particular, it offers an explanation of the decisions characterizing Turkey’s high-carbon energy pathway over the years, by building on some conceptual lenses: geopolitical interstate relations, sociopolitical and sociotechnical imaginaries, production of socioeconomic inequalities, and formation of new political collective identities. A thorough reading of the energy politics literature in Turkey suggests that all these dimensions are helpful to understanding not only the country’s past energy choices but also contemporary energy debates and conflicts under the “new Turkey.” Three points come to the fore in Turkey’s relationship with energy from the 1980s onward. (1) Turkey has pursued high modernist ambitions to be a regional energy hub and provide uninterrupted supply for its economic growth goals. (2) Energy choices and policies were formed politically as governments in coalition with domestic and foreign private capital have primarily promoted particular private interests and instrumentalized a technocratic discourse to establish political hegemony and marginalize public criticism. (3) Energy-related decisions have been insulated from public participation, resulting in intense sociospatial and socioeconomic inequalities and conflicts. A historical and interdisciplinary perspective also helps to explain how different energy resources generate power symbolically as well as materially and reproduce hegemony through concepts such as energy scarcity, security of supply, and energy independence. The chapter concludes with a critical assessment of the challenges Turkey faces for a transition to fair and environmentally sustainable energy systems.