Wind parks in post-crisis Greece: Neoliberalisation vis-à-vis green grabbing

This article explores the growth of wind parks in post-crisis Greece in the convergence of the Greek economic crisis, the country’s structural adjustment and global climate change. It illuminates an ongoing process of nature’s neoliberalisation defined by specific measures and strategies. These have facilitated a wave of green grabbing (public and private land, financial and natural resources) in Greece by mostly transnational (energy) companies. Green grabbing is leading to unfavourable consequences for local shepherds and farmers, domestic and small business electricity consumers, conservation and local biodiversity, as well as to ecological distribution conflicts. Private wind parks in post-crisis Greece serve as a socioecological fix to the Greek economic crisis and climate change. The article finally argues that large private and public-private wind parks are far from innocent. Rather, hiding under green and economic growth/recovery credentials, they represent a vehicle for the reproduction and expansion of capitalism with important socioecological implications varying in each context necessitating urgent empirical exploration.