Environmental assessment of energy activities causing climate change through expropriation migrations according to the new ecology paradigm: Muğla, Milas case study

Yeniköy and Kemerköy thermal power plants located within the borders of Milas district of Muğla province and mine quarry activities providing lignite to these plants caused expropriation migrations. Since 1984, Sekköy, Hüsamlar and Ikizköy producers have migrated from the villages where they lived as a result of expropriation procedures. Due to the efforts of thermal power plants to increase capacity, the region still faces the risk of further nationalization. In addition to the fact that mines and thermal power plants cause environmental degradation, climate change has become more noticeable in the region with each passing year. In order to determine the environmental and sociological consequences caused by energy activities in the region, surveys and interviews were conducted with the producers who left their places because of the expropriation migration. Thus, environmental and sociological consequences caused by energy activities that contribute to climate change have been aimed to determine the relationship with climate change. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the effects of expropriation migration are related to economic, social and political areas. The decrease in the population that makes production integrated with nature in the economic sense has caused the production culture to turn into a consumption culture. When the economic and cultural changes combined with the more severe feeling of climate change, political conflicts between the people and the bureaucracy began to occur. After this point, it is suggested that economic and political forces determine their goals according to the view that human is a part of nature.