This case study examines the Spectra Solar Park, a 35 MW grid-connected photovoltaic facility in Manikganj District, Bangladesh, as an instance of a broader pattern in which the institutional conditions enabling renewable energy expansion simultaneously facilitate agricultural dispossession, environmental harm, and the exclusion of affected communities. Drawing on the project’s Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), contemporaneous media reporting, independent satellite land-cover analysis, and community testimony gathered during a December 2025 field visit, the study documents a systematic gap between official claims and ground reality. The ESIA classified the 140-acre site as “non-agricultural,” yet the same document’s revenue records show 95 percent agricultural (Nal) land, satellite analysis finds 43.8 percent cropland, and community accounts describe a productive three-crop floodplain system. The assessment was completed seven months after construction began—by which point sand-filling was 94 percent complete—rendering it a post-hoc rationalization rather than a genuine evaluation. Land acquisition operated through a “dalal-relative” system in which local intermediaries, many of them kin to affected families, brokered transfers at nominal prices, while the Union Parishad chairman doubled as the developer’s purchasing agent. Resistance was suppressed through coercion, alleged violence, and the weaponization of a “Jamaat meeting” label. Applying an energy justice framework, the study traces distributive, procedural, and recognitional failures: costs fell on smallholders—including erased women’s post-harvest and fishing livelihoods—while a tariff set under the non-competitive QEEES Act, financed partly by the ADB, insulated beneficiaries from the harm inflicted
Author: Chaudhuri, Anushree and Rashid, Tasin; Sreya, Wasema Rahman; and Kamal, Rohini
Type: Report
Publisher: BIGD
Year: 2026
