Justice and risk perception in Chile’s wind energy expansion

The deployment of renewable energy infrastructures has intensified across Latin America as countries pursue decarbonization goals; however, these transformations often reproduce existing territorial inequalities, especially in rural areas that have been historically affected by extractive industries. In many rural areas, the expansion of wind energy has generated significant socio-environmental tensions linked to landscape transformation, informational asymmetries, and procedural deficits. This study evaluates the interaction between energy development and the ecosystem multifunctionality of rural landscapes, focusing on how local actors perceive and interpret socio-environmental risks, changes in Ecosystem Services, and dimensions of environmental justice. A constructivist framework was performed in addition to qualitative fieldwork in five administrative localities to connect conceptual trends with empirical narratives. Results show that wind energy projects have disrupted both physical and symbolic ecological landscape functions, revealing perceived risk functions associated with procedural injustice and an expression of territorial inequality. Risk perception emerged as a socially constructed and historically rooted phenomenon, shaped by lack of trust, uneven information access, and symbolic disconnection. The findings call for place-based, justice-oriented energy planning approaches that integrate community knowledge, territorial heterogeneity, and the affective dimensions of landscape.