CONTESTED WATERSCAPES IN THE MEKONG REGION: HYDROPOWER, LIVELIHOODS
AND GOVERNANCE
Tira
ForanAustralian National University18 August 2009
Key Messages
The water resources of the Mekong region are increasingly contestedGovernments, companies, banks drive new investments; new financiers emergingroads, dams, irrigation schemes, navigation
These projects may provide benefits to wider society . . . but also pose multiple burdens and risks
Millions of people depend on wetlands, floodplains and aquatic resourcesWe need to put infrastructure development in its place
Contested Waterscapes: purpose and themes
JustificationHow are large‐scale projects proposed, justified, and built?
ContestationAre projects contested, and if so how?
Governance regimesHow do specific governance regimes influence outcomes?
Importance of narratives
Development policy is an attempt to make complex problems identifiable and uncertainty manageable.
Narratives = simple story lines of how a ‘problem’ has arisen and will unfold
hence what the necessary course of action should be
Development narratives are the ‘conventional wisdom’
deeply embedded; rarely challenged
Legitimise certain types of knowledge and action
Storytelling = how actors and institutions make claim to action and ownership over resources
Table of Contents
Introduction1
What is special about water resources development?
People are interconnectedPeople and ecosystems also are
Interventions in the hydrological cycle generate costs, benefits and risks
spread spatially and socially across the basin
Externalities are linked to changes in the water regime
in terms of quantity, quality, timing or sediment load
Old and new hydropower players in the Mekong Region
2
Eleven hydropower schemes proposed on the lower Mekong
Credit: Thai CSOs
Nam Theun
2 dam (during construction)
Pak Mun
Dam: Perpetually Contested?3
During the “5 month, 9 day rally”Dec. 1994
After the “win-win”
opening solution, June 2004
The Nam Theun
2 Controversy and its Lessons for Laos
4
Nam Theun
2 reservoir after impoundment
Damming the Salween
River5
Approximate location of proposed projects on Nu/Salween
Irrigation in the Lower Mekong Basin Countries: The Beginning of a New Era?
6
Irrigation canals: Attapeu, Southern Laos
Landscape transformations and new approaches to wetlands management in the Songkhram
River Basin7
Songkhram: changing waterscapes
Blake 2008
Rich or poor: NR dependent livelihoods
The Delta Machine: Water Management in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta in Historical and Contem-
porary
Perspective
8
Mekong delta: “a work without end”
Biggs et al. / Kahonen
2008
Irrigation canal, Bac
Lieu, Mekong Delta
Delta farmers: intensification and differentiation
Hydropower in the Mekong Region: What are the Likely Impacts on Fisheries?
9
The ‘Greening of Isaan’: Politics, Ideology and Irrigation Development in the Northeast of Thailand10
Proposed Khong-Chi-Mun
project, late 1980s: 3 stages, 42 years, 800,000 ha
Proposed Water Grid project, 2003 (5 years , +16.5 million ha)
The Promise of Flood Protection: Dikes and Dams, Drains and Diversions
11
Songs of the doomed: The Continuing Neglect of Capture Fisheries in Hydropower Development in the Mekong
12
De-marginalizing the Mekong River Commission
14
MRC organizational chart
MRC Basin Development Plan Programme
(BDP) policy narrative:
“Sustainable development can be planned using IWRM principles”
IWRM principles:Participatory, pro-poor multi-stakeholder dialogueMulti-level and cross-sectoral collaborationMRC can build (via NMCs and line agencies) capacity to do so
Source: adapted from BDP 2009
The Anti-Politics of Mekong Knowledge Production
13
“The role of the MRC as a knowledge production agency . . . should not be to pretend to take the politics out of decision-making, but rather to foster a political dialogue between and within riparian countries that is informed by a better understanding of the implications of particular decisions . . . "
Contested Waterscapes: Where to Next? 15
Themes
How are large‐scale projects proposed, justified, and built?
Past: appeals to national securityGrand narratives of modernizationPresent: many old projects are being dusted off
rhetoric of mitigation, tradeoffs, and best practicesalso, argument that more investment in water infrastructure povery alleviation‘development is inevitable’; ‘development cannot wait’existing benefits not recognized or downplayed Simplistic and unrealistic assumptions made in project feasibility studies; many examples of poor EIAs
Cases: Irrigation in NE Thailand & Vietnam Delta; Mekong mainstream dams cascade; Nam Theun 2
Justifications: our analysis
There is nothing “inevitable” about development . . . except serious negative impacts
Dominant justifications are simplistic
More balanced outcomes largely result from various forms of contestation
Small‐scale development is more sustainable
Need pro‐development fisheries narratives
Are projects contested, and if so how?
Multiple forms of contestation, reflecting overall development of civil society in the region: Resistance: weapons of the weak
E.g., Vietnam Delta ‐ reluctance to comply with state policy
Analytical contestation (politics of knowledge)Contesting feasibility studies & IAsPromoting stronger standards
AdvocacyMedia campaignsCounter‐knowledge (Tai Baan)Civil disobedience
Cases: Pak Mun Dam, NT2 Dam, Rasi Salai, Hua Na
Do specific governance regimes make a difference to decision making?
General patternsPower highly concentrated among eliteRepression of civil society organizationsInterest‐driven decision makingLimited public dialogue
Pressure on lower levels of governmentThailand
Money politics patronage & populist policies megaprojectsAd‐hoc decision making by the executive branch (vs. parliament) many Cabinet resolutions, fewer laws
Five pathways to improving governance
1 Produce knowledgeconventional science & alternative knowledge
2 Bridge different viewpoints by deliberationand negotiation
3 Establish rules, standards, and norms
4 Shift balance of power through advocacy
5 Promote transboundary management
Acknowledgements
Photo credits: NASA (Siphandone); Khao
Sod Newspaper
(Pak Mun
protest); Buchita
(Pak Mun
protest 1994); Nu
river
advocates (Nu
river); MRC (1995 agreement); International
Rivers (NT2 and Lao fisher images); Book 2 contributors
THANK YOU
State-centered
governance
Society-centered
governance
participation
empowerment
Ma
CoSta
Shifting governance
Ma Co
Sta
• Deliberation• Advocacy• Norms• Knowledge production
• Institutions• Roles• Tools
G1G2
(1) Engage in knowledge production
Few Mekong river fish were regarded as migratory in the 1960s (Hori, 2000)
vs.specialists now estimate ‘that over 70 percent of the total fish catch in the Lower Mekong Basin is dependent on long distance migrant species’
(Dugan, 2008).
• Modelling
• Scenarios
• Impact assessments
(1) Engage in knowledge production
Narratives and counter narratives & the politics of knowledge
1.Documenting the impact of the Yali
Falls dam in Cambodia
2.Thai Baan research
3.Kaeng
Sua
Ten dam on the Yom River in upper northern Thailand ‘to protect Bangkok from flooding’
4.Fisheries as a doomed resource
5.Northeast Thailand as a desert waiting to bloom
(2) Discussing and debating alternatives
"Deliberative democracy", social learning
1.‘Exploring Water Futures Together’
2006 dialogue
2.Watershed committees; participatory river basin management
3.MRC Hydropower Forum in 2008
Participatory governance?
(3) Promoting standards
Constraining/guiding powerful actors' behaviour
1.Integrated Resource Planning (IRP)2.World Bank and ADB code of conducts3.Voluntary codes of conduct for financial institutions: e.g., Equator principles, Carbon principles4.2009 Sustainability Assessment Protocol (International Hydropower Association)5.Guidelines for Chinese companies working abroad (developed by Global Environment Institute)6.Aarhus
Convention
(4) Advocacy
Shifting the power balance, exposing unethical behaviours, promoting transparency, struggling for compensations, proposing alternatives, etc.
1.NGOs (TERRA, SEARIN, IR, etc)
2.The Assembly of the Poor
3.Academics
(5) Transboundary
water management
Agreements, rules of conduct between riparian countries
1.Agreements between riparian countries
2.Increase transparency in decision-making
3.Preventing free-riding