JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Moving beyond ‘sustainable hydropower’ in the Mekong basin [15-30 June 2022]

What role should large hydropower dams play in future electricity systems? At the UNFCCC COP 26 in November 2021, the International Hydropower Association (IHA) sought to further the industry's role – and access to climate financing – by advocating 'sustainable hydropower' as vital to achieving net zero emissions targets. Civil society groups, meanwhile, countered that hydropower should be excluded from UN climate finance mechanisms, citing the industry's human rights and environmental impacts.

This policy analysis contends that the claimed benefits of 'sustainable hydropower' are rarely seen in practice, especially in the global south where most new large dams have been built, and that this low-carbon argument glosses over the industry's associated ecological and social costs while better electricity alternatives exist. It argues that healthy rivers are a foundation of climate change resilience, and highlights new and existing principles towards this goal.

Please read the full policy analysis at “The Water Dissensus – A Water Alternatives Forum” and post your responses and analysis in the online forum that is open from 15-30 June.

The policy analysis is written by Dr. Carl Middleton, Director of the Center for Social Development Studies (CSDS) in the Faculty of Political Science of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

UPCOMING EVENT: The Belt and Road Initiative, hydropolitics, and hydropower [Online, 7 June 2021]]

16.00-17.30 am BKK Time, Monday, 7 June 2021 via Zoom

Carl Middleton from CSDS will be one of the speakers

Carl Middleton from CSDS will be one of the speakers for the webinar "Contrasting China's Relationship with South and Southeast Asia: the Belt and Road Initiative, Hydropolitics, and Hydropower."

Carl will speak on ‘Reworking the Mekong River Regime: The Geopolitics and Hydropolitics of Competing Regionalisms’.

About the webinar:

"In this webinar we examine the role of new and planned hydropower projects financed by China in shifting geopolitics between China and South and Southeast Asia. We ask how hydropolitics and dams are enabling new forms of economic, social and political regional institutionalisation through the Belt and Road Initiative, how these play out differently in South and Southeast Asia and what these mean for local communities and nature in particular locales across South and Southeast Asia."

To join this webiner, you can register on the organizer’s webpage here, or register via Zoom on this link https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vBmdcT0nRXCLne0iWFlD8A.

UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE PAPER: Demarcating the public and private in hydropower in the Mekong Region

Virtual conference: The third biennial conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) - Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration

22-25 September 2020 , Virtual Conference at https://event.pollen2020.exordo.com/

Abstract for: Demarcating the public and private in hydropower in the Mekong Region

By Carl Middleton*

In this paper, I critically analyze the generation of plural demarcations of 'public' and 'private' through large hydropower projects in the Mekong region. Different conceptual and material meanings of public are considered, including the public sphere, the public interest, public goods, public knowledge, and various 'publics' as group identity, and in each instance how they relate to – or merge with – notions of private. I show that the meaning of public and private is contextual, relational, and often hybrid rather than distinct, for example regarding: the corporatization of state-owned enterprises; the construction and operation of large dams as various types of public-private partnerships; the merging of public and private sources of finance; and in the definition and legitimation of resource and property rights. These plural meanings of public and private hold consequences for water governance that requires critical problematization, including in relation to: the configurations of state and non-state actors and their power relations that shape how collective and individual interests are defined and acted upon; the types of knowledge that are generated, by who, and for what purpose; the spaces/ places within which projects, plans and policies are discussed, contested and governed; and how benefits, costs and risks are ultimately distributed amongst different groups within society. The paper will present case studies from large hydropower projects within the Lancang-Mekong basin, analyzed in the context of partially-fulfilled plans for economic regionalization and cross-border electricity trade.

* Center of Excellence on Resource Politics for Social Development, Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University (Carl.Chulalongkorn@gmail.com)

This paper will be presented as a pre-recorded presentation. View more details on the conference here: https://pollen2020.wordpress.com/.

IN THE NEWS: "Book Review 'Dead in the Water: Global Lessons from the World Bank’s Model Hydropower Project in Laos' from Southeast Asian Studies"

By Keith Barney [Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2019, pp. 153-157]

Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on environmental and social mitigation programs for the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower project in Laos, extending over the full footprint of the project zone from the Vietnam border down to the confluence of the two impacted rivers with the Mekong. What are scholars, development practitioners, and concerned citizens to make of this high-profile infrastructure project? Costing about US$1.45 billion in the end, it made such a significant investment in addressing its socio-environmental externalities, but as the authors of Dead in the Water argue, has still come up short.

. . .

Dead in the Water does not specifically set out to theorize a new framework for understanding the NT2 project or the implications of hydropower development in Laos. Its aims are more applied and grounded, and constitute a basic warning that “supporting high-risk projects—those with the potential for severe social and environmental impacts—in countries with significant governance issues is fundamentally inappropriate and likely to cause more harm than good” (p. 298). The approach is set by some well-crafted chapters by the lead editors: independent researcher/consultant Bruce Shoemaker, and conservation biologist William Robichaud, both whom have long-term experience in the country. While none of the other chapter contributors are Lao nationals, which is a shame but understandable, given the constraints with freedom of speech in the country; almost all of the other writers have spent decades working and researching about Lao resource management issues.

****

Read the full review here

Citation: Barney, Keith. Review of Dead in the Water: Global Lessons from the World Bank’s Model Hydropower Project in Laos edited by Bruce Shoemaker and William Robichaud. Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2019, pp. 153-157

Carl Middleton of CSDS contributed the chapter “Branding Dams: Nam Theun 2 and its Role in Producing the Discourse of “Sustainable Hydropower”” to the book (see here)

Buy the Book: Dead in the water: global lessons from the World Bank's model hydropower project in Laos (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018)

IN THE NEWS: Review of "The water-food-energy nexus. Power, politics and Justice"

By François Molle [Water Alternatives, 2019]

Although water-food-energy nexus thinking can hardly claim to be new wine, the growth of 'nexus literature' in the past ten years is remarkable. It has gained currency as a buzzword with the potential to convene water experts in global jamborees, to elicit books and special journal issues, and to challenge the long-established Integrated Water Resources Management concept as the new champion of integrative imperatives.

. . .

The book does a great job at showing how a water-energy-food nexus approach emphasises demand-led technological and market solutions, downplays supply-side limits, promotes a technical and supposedly apolitical treatment of trade-offs, and largely ignores the political dimensions that shape control over, and access to, resources. But even in its reductionist form of an optimising tool for cross-sectoral planning or business, the systemic complexity that the nexus seeks to address is baffling, and it is no wonder than in practice empirical work focuses on sub-nexuses using monetary metrics.

***

Carl Middleton of CSDS is the co-author of this book.

Read full article here
Buy the Book (coming soon)

IN THE NEWS: "Flashing cash, China spearheads Mekong economic integration"

By Marwaan Macan-Markar [Nikkei Asian Review, 12 January 2018]

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang used a visit to Cambodia this week to strengthen China-led economic integration across mainland Southeast Asia. Li celebrated his embrace of multilateralism with an op-ed penned specially for a Cambodian newspaper, and basked in China's triumph with its five southerly neighbors, all of whom share the Mekong, Southeast Asia's longest river. 

"Being located downstream, the lower Mekong countries have long struggled to negotiate with China on its dam construction upstream," said Carl Middleton, director of the Center for Social Development Studies, at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok. "A weakness of the current Lancang Mekong Cooperation Framework's approach is that there appears to be little interest by China to develop specific written rules for trans-boundary water sharing."

Jinghong Hydropower Station in Yunnan province  (Source: AP)

China's determined push into mainland Southeast Asia lays bare the limits of existing Mekong initiatives supported by Japan, the U.S. and other Western nations, all of which focused on the five basin countries but shut out China. They pose little challenge to China, and are short on the verbal fireworks over another body of water in Southeast Asia -- the disputed South China Sea.

Read full article at: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Flashing-cash-China-spearheads-Mekong-economic-integration?page=1