UPCOMING EVENT: The Mekong, China, & SE Asian Transitions Series-Mekong Dams: Debates and the Politics of Evidence [Online, 29 April 2021]

07.00-08.30 am BKK Time, Thursday, 29 April 2021 via Zoom

Carl Middleton from CSDS will be one of the panelists

In recent decades, people living in the Lower Mekong Region have witnessed major shifts from predominantly subsistence agriculture to industrializing economies, with attendant changes in migration, crop production systems, and major infrastructure (roads, dams, industrial estates). This series of four webinars will explore how communities in the region are experiencing the economic, social, and cultural dislocations of these transformations.

Full webinar series schedule:

• Panel 1 : Jan 27 - Markets for Mekong Commodities

• Panel 2 : Feb 24 - Migration, Mobility, and the Mekong

• Panel 3 : Apr 7 - The Spirits and Spiritual Life of the Mekong

• Panel 4: Apr 28 - Mekong Dams: Debates and the Politics of Evidence

Carl will be one of the panelists on Panel 4.

To register for this event, please visit the Zoom link here. For more information about this event, please visit the organizer’s website here.

This event is organized by Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University.

UPCOMING EVENT: Low Flows, Drought, Data and Geopolitics on the Mekong-Lancang River [Online, 28 April 2021]

10.00 pm BKK Time/ 05.00 pm CEST, Wednesday, 28 April 2021 via Facebook Live from UPF Lund

Public Lecture with Carl Middleton from CSDS

The Mekong-Lancang River flows from the Tibetan Plateau through Yunnan Province of China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Since the early 1990s, the river has been increasingly engineered by large hydropower dams. In this seminar, Carl Middleton assesses conflict and cooperation in transboundary water governance, with a focus on the Mekong River Commission established between the four lower basin States, and the China-led Lancang Mekong Cooperation. Heavily influenced by geopolitical tensions between the US and China, Carl Middleton analyzes the heated regional debates over China’s dam cascade and low river flows downstream since 2019, and the impact on peoples’ lives.

Dr. Carl Middleton is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Director on the Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in International Development Studies (MAIDS-GRID) Program, and Director of the Center for Social Development Studies (CSDS) in the Faculty of Political Science of Chulalongkorn University. Dr. Middleton’s research interests orientate around the politics and policy of the environment in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on nature-society relations, the political ecology of water and energy, and environmental justice. He has lived in Southeast Asia for fifteen years, with much of his work focused onto the Mekong River.

For more information, please visit the event page here.

UPCOMING EVENT: ARI E-Workshop on Transboundary Environmental Governance in Southeast Asia [Online, 4 December 2020]

15.40-17.30, Friday, 4 December 2020 via Zoom

Carl Middleton from CSDS will be presenting on this event.

The Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, is going to organize an inter-disciplinary workshop on "Transboundary Environmental Governance in Southeast Asia" to explore how, why, when and what forms of transboundary environmental governance are emerging in Southeast Asia.

The workshop will be conducted online via Zoom. To register, please visit this link here and the organizer will reply prior to the event with the Zoom link.

Panel IV. Hybrid Governance of Transboundary Commons

Chairperson: Zu Dienle Tan, National University of Singapore

Panelists:

• Beyond the Commons/Commodity Dichotomy in the Lancang-Mekong Basin: Implications for Transboundary Water Governance by Carl Middleton, Chulalongkorn University

• Unruly Fires: Nonhumans as Transboundary Actants in Governing Indonesia’s Wildfires by Rini Astuti, National University of Singapore and Yuti Ariani Fatimah, Nanyang Technological University

• A Multi-Scalar Political Economy Analysis of Thailand’s Widespread Urban Air Pollution by Danny Marks, Dublin City University

• Path Dependency of Land Use in Southeast Asian Peatlands by Lahiru Wijedasa, National University of Singapore

Abstract:

Beyond the Commons/Commodity Dichotomy in the Lancang-Mekong Basin: Implications for Transboundary Water Governance

Extensive hydropower construction across the Lancang-Mekong basin is changing the river’s hydrology and ecology, with implications for the availability and governance of common pool resources, as well as for riparian livelihoods. In this paper, I assess how the transboundary commons are being reworked as the river is transformed by large dam operation. The paper applies an analytical lens that seeks to move beyond a commons-commodity dichotomy in water related resource governance (Paerregaard and Andersen, 2019) to argue that at the present time the Lancang-Mekong River is neither fully commodified nor fully a commons, but rather a hybrid of the two. The paper will examine how transboundary hybrid governance regimes are reworking the hybrid commons, drawing attention to how states, communities, and even private actors, seek to maintain particular types of commons, whilst simultaneously either furthering or resisting commodification of some properties of the river. The paper will discuss the implications of this hybrid governance perspective for recent hydropolitics in the river basin and existing and new transboundary water governance institutions, namely the Mekong River Commission and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework.

For more information about this event, please visit the organizer’s webpage here.