JOURNAL ARTICLE: Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co-production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

Publication date: January 2023

Publication: Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

Authors: Robert A. Farnan, Sally Beckenham, Carl Middleton

Abstract: In Human Geography, there is growing interest in how accounts of development can be wedded to an understanding of society in which the material or technical is connected to the social. Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches this division by emphasizing the inextricable relationship between technology and society. This process of co-production—between science and technology on the one hand and social and political order on the other—drives the focus of the special section and its investigation of ecological knowledge and contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia that this guest editorial introduces.

See the full guest editorial here.

Citation: Farnan, R.A., Beckenham, S. and Middleton, C. (2023), Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co-production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 44: 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12469

JOURNAL ARTICLE: The political ecology of large hydropower dams in the Mekong Basin: A comprehensive review

Publication date: June 2022

Publication: Water Alternatives

Authors: Carl Middleton

Abstract: Since the early 1990s, the Mekong basin has been transformed from a largely free-flowing basin to one that is increasingly impounded by large hydropower dams, impacting river hydrology, ecology, riparian livelihoods, and water governance. This comprehensive review organises and assesses political ecology literature on large dams in the basin. Following a conceptual scoping of the political ecology of large dams, the review covers: the biophysical impacts of hydropower in the Mekong basin and how the scientific studies that research them relate to political ecology literature; relational hydrosocial approaches, including hydrosocial ordering and networked political ecologies; the ontological multiplicity of the Mekong(s) and associated ontological politics; the political economy of large dams in the Mekong basin and its relationship to transboundary water governance and hydropolitics; the discourses and knowledge production about large dams, including those regarding water data politics, 'international best practices', impact assessments, and public participation; and livelihoods, the commons, and water justice. The review details how some large hydropower dams in the Mekong basin have taken on global salience, including the Pak Mun dam, the Nam Theun 2 dam, and the Xayaburi dam. The review argues that political ecology research has significantly widened the scope of how large hydropower dams are understood and acted upon, especially by those challenging their realisation. This includes how large hydropower dams’ political processes and outcomes are shaped by asymmetrical power relations with consequences for social and ecological justice. Recognising that a substantial portion of political ecology research to date has been conducted as extensive plans for large dams were being materialised and contested, the review concludes by outlining future priority research areas that cover existing gaps and posing new questions that are arising as the river basin becomes progressively more impounded.

Keywords: Political ecology of large hydropower dams, hydrosocial ordering, critical hydropolitics, commons, water justice, Mekong-Lancang River

See the article here.

Citation: Middleton, C. (2022). “The political ecology of large hydropower dams in the Mekong Basin: A comprehensive review.” Water Alternatives 15(2): 251-289

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Higher education institution, SDG2 and agri- food sustainability: lessons from Chulalongkorn University and Thailand

Publication date: October 2021

Publication: Environment, Development and Sustainability

Authors: Wayne Nelles, Supawan Visetnoi, Carl Middleton, Thita Orn- in

Abstract:

This paper examines higher education efforts linking United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and agri- food system sustainability given reports of stagnant movement for SDG2 in Southeast Asia and lack of data for effective monitoring or evaluation to realize the 2030 Agenda. It discusses Thai contexts amid a growing global movement in academic theory, policy and practice to mainstream SDG knowledge and implementation across campuses presenting one case to illustrate broader concerns. Chulalongkorn University policies, faculty awareness, curricula, research, sustainability reporting and partnerships about SDGs have contributed to SDG2 objectives from different disciplines and academic units. However, some faculty still lack understanding of SDGs generally while SDG2 has not been an institutional priority. The university has made welcome progress since 2017 policy promoting SDGs but still needs to strengthen SDG2 data collection, teaching, research and community outreach capacities including links to governement and international reporting to address complex agri- food system sustainability challenges. Comparative studies could also help while critically debating SDG deficiencies and promoting socioeconomic, ecological, agri- food system, community and campus sustainability.

Keywords: Higher education institutions, SDG2, Chulalongkorn University, sustainable agri- food system, Sufficiency economy philosophy, Thailand

Read the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Hydrosocial rupture: causes and consequences for transboundary governance

Publication date: September 2021

Publication: Ecology and Society

Authors: Michelle A. Miller, Alfajri, Rini Astuti, Carl Grundy-Warr, Carl Middleton, Zu Dienle Tan and David M. Taylor

Abstract:

Unsustainable models of growth-based development are pushing aquatic ecologies outside known historical ranges and destabilizing human activities that have long depended on them. We develop the concept of hydrosocial rupture to explore how human-water resource connections change when they are exposed to cumulative development pressures. The research analyzes stakeholder perceptions of hydrosocial ruptures in two sites in Southeast Asia: (1) peatlands in Riau Province, Indonesia, and (2) Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia. In both contexts, capital-driven processes have reconfigured human-water resource connections to generate transgressive social and environmental consequence that cannot be contained within administrative units or property boundaries. Our findings show how these ruptured hydrosocial relations are perceived and acted upon by the most proximate users of water resources. In Cambodia, a policy of resettlement has sought to thin hydrosocial relations in response to biodiversity loss, chronic pollution, and changing hydrology in Tonle Sap Lake. By contrast, in Indonesia’s Riau Province, efforts are underway to thicken human-water relations by hydrologically rehabilitating peatlands drained for agricultural development. We argue that in both of these contexts hydrosocial ruptures should be understood as phenomena of transboundary governance that cannot be addressed by individual groups of users, sectors, or jurisdictions.

Keywords: hydrosocial relations; rupture; Southeast Asia; transboundary water governance

See the article here.

Citation: Miller, M. A., Alfajri, R. Astuti, C. Grundy-Warr, C. Middleton, Z. D. Tan, and D. M. Taylor. 2021. Hydrosocial rupture: causes and consequences for transboundary governance. Ecology and Society 26(3):21. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12545-260321

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Bangkok Precipitated: Cloudbursts, Sentient Urbanity, and Emergent Atmospheres

Publication date: 20 July 2021

Publication: East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal

Author: Jakkrit Sangkhamanee

Abstract:

Bangkok often floods. This paper examines the effects of city deluge as a result of urban assemblage: complex, distributed and disjunctive relations between the city’s amphibious ecologies and landscapes, its dilapidated drainage infrastructure, its varied transport systems, its weather patterns, and the movements of people. During cloudbursts, many of Bangkok’s missing masses become plainly and frustratingly, visible. Using ethnographic description as a “material diagnostics,” I explore how irritated, perturbed, urban atmospheres emerge out of disjunctive infrastructural constellations. Cloudbursts make perceptible such atmospheres as forms of sentient urbanism, in which distributed sensations are generated by intersecting material itineraries moving across multiple assemblages. As affects and agitations move from street level to social media, rain precipitates matters of urgent, urban concern and critique.

Keywords: atmospheres, flood, infrastructure, sentient urbanism, Bangkok

See the article here.

Citation: Sangkhamanee, J., 2021. Bangkok Precipitated: Cloudbursts, Sentient Urbanity, and Emergent Atmospheres. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 15(2), pp.153-172. doi:10.1080/18752160.2021.1896122.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: The Emergence of a Hybrid Public Sphere in Myanmar: Implications for Democratisation

Publication date: 20 April 2021

Publication: TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia

Authors: Carl Middleton and Tay Zar Myo Win

Abstract:

Myanmar was under a military government for almost six decades, during which time the state maintained an ‘authoritarian public sphere’ that limited independent civil society, mass media and the population's access to information. In 2010, Myanmar held flawed elections that installed a semi-civilian government and established a hybrid governance regime, within which civil, political and media freedoms expanded while the military's influence remained significant. In this paper, we examine ‘hybrid governance at work’ in the ‘hybrid public sphere’, that holds in tension elements of an authoritarian and democratic public sphere. The boundaries of these spheres are demarcated through legal means, including the 2008 military-created Constitution, associated judicial and administrative state structures and the actions of civil society and community movements toward political, military and bureaucratic elite actors. We develop our analysis first through an assessment of Myanmar's political transition at the national level and, then, in an empirical case of subnational politics in Dawei City regarding the planning of the electricity supply. We suggest that the hybrid public sphere enables discourses—associated with authoritarian popularist politics in Myanmar—that build legitimacy amongst the majority while limiting the circulation of critical discourses of marginalized groups and others challenging government policies. We conclude that for substantive democracy to deepen in Myanmar, civil society and media must actively reinforce the opportunity to produce and circulate critical discourse while also facilitating inclusive debates and consolidating legislated civil, political and media freedoms. On 1 February 2021, shortly after this article was finalized, a military coup d’état detained elected leaders and contracted the post-2010 hybrid public sphere, including constraining access to information via control of the internet and mass media and severely limiting civil and political rights.

Keywords: hybrid governance, accountability, authoritarian public sphere, media freedoms, Dawei

See the article here.

Citation: Middleton, C., & Win, T. (2021). The Emergence of a Hybrid Public Sphere in Myanmar: Implications for Democratisation. TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1-20. doi:10.1017/trn.2021.2

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Reciprocity in practice: the hydropolitics of equitable and reasonable utilization in the Lancang-Mekong basin

Publication date: 04 October 2020

Publication: International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics

Authors: Carl Middleton & David J. Devlaeminck

Abstract:

Equitable and reasonable utilization (ERU), the cornerstone of international water law, recognizes the rights of states to utilize shared water resources. However, there is ambiguity in ERU’s application, and upstream states often perceive it as against their interests. Recent research highlights the important role reciprocity plays in international water law, yet how reciprocity is practiced in transboundary water governance remains poorly understood. Combining literature on international law, hydropolitics and international relations, this article conceptualizes ‘reciprocity in practice’ for international watercourses as interconnected legal, social and political processes by which state and non-state actors negotiate ERU and distribute benefits and harms. We pay particular attention to power relations and perceptions of fairness that influence the form and (dis)continuity of reciprocity. We demonstrate our approach through an analysis of evolving legal regimes and issues of navigation, hydropower, flood and drought management, and economic regionalization in the Lancang-Mekong basin, focusing on relations between China and downstream states. We demonstrate how multiple forms of reciprocity occur simultaneously across issues that are often analyzed individually, complicating common narratives of China’s unilateralism. We show, however, that practiced positive reciprocity is weak and exclusive, generating distrust and resistance from those excluded or who experience harms. Overall, we suggest that processes of ‘reciprocity in practice’ are at the heart of meaningful negotiation, institutionalization and practice of ERU, and that, as a model of water allocation, ERU should be contextualized to wider process of allocation of benefits and harms that include but go beyond water, and in which power relations fundamentally matter.

Keywords: UN Watercourses Convention, Mekong River Commission, Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, Lancang dam cascade, Equitable and reasonable use

Read the abstract in Chinese (Mandarin) here.

See the article here.

Citation: Middleton, C., and Devlaeminck, D.J. (2020) Reciprocity in practice: the hydropolitics of equitable and reasonable utilization in the Lancang-Mekong basin. Int Environ Agreements.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-020-09511-6

JOURNAL ARTICLE: ASEAN in the South China Sea conflict, 2012–2018: A lesson in conflict transformation from normative power Europe

Publication date: 4 July 2020

Publication: International Economics and Economic Policy

Author: Kasira Cheeppensook

Abstract:

For decades, overlapping territorial claims to the South China Sea have had a destabilizing effect in East and Southeast Asia, with broader implications beyond the region. Four ASEAN countries (Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) are direct claimants in the South China Sea conflict. ASEAN’s role, as a regional organization, in facilitating peaceful resolution of these claims and maintaining stability is challenging because the conflict presents potentially divisive rifts among ASEAN members themselves. This paper explores ASEAN’s role in managing the South China Sea conflict by examining the actions of two non-claimant states that functioned as country coordinators for ASEAN–China relations from 2012 to 2018: Thailand and Singapore. The efforts of these two countries as honest brokers shed light on how ASEAN can deal with this ongoing crisis so as to ensure the organization’s ongoing effectiveness and sustain regional harmony. The concept of normative power is employed to explain the potential role of non-claimant states in conflict transformation.

Keywords: ASEAN, South China Sea, Normative power Europe

See the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Shaping ocean governance: a study of EU normative power on Thailand’s sustainable fisheries

Publication date: 22 June 2020

Publication: International Economics and Economic Policy

Authors: Ajaree Tavornmas, Kasira Cheeppensook

Abstract:

The European Union (EU) has been championing an agenda for better ocean governance based on a cross-sectoral, rules-based international approach and indicated its role as a strong global actor in this field. The EU, as reflected through its strategies adopted during the last decade (2005–2015), aims to shape international ocean governance on the basis of its experience in developing a sustainable and ethical approach to ocean management, notably through its environment policy and regulatory regime. This paper observes a significant transition of the EU internal policy towards a more externally-oriented one as well as its ambition in exporting the EU norms to third countries. It seems that the EU aims to lead this maritime and fisheries domain as a global actor, diffusing norms via interstate relations. The case study of EU policy towards Thailand fisheries policy, resulting in Thailand’s adopting sustainable fisheries policy in 2015 will be explored in this research paper. In addition, the paper aims to analyse the development and evolution of Thailand’s sustainable fisheries policy during 2015–2019 and to examine the rationales behind Thailand’s shift towards more environmentally and socially friendly fisheries policy. It focuses on how and in what ways Thailand as a third country has been influenced by the EU normative power in the maritime and fisheries domain and in particular, by the EU’s illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) or “IUU Regulation” entered into force since 2010 as one of its main tools to promote ocean governance.

Keywords: Ocean governance, European Union (EU), Normative power, EU illegal, Unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) regulation, Sustainability, Sustainable fisheries, Thailand

See the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power

Publication date: 28 July 2020

Publication: Asia Pacific Viewpoint

Authors: Diana Suhardiman, Carl Middleton

Abstract:

Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non‐state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi‐scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision‐making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmented processes through which decisions have been arrived at, and their implications. In the context of highly asymmetrical power relations throughout the basin, and the absence of an intergovernmental agreement to date, we argue that hybrid networks of state and non‐state actors could be strategically engaged to connect parallel and fragmented decision‐making landscapes with a goal of inclusively institutionalising the transboundary commons and maintaining connected local commons throughout the basin, foregrounding a concern for ecological and social justice.

Keywords: China, large hydropower dams, limited statehood, Myanmar, Thailand, water governance

See the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: How transboundary processes connect commons in Japan and Thailand: A relational analysis of global commodity chains and East Asian economic integration

Publication date: February 2020

Publication: Asia Pacific Viewpoint

Authors: Carl Middleton, Takeshi Ito

Abstract:

In this paper, with a focus on Japan and Thailand, we outline a relational environmental and economic history of East Asian economic integration (EAEI) and its implication for the commons in both places. We draw attention in particular to global commodity chains as relational processes not only of trade and investment, but also geopolitics and aid, to argue that these transborder processes have connected together commons in distant localities resulting in their simultaneous enclosure, dispossession and (re-)commoning with implications for community vulnerabilities in positive and negative ways. To demonstrate this argument we analyse three periods of EAEI: the late nineteenth century until World War II, when Japan and Thailand both began to modernise and new trade and geopolitical relations emerged in the context of colonialism; the post-World War II recovery until the Plaza Accord in 1986, during which time Japan rapidly industrialised, as did Thailand to a lesser extent and regionalism was largely defined by US hegemony; and the post-Plaza Accord period, when Japan deindustrialised its labour intensive manufacture and heavy industry and Thailand rapidly industrialised and EAEI became defined by new and intensified global commodity chains.

Keywords: (re-)commoning, dispossession, enclosure, environment–society relations

See the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Ontological politics of hydrosocial territories in the Salween River basin, Myanmar/Burma

Publication date: April 2020

Publication: Political Geography, Volume 78

Authors: Johanna M. Götz, Carl Middleton

Abstract:

In this paper, we question an often-unchallenged assumption that we all talk about the same ‘thing’ when talking about water. Taking the Salween River in Myanmar as a case study, we draw on a growing body of hydrosocial literature to analyze the multiple ontologies of water. Conceptually, we take each ontology to be constituted of – and enacted within – a human-more-than-human assemblage, the spatiotemporal dimensions of which demarcate a ‘hydrosocial territory.’ We present three illustrations, namely: the role of the Union Government's National Water Resources Committee and how it manifests and is situated within an ontology of ‘modern Water’; a Karen indigenous initiative to establish a Salween Peace Park and an associated revealing of an ‘indigenous’ ontology; and plans for the construction of mainstream hydropower dams and electricity export to neighboring Thailand, where different water ontologies and their hydrosocial territories collide. We examine how multiple ontologies of water are contested through ‘ontological politics’, whereby human actors compete to further their own interests by naturalizing their ontology while marginalizing others. While not downplaying the role violent conflict plays, we argue that in the Salween basin ontological politics are an underappreciated terrain of contestation through which political authority and the power relations that underpin it are (re)produced, with implications for processes of state formation, territorialization and the ongoing peace negotiations.

Key Words: Salween/Thanlwin River, Resource politics, Multiple ontologies of water, Partially-connected worlds

Read the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: Hybrid Governance of Transboundary Commons: Insights from Southeast Asia

Publication date:
July 2019

Publication: Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Authors:
Michelle Ann Miller, Carl Middleton, Jonathan Rigg & David Taylor

Abstract:

This article examines how hybrid environmental governance produces, maintains, and reconfigures common property across transboundary geographies of resource access, use, and ownership. Transboundary commons are a category of environmental goods that traverse jurisdictions and property regimes within as well as between nation-states. They are forged through collaborative partnerships between spatially dispersed state, private-sector, and societal institutions and actors. This article disaggregates these transboundary commoning arrangements into two geographically discrete yet conceptually intertwined categories of governance: mobile commons and in situ commons. We ground our enquiry in Southeast Asia, a resource-rich region where diverse formal and informal practices of resource organization blur the boundaries of environmental governance. Whereas environmental commons are often analyzed in terms of resource rights and entitlements, this article argues that a focus on power relations offers a more productive analytical lens through which to understand the dynamic and networked ways in which transboundary common property is continually being (re)made through processes of hybrid governance in response to changing ecological systems and shifting social realities.

Key Words: ASEAN, common property, cross-border governance, environmental commons, hybrid governance.

Read the article here.

JOURNAL ARTICLE: The Public Regime for Migrant Child Education in Thailand: Alternative Depictions of Policy

Publication date:
September 2018

Publication: Asian Politics & Policy

Authors:
Nongyao Nawarat and Michael Medley

Abstract:
This article analyzes the conceptualization and depiction of Thailand’s public policy on education for the children of migrant workers in the country by examining a cluster of fairly  recent  literature  on  the  subject.  The  studied  texts  broadly  share  the  view  that Thailand’s  policy  of  providing  full  education  to  these  children  is  subject  to  gaps  and patchy  implementation.  An  analytical  review  of  the  literature  on  conceptualizing  this policy shows, however, that this picture is misleading as it tends to reduce policy to an idealized  intention.  Rather,  Thailand  has  a  plurality  of  local  policies  ambiguously governed by a national policy, which in turn does not predominantly aim at education for all. We contend that our improved characterization of the situation helps create more productive openings for research and policy change on this important topic.

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JOURNAL ARTICLE: National Human Rights Institutions, Extraterritorial Obligations and Hydropower in Southeast Asia: Implications of the Region’s Authoritarian Turn

Publication date:
June 2018

Publication: Austrian Journal of Southeast Asia Studies

Authors:
Carl Middleton

Abstract:
This article examines the role of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) and transnational civil society in pursing Extraterritorial Obligation (ETO) cases in Southeast Asia as a means to investigate human rights threatened by cross-border investment projects. Two large hydropower dams under construction in Laos submitted to NHRIs from Thailand and Malaysia, namely the Xayaburi Dam and Don Sahong Dam, are detailed as case studies. The article argues that the emergence of ETOs in Southeast Asia, and its future potential, is dependent upon the collaborative relationship between the NHRIs and transnational civil society networks. Whilst NHRIs are in positions of political authority to investigate cases, civil society also enable cases through networking, research, and public advocacy. Further institutionalization of ETOs is significant to emerging regional and global agendas on business and human rights, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that both the Thai and Malaysian governments have expressed commitment to. However, in Thailand and its neighboring countries where investments are located there has been an authoritarian turn. Reflecting this, there are weakening mandates of NHRIs and reduced civil and political freedoms upon which civil society depends that challenges the ability to investigate and pursue cases.

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JOURNAL ARTICLE: Regional Clustering of Chemicals and Waste Multilateral Environmental Agreements to Improve Enforcement

Publication date: August 2017

Publication: International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics

Author: Ning Liu, Carl Middleton

For further details of the article, visit Springer.

Abstract:

Illegal trade in chemicals and waste has brought severe negative impacts to human health and the environment. Fragmentation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) has challenged implementation due to disconnects and inconsistencies between regimes that causes inefficiencies, overlapping norms, and duplication. Since the late 1990s, there have been proposals to cluster MEAs organizationally and functionally to create synergies between them. This paper evaluates whether the proposition on clustering of MEAs has worked in practice through an empirical case study of the “MEA Regional Enforcement Network (REN)”. MEA REN sought to cluster at the organizational and functional elements of the Basel Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, the Stockholm Convention, and the Montreal Protocol in South and Southeast Asia. Regarding organizational clustering, through co-organizing regional network meetings cross-MEA learning was enhanced and costs were saved, but co-locating regional offices proved more challenging. For the clustering of functional elements, MEA enforcement was ultimately strengthened through several joint initiatives across MEAs. However, not all functions could be clustered as anticipated, including data reporting due to incompatibility between the conventions and overall workloads. The paper concludes with recommendations for future environmental enforcement.