BOOK: Knowing the Salween River: Resource Politics of a Contested Transboundary River

Title:
Knowing the Salween River: Resource Politics of a Contested Transboundary River

Editors:
Carl Middleton and Vanessa Lamb

Year:
2019

Further details about the book are available here.

This open access book focuses on the Salween River, shared by China, Myanmar, and Thailand, that is increasingly at the heart of pressing regional development debates. The basin supports the livelihoods of over 10 million people, and within it there is great socio-economic, cultural and political diversity. The basin is witnessing intensifying dynamics of resource extraction, alongside large dam construction, conservation and development intervention, that is unfolding within a complex terrain of local, national and transnational governance. With a focus on the contested politics of water and associated resources in the Salween basin, this book offers a collection of empirical case studies that highlights local knowledge and perspectives. Given the paucity of grounded social science studies in this contested basin, this book provides conceptual insights at the intersection of resource governance, development, and politics of knowledge relevant to researchers, policy-makers and practitioners at a time when rapid change is underway.

For more information about our project Salween Water Governance, please visit here.

POLICY BRIEF: Shaping the Future of Mekong Regional Architecture: Reinforcing Transboundary Water Governance Through Reciprocity

Publication date:
June 2019

Publication: 
Shaping the Future of Mekong Regional Architecture: Reinforcing Transboundary Water Governance Through Reciprocity

Download the policy brief here.

This policy brief is produced for track 1.5 Mekong Policy Dialogue on evolving sub-regional architecture and the role of Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS), co-organized by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - Australia (DFAT), The Asia Foundation (TAF), and Center for Social Development Studies (CSDS) . For more information more resources from the dialogue, please visit this link here.

Authors: 
Carl Middleton, David J. Devlaeminck, and Anisa Widyasari

Key Findings

• There is deepening cooperation between the Mekong River Commission (MRC) and Lancang Mekong Cooperation (LMC). The joint activities to date can be understood as examples of specific reciprocity, namely specific exchanges of more-or-less equal value with clearly defined obligations, and have helped build trust.

• To further collaboration, regional governments will need to gradually move from specific reciprocity to diffuse reciprocity. Here, cooperation is not between specific actors alone (i.e. the MRC and LMC), but reflects a broader cooperation between wider groups of actors and beyond river-based considerations.

• To date, the MRC has directed more attention to the benefits to the river, including wild capture fisheries and other ecosystem services, whilst the LMC has emphasized more regional economic planning and projects. By working together, the river might be better protected, whilst simultaneously yielding sustainable generation of economic benefits.

• Some potential directions for furthering collaboration include: a joint, systematic baseline assessment of the current ecological and socio-economic status of the Lancang-Mekong River and key drivers of change; a joint study on the existing legal rules, customary principles, and pledges maintained by each organization to identify points of commonality and difference; and a collaborative analysis to define reciprocity as a concept, and how it can be operationalized through relevant rules and regulations working towards a rulesbased approach.

• The concept of reciprocity encompasses not just inter-state cooperation but also the interests and activities of non-state stakeholders, such as riverside communities. The MRC and LMC could consider co-organizing multi-stakeholder dialogues to generate a more complete picture of the Lancang-Mekong River and its diverse economic, social and cultural values.

BOOK CHAPTER: Knowledge coproduction for recovering wetlands, agro-ecological farming, and livelihoods in the Mekong Region

Publication date:
August 2019

Publication:
Knowledge Co-production for Recovering Wetlands, Agro-ecological Farming and Livelihoods in the Mekong Region

Author:
Carl Middleton, Kanokwan Manorom, Nguyen Van Kien, Outhai Soukkhy and Albert Salamanca

Editors:
Chayanis Krittasudthacheewa, Hap Navy, Bui Duc Tinh, and Saykham Voladet

For further details on the book please visit the book's website here.

You can access the chapter here.

The Mekong Region contains extensive wetlands of high levels of biodiversity that have long provided a wide range of ecosystem services that are equally important to human well-being. In many cases, these wetlands have long been important for agro-ecological production, including rice and vegetable farming, livestock raising, fishing and aquaculture, and the collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), thus supporting local livelihoods and economies.

Unfortunately, many wetlands in the Mekong Region have been degraded or even lost, largely due to agricultural intensification, large-scale water infrastructure development, and land use changes associated with urbanization The extensive loss of wetlands is a threat to sustainable economic development through the loss of core ecosystem services that they provide. It also threatens the enjoyment of a range of human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and culture. When traditional wetlands agro-ecological practices are lost, so too are the local knowledge and culture associated with them.

Addressing complex problems such as the loss of wetlands requires gathering and activating a range of different types of knowledge, including scientific (expert), local, practical, and political. In this chapter, we present three case studies of knowledge coproduction research in Thailand, Vietnam and Laos aimed at the more inclusive ecological governance of wetlands degraded by largescale water infrastructure and the recovery of associated agro-ecological systems and livelihoods. We consider knowledge coproduction to be the dynamic interaction of multiple actors, each with their own types of knowledge, who coproduce new usable knowledge specific to their environmental, sociopolitical and cultural context and that can influence decision-making and actions on the ground. We argue that the knowledge coproduction approach enables research to move beyond weak forms of “participation” and towards social learning that builds trust, partnership and ownership among actors, and can generate innovative solutions for wetland and livelihood recovery.

Please contact Dr. Carl Middleton for more information.

Citation: Middleton, C., Manorom, K., Nguyen, V.K., Soukkhy, O. and Salamanca, A. (2019) “Knowledge Co-production for Recovering Wetlands, Agro-ecological Farming and Livelihoods in the Mekong Region” (pp 9-34) in Krittasudthacheewa, C., Navy, H., Tinh, B.C. and Voladet, S. (eds). Development and Climate Change in the Mekong Region. SIRD/Gerakbudaya, Malaysia

OPINION: Mekong Drought Reveals Need for Regional Rules-based Water Cooperation

by Carl Middleton

Photo Credit: The Network of Thai People in Eight Mekong Provinces

The severe drought currently faced by farmers and fishers in the Mekong basin is a disaster that reveals many things. It reveals the extent to which large dams now increasingly control river water levels. It reveals too the limits to cooperation between the countries sharing precious water in times of scarcity. And, it reveals the likelihood of an increasingly uncertain future under the conditions of climate change. What must be done in the short and long term?

It is – in theory – now almost the middle of the rainy season. Usually at this time the Mekong River is beginning to swell with the rain waters of the Southwest monsoon. Yet, this year water levels are as if it were a drought in the dry season. This has seriously affected farmers, with their planted rice and other crops withering in parched soil. It has also impacted fishers dependent on the river’s ecology.

In mid-July, the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC) stated that the river’s water levels are among the lowest on record for June and July. They explain that there has been a shortage of rainfall across the basin since January. The MRC also highlight that dam operation on the upper Mekong River in China, where it is known as the Lancang River, could have an impact. China sent a notification to the MRC indicating that between 5 to 19 July the water released from the lower of its eleven large dams, called Jinghong, would “fluctuate” due to “grid maintenance.”

Photo Credit: The Network of Thai People in Eight Mekong Provinces

This has had a two-fold impact. First, it withheld water at a time when downstream countries would have most benefited from more water being released. Second, sending unnatural pulses of water down the river harms river ecology and livelihoods dependent upon it, including riverbank gardens, river weed collection, and fishing, although this has in fact occurred since the late 1990s.

Alongside China’s dams, civil society groups have questioned the role of the Xayaburi dam in Northern Laos, which is scheduled to be commissioned in October this year. Since mid-July, the project had been testing its turbines, causing river fluctuations downstream. The company has denied that they have played a role in the drought, and ironically have even lamented that they were also affected by the withholding of water by China. However, Thailand’s Office of National Water Resources sent a letter to the Government of Laos requesting the testing be temporarily halted.

Less attention has been paid to the possible role of tributary hydropower dams, in particular in Laos that is progressively fulfilling its government’s vision to become the ‘battery of Southeast Asia.’ Over sixty medium and large-scale dams have been built to date. The question here is whether these tributary projects have also been withholding water to replenish their reservoirs to sell electricity. As with all of the hydropower dams in the Lancang-Mekong basin, little real-time data is in the public domain about reservoir water levels.

What are the lessons learned and what is to be done? Most immediately, support needs to be provided to rural communities both to distribute water to the extent that it is available and provide other means of support including, where necessary, financial support. Once the rains do arrive, as is anticipated any day now, hydropower project operators should resist the temptation to immediately begin replenishing their reservoirs for power generation. Rather, the priority should be with distributing water to farmers and recovering the river’s ecology for fishers and wildlife.

In the longer term, if it is true that there is little water in hydropower dam reservoirs, this also reveals the fallacy of depending too much on such infrastructure-led solutions towards managing drought. Rather, it indicates that other forms of preparedness will be necessary including better predictive capacity for droughts before they occur, and well-resourced plans once they do occur at the local, national and transboundary level. It should also include rethinking water storage to consider more groundwater and small-scale solutions, rather than focusing only on large dams.

Photo Credit: The Network of Thai People in Eight Mekong Provinces

Given that the Mekong River is shared between six countries, it is clear that even deeper inter-governmental cooperation is needed. Since the last severe drought in 2016, much has been said about the new regional cooperation under the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) between China and downstream countries, including how it should cooperate with the MRC. In March 2016, shortly before the region’s leaders committed to the LMC, China released water from the Lancang dams as a show of goodwill in an effort to alleviate the severe drought at that time, although unfortunately the water releases caught some downstream communities unaware.

Building on the collaboration between the MRC and LMC, rather than depend upon informal arrangements for sharing water between China and downstream countries, it would be better to move towards a clearer rules-based approach. The scope of cooperation, some of which has already started, should include: more comprehensive data sharing between governments and with the public; collaborative research; clear rules and procedures on emergency water release; hydropower cascade operation that mimics, to the extent possible, the natural river flow; and improved procedures for genuine public participation, especially for riverside communities.

In the face of worsening climate change, and recognizing that it is often the most vulnerable who face the greatest risk during times of drought, these short and long-term solutions are needed now more than ever.

For the article published in Thai, please visit this link.

Carl Middleton is Director of the Center of Excellence in Resource Politics for Social Development at the Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. He can be contacted at Carl.Chulalongkorn@gmail.com.

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.

BOOK: The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice

Title:
The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice

Authors:
Jeremy Allouche, Carl Middleton, Dipak Gyawali

Year:
2019

Further details about the book are available here.

Open access copy of Chapter 4 of the book can be accessed here: “The Knowledge Nexus and Transdisciplinarity” 

The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of "the nexus" between water, food, and energy which is intuitively compelling. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts. One current approach to the nexus treats it as a risk and security matter while another treats it within economic rationality addressing externalities across sector. A third perspective acknowledges it as a fundamentally political process requiring negotiation amongst different actors with distinct perceptions, interests, and practices. This perspective highlights the fact that technical solutions for improving coherence within the nexus may have unintended and negative impacts in other policy areas, such as poverty alleviation and education. 　

The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice lays out the managerial-technical definitions of the nexus and challenges these conceptions by bringing to the forefront the politics of the nexus, around two key dimensions – a dynamic understanding of water–food–energy systems, and a normative positioning around nexus debates, in particular around social justice. The authors argue that a shift in nexus governance is required towards approaches where limits to control are acknowledged, and more reflexive/plural strategies adopted.

This book will be of interest to academic researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the fields of international development studies, environmental politics, and science and technology studies, as well as international relations.

Citation: Allouche, J., Middleton C. and Gyawali, D. (2019). The Water-Food-Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice. Routledge-Earthscan: London and New York

REPORT: The Environment - Contested Knowledge of the Commons in Southeast Asia (CRISEA Working Paper 1)

Publication date:
March 2019

Publication:
The Environment - Contested Knowledge of the Commons in Southeast Asia (CRISEA Working Paper 1)

Authors:
Tomasz Kamiński, Monika Arnez, Carl Middleton, Sally Beckenham, Robert A. Farnan, David Chu, Edyta Roszko, Amnuayvit Thitibordin, Andrea Valente, Michał Zaręba

Download the report here.

Environmental questions are at the heart of many development dilemmas in Southeast Asia. New actors and technologies, changing domestic politics, policies, and economies - as well as shifting geopolitical contexts, are remaking nature-society relations in the region. A failure to address transnational environmental challenges could not only undermine ASEAN’s legitimacy but also have drastic consequences for the region’s security and its political and economic stability.

In addressing these questions in this Working Paper, we are particularly concerned with contested knowledges of “the commons” and competition over resources. We consider the environment as a driver of processes of regional integration, but also of conflicts between various actors in the region. Our research focuses on three environmental contexts namely: sea; rivers; and air. In addressing all three our emphasis is on the transition to a low-carbon economy. Grounded in a multidisciplinary approach, our research shares a common conceptual framework, centred on the co-production of ecological knowledge and ecological governance.

Drawing on the work of Sheila Jasanoff (2004), Shubhra Gururani and Peter Vandergeest (2014), amongst others, we consider the production, circulation, acquisition and assimilation of ecological knowledge at, and across the local, national and global levels and its relationship to ecological governance. Based on macro and micro case studies, we relate this dynamic process of co-production to other concepts, including reterritorialization; feminist political ecology, hydropolitics, and paradiplomacy (international relations conducted by subnational governments on their own). The aim of this paper is to present the theoretical framework of our work as well as the three main strands of our research. In the first section, we explain our understanding of the concept of ecological knowledge. This is followed by a presentation of our methodological approaches, while the last section presents the individual research projects in the WP, arranged in three modules.

Please contact Dr. Carl Middleton for more information.

Citation: Kamiński, T., Arnez, M., Middleton, C., Beckenham, S., Farnan, R.A., Chu, D., Roszko, E., Thitibordin, A., Valente, A., and Zaręba, M. (2019) The Environment - Contested Knowledge of the Commons in Southeast Asia (CRISEA Working Paper 1). Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia (CRISEA) Working Paper No. 1 (March 2019).

This report is part of our project The Contested Meanings of the Mekong River in Northern Thailand. You can visit the project page here.

OPINION: What does Chinese ‘reciprocity’ mean for Mekong’s dams?

by Carl Middleton

The Lancang Mekong supports 70 million people living in the basin（Photo: He Daming)

It is now two and a half years since the first Lancang Mekong Cooperation (LMC) leaders’ summit was held in Sanya city on Hainan Island, China. The aim of the LMC – a China led multilateral body involving all six Mekong countries – is to deepen economic, cultural and political ties between China and mainland Southeast Asia. Leaders have repeatedly declared the importance of the Lancang-Mekong River to this cooperation. Reflecting this, on 1-2 November, the LMC will host the “1st Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Forum” in Kunming, China.

The LMC’s second leaders’ summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in January 2018 revealed the swift pace of the initiative. This is reflected in the numerous senior-level meetings between governments, the initiation of almost 200 China-funded projects, and the LMC’s deepening institutionalisation through various LMC secretariats and working groups. Yet, while China has hosted people-to-people exchange programs and university scholarships, the LMC’s state-centric approach has afforded little opportunity for public deliberation about its overall policy principles and direction.

Through the LMC, some government officials and scholars from China have proposed that downstream and upstream countries have both rights and responsibilities towards each other. This concept of ‘reciprocity’ is not yet official LMC policy, but suggests a shift in government position compared to China’s earlier unilateral construction of dams on the Lancang River. Overall, the LMC and its proposition of ‘reciprocity’ appears to be an invitation to negotiate basin-wide water cooperation on the Lancang-Mekong River.

Much, however, remains uncertain. For example, how will the LMC build upon the existing inter-governmental Mekong River Commission, established in 1995 by the four lower basin countries? How will the LMC address concerns of riverside communities and civil society and ensure their meaningful inclusion? And how will countries ensure the river’s ecological health given the strong push for economic growth and associated water infrastructure projects? This article asks whether the LMC and the concept of ‘reciprocity’ is a promising approach to meet these challenges.

For the full article, please click here.

POLICY BRIEF: Reciprocal Transboundary Cooperation on the Lancang-Mekong River: Towards an Inclusive and Ecological Relationship

Publication date:
November 2018

Publication: 
Reciprocal Transboundary Cooperation on the Lancang-Mekong River: Towards an Inclusive and Ecological Relationship

Download the policy brief here.

Visit the Water governance and knowledge production on the Lancang-Mekong River project page here.

Author: 
Carl Middleton
 

Summary
It is now two and a half years since the first Lancang Mekong Cooperation (LMC) leaders’ summit was held in Sanya city in Yunnan Province, China. During this period, the LMC has become increasingly institutionalized. The overarching ambition of the LMC is to deepen economic, cultural and political ties between China and mainland Southeast Asia. This policy brief assesses emerging principles for transboundary water cooperation under the LMC, in particular the concept of reciprocity that expands upon the UN Water Courses Convention. It also assesses the role of the LMC vis-a-vis the Mekong River Commission in transboundary water governance. The analysis concludes that as the LMC becomes a more consolidated institution, a genuine and equal partnership for the Lancang-Mekong River cooperation is needed that could build upon principles of “inclusive reciprocity” between state and non-state actors, and “ecological reciprocity” that recognizes the need for an ecologically healthy Lancang-Mekong River.

Mekong River at Chiang Khong, Northern Thailand (Credit: Carl Middleton)

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.

Read the article here.

BOOK CHAPTER: Branding Dams: Nam Theun 2 and its Role in Producing the Discourse of “Sustainable Hydropower”

Publication date:
June 2018

Publication:
Dead in the Water: Global Lessons from the World Bank's Model Hydropower Project in Laos

Author:
Carl Middleton

Editors: Bruce Shoemaker and William Robichaud

For further details on the book please visit the book's website here.

In the 1990s, the global hydropower industry – in particular the industry of Northern countries – was facing a growing crisis of legitimacy. Opponents of large dams grew in numbers and became increasingly vocal, claiming that development benefits were exaggerated. This cumulated in the publication of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) report in 2000, which affirmed many of the opponents’ criticisms.   In this context, the World Bank, seeking a means to once again finance large hydropower, put forward the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) hydropower project as a new, best-practice approach.  Meanwhile, the International Hydropower Association (IHA) sought to counter the WCD with its own sustainability guidelines in 2004 and subsequently a Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP) launched in 2011. From this significant and combined effort of large am proponents emerged the policy discourse of “sustainable hydropower,” the purpose of which was to re-legitimize the industry.

This chapter deconstructs how NT2 has been discursively produced as a “brand” and woven in to the “sustainable hydropower” discourse. The chapter argues that in public the World Bank and the hydropower industry have regularly drawn on the NT2 as a model to legitimize their claim that “sustainable hydropower” can exist. Needless to say, this claim is fiercely disputed. Indeed, behind closed doors amongst the project’s proponents and in specialist hydropower industry conferences, more provisos and nuances are considered that bracket the public claims of success. The chapter also addresses how NT2 has been represented in regional and global debates on “sustainable hydropower,” for example in relation to the Hydropower Sustainabilty Assessment Protocol led by the International Hydropower Association. 

Please contact Dr. Carl Middleton for more information.

Citation: Middleton, C. (2018) "Chapter 13: Branding Dams: Nam Theun 2 and its Role in Producing the Discourse of 'Sustainable Hydropower'" (pp 271-292) in Shoemaker, B. and Robichaud, W. (eds.) Dead in the Water: Global Lessons from the World Bank's Model Hydropower Project in Laos. University of Wisconsin Press: Madison.