Resettlement of villages on the Nakai Plateau for the Nam Theun 2 project has prompted much debate in Laos and more widely. Among other important issues, are questions about the “new” livelihoods the project envisaged for villagers and villagers’ perspectives on the changes they will experience. I was in Nakai very briefly this month and was able to re-visit people who I had stayed with three years ago, but this time in the resettled village where they moved in April this year.
Image 1: Recently resettled village on the Nakai Plateau
Image 2: Reservoir at the old village site.
In early 2005, just before the World Bank’s appraisal of the project, villagers expressed both strong desires for and concerns about Nam Theun 2 and the changes they were told it would bring (I have a forthcoming paper on this topic). Now as then, people’s views are mixed. As one young woman said of the new village, “some people like it, some people don’t.” Another explained that the new village “doesn’t have nature [thammasaat] like the old village but it is convenient”, noting especially the water tanks for each house during the wet season and wells for the dry season. Most striking, however, is how a sense of uncertainty appears to have become much more pronounced since the project moved from a possibility to an actuality.
Across the village, material possessions and amenities have markedly increased and provide immediate visual signs of “prosperity” that were lacking in the old village. This is not only with the large wooden houses, toilets, water tanks, power lines, electricity (2 hours per day) and fibreglass boats (1 per 2 households) provided directly by the project but also with televisions, small generators, satellite dishes, motorbikes, mobile phones and other household goods villagers’ themselves have acquired.
But the apparent increase in economic wealth is also associated with increased insecurity, which features both between and within households. For instance, deposits into the village bank for the last month varied hugely between households (from 5,000 Kip to 6,000,000 Kip per household). Likewise, a young mother repeatedly noted her “worry” (ut cay) about her children’s future. She explained that there are good jobs in Nakai, but these require education, money and connections, all of which are scarce commodities in the village. As another middle-aged woman explained, “if you had money in the old village then living in the new village is good, but if you didn’t have money then it is difficult.”
A sense of insecurity is very evident when villagers talk about the changes to two important components of their livelihoods – agriculture and natural resources. Regarding agriculture, villagers are especially concerned by the limited land available for grazing livestock and planting rice. For instance, villagers take large livestock to various grazing spots outside the new village, including the site of the old village, but point to protruding ribs and say how such skinny animals can only get a low price.
Image 3: Livestock grazing at the old village site
Image 4: But even at grazing sites outside the new village, livestock are “too skinny”.
Perhaps most visibly to the brief visitor, the newly built but completely unused village market attests to the persistent “marketing problem” that has challenged plans for vegetable production as a viable income-generating activity for resettled villages on the plateau. Villagers say that the Nam Theun 2 project previously told them they would grow vegetables to sell but now tells them the soils are too poor and, in any case, villagers themselves see the village market as having limited value when “there are no buyers.”
The second aspect of local livelihoods that is in flux is the use of natural resources. Fish are currently abundant in the reservoir but their low price in the district market limits their utility for villagers as a source of income. In contrast, forest resources are of continuing or increasing value but in diminishing availability. Villagers describe how areas near the old village that were abundant in bamboo shoots, rattan shoots, mushrooms and other forest products have now been flooded while the limited forest areas near the new village were quickly denuded in a quest for cash income after the village moved.
Image 5: Rice gardens with denuded forest in the background.
Plans for Nam Theun 2 envisaged livelihoods moving away from subsistence use of forest resources as they became integrated with the cash economy. While the latter is being achieved, the former is not as income earning opportunities (eg. Village Forestry Association) are limited and only accessible to those with “connections”. Thus, villagers have returned to collecting damar resin (kisii), which was banned in the lead-up to the official commencement of Nam Theun 2, travelling across the reservoir to the Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area (NPA) where it is more abundant. The construction of a small Berberine vine (khua haem) factory at the site of the old village site – funded by outside entrepreneurs and also next to the reservoir with easy boat access to the NPA – is another sign of the inter-twining of villagers’ livelihoods, natural resources and commerce.
Image 6: Berberine factory being built and reservoir in background.
Integration with the market economy provides new opportunities that appear to fit nicely with projects like Nam Theun 2 and national programs for development, but there are also significant challenges for making sure these mesh with the nominally congruent aims of poverty alleviation, social equity and sustainability. Despite the considerable effort put into planning for Nam Theun 2 (relative to other hydropower projects in Laos), gaps only become fully recognised at the time of implementation. What requires appreciation then, is that it is villagers who experience the effects of change, who are directly affected by oversights in preparation and who must live through the risks and uncertainties of resettlement.
Image 7: Villagers are the ones who must live through the uncertainties of resettlement.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Bounme Kambang // Oct 26, 2008 at 12:53 pm
What is it specifically about the market economy that creates uncertainty? Is it ‘marginal access’ to this economy or is it something about the relationships produced by this economy more generally that produces the experience of ‘uncertainty’? Is this uncertainty something that prevents people from gaining mastery over the material relationships that sustain their lives? Is it just the same feeling of uncertainty that we all have, the residue of the transition to a flexible modernity? Was the former subsistence lifestyle of these villages characterised by certainty of livelihood? What is the alternative model to current practices of project-related resettlement? Would a model emphasising sustainable subsistence work better than one emphasising market integration? Is there really a way to give villagers more control over their lives when the whole point of these projects is to remove them from the resources that formerly allowed such control?
2 Sarinda // Oct 28, 2008 at 11:00 am
Thankyou Bounme for your great questions, which I wish I could answer! I do not think that there is any clear, consistent relationship between the market economy and uncertainty. And I am certainly not proposing that subsistence-oriented livelihoods are intrinsically ‘better’ than the alternatives. Perhaps more important is the extent of the shift in livelihoods, rather than where exactly livelihoods are shifting from or to. Also, I realised after writing this piece that what bugged me was how uncertainty was not a common theme of official discourses about NT2 during planning – the necessities of marketing a large project to diverse audiences means that uncertainty is often downplayed. So an improvement would be to make sure that the inevitable uncertainties of resettlement are clearly communicated to all involved. This will not address your final question by ensuring villagers’ control over their lives, but it may at least provide a more balanced perspective of the positive and negative changes that large development projects can bring.
3 Nanda Gasparini // Oct 30, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Dear Sarinda, as posted in an email commentary on Lao Fab, please find below.
Dear Sarinda,
Thanks so much for your very interesting post. I agree with much of what you point to, particularly the challenges in implementing these kind of big rural development initiatives and what it means for people. Like you, my colleagues and I have seen the new-found wealth in some households in Nakai, particularly the numerous motorbike and satellite dishes which no doubt point to increasing income in some households and the benefits of electricity and having good roads. And like you we are concerned about those who are not doing as well — particularly those vulnerable households made up of, say, a widow with young children, whose opportunities may not be the same as her neighbors. These are all challenging issues, and I know my colleagues and I are dealing with them on a daily basis.
From the World Bank side, we are very closely monitoring this situation — both the incomes on a household basis, the income generating opportunities for people, the establishment of the market you referred to, the amount of grazing land for the livestock, etc. While solid plans are there, like you point out, the reality is that when dealing with people’s lives you have to adapt to circumstances and plans will change and need to be adapted to — “Adaptive Management”, as known in ‘development jargon’. This in fact was one of the main principles in the concession agreement, but the challenge is always to make this work in practice. We’re keeping a close eye on the situation, and working with NTPC and the Lao Government to make the changes needed so that the resettled people are better off and double their incomes in the medium-term as set in the concession agreement’s income targets.
If you’re still around in Vientiane, or next time you visit, please let us know. It would be interesting and useful for us to hear the feedback from your trips.
Best,
Nanda
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