Glancing at a map highlighting the proposed dams in the Mekong Basin, especially in Laos, casts doubt on the assertion that hydropower is being driven by energy demand and that environmental and social concerns are a priority for local governments and industry.
In a new article entitled Water grabbing in the Mekong basin – An analysis of the winners and losers of Thailand’s hydropower development in Lao PDR’ Nathanial Matthews argues that powerful actors from the Thai and Laos’ government and private sector are controlling the benefits of hydropower expansion in the Mekong Basin, while the environment and local communities are negatively impacted. Framing hydropower under water grabbing helps to illuminate the drivers and enablers of the Basin’s current hydropower boom and provides an alternative explanation to the regional rhetoric that these dams will help Thailand, Laos and the region.
Thanks for highlighting this.
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Indeed, thanks very much, for a readily available discussion of the situation on the Mekong an its tributaries.
As regards demand for power … there’s an excellent Proposed Power Development Plan (PDP) 2012 by Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen and Chris Greacen that I reformatted for my personal ease in reading, you can click straight throught the originals in Thai and English.
I remember seeing and hearing Benedict Anderson referring in one of the recent youtubes on Thai politics to the “mob of Chula engineers” who run the EGAT. I’d be interested in learning more about that branch of the Thai mob, if anyone has more information.
The Bangkok Post had a (wire service!) story, a local story was posted two weeks ago at the Phnom Penh Post, about Living River Siam’s lawsuit filed against the Gang of Five : EGAT, Siam Commercial Bank (the King’s Bank), Krung Thai Bank (Thai state owned and operated), Bangkok Bank, and Kasikorn Bank who are the financial drive wheels behind Ch.Karnchang and their united attempt to kill Mae Khong.
Thanks to Teerapong Pomun and Living River Siam
Thanks again for the link.
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I think Matthews is totally wrong on this. First of all, these maps show indicative planning – the lists of all possible dam sites, most of which were identified in the 60s, and many of which are mutually exclusive.
More importantly, watergrabbing is a faulty concept. There is no comprehensive attempt to assert ownership over water resources in the Mekong Basin, even if there are struggles over who gets to use certain resources for different purposes. In fact, there is no debate over water ownership in Laos.
Just as important (and a correlative), there is no legal attempt to hold hydro operators responsible for damage caused by power station outflows. Authority over a resource implies responsibility for damages, no? Consider water buffalos. yet for hydro it’s simply not a legal issue.
The term water grabbing is faulty at base because it just tries to apply a concept from land-based legal regimes, with all the assumptions about territorial & legal sovereignty, to hydraulic contexts.
Time to start over.
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Dr. Whitington, is your PhD available for public download? I found a link to it but it was broken.
Regards,
Paul
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Hi Paul,
I believe it’s available through Proquest. However, I can recommend this peer reviewed paper as a clearer & more concise statement of its primary arguments: http://www.academia.edu/1376585/Institutional_Condition_of_Contested_Hydropower_The_Theun_Hinboun_-_International_Rivers_Collaboration_Whitington_
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Greetings,
I think Jerome makes some good points. I would add that evidence from the last 20 years clearly indicates that not every or even most of the planned dams mentioned in planning documents, and included on maps, are likely to be built, at least in the near or foreseeable future. However, even with this being the case, it is still true that hydropower development is taking place at a rapid pace, and that the interests of some are dominating those of others. Thus, taking a political ecology approach to looking at hydropower development in the Mekong Region does generally make sense. However, that means considering both the political economy and the ecology. Matthews should have paid more attention to the latter.
The concept of global land grabbing has become popular in recent years, but recently, despite the recognition that land displacement remains a very important issue, it is also being increasingly recognized that those who have used the term have sometimes failed to sufficiently acknowledge all the factors associated with land alienation problems. For example, the global land grabbing meta-narrative has tended to put all the blame on global capital and foreign governments for land alienation problems. While they have certainly played an important role, it is also true that other more localized forms of capital and elite capture also deserve greater attention. Land grabbing is not playing out in the same ways everywhere. So, there are not only problems with the concept of water grabbing, but we should also be concerned with the concept of global land grabbing as well.
Still, I see some value in Matthews’ article. Part of the analysis makes sense. However, the material nature of river water should have been considered and analyzed in more detail. Water is not the same as land; it flows and can be used again downstream. So, how does the materiality of water affect resource use and tenure, as compared to land? I asked this same question last year during the book launch for ‘Powers of Exclusion’ at the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting in New York. Matthews could have usefully done the same.
It is true, as Jerome has pointed out, that the question of water ownership is not really part of the debate in the Mekong Region, at least not yet. However, the question of whose interests should receive priority is a hot topic. So, if we were to think of water grabbing in relation to hydropower development in terms of priorities for usage in relation to environmental services, etc., then the argument would make more sense. Although the theoretical work required to do that was not done by Matthews, if it had been done, his paper could have been quite interesting. As it stands, however, its potential has not been fully realized.
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