£876.65? The highlands meet high fashion?  Any takers?

The advertisement sets out all of the details:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks candidates for an assistant professor (tenure-track) position with a specialization in Hmong studies or related highland societies in Southeast Asia and/or adjacent regions. Appointment to begin August 2010. Ph.D. required. Previous teaching experience at the college/university level desirable but not required. Duties include teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level, conduct scholarly research in area of expertise, and perform university and professional service as appropriate. The successful candidate will be expected to do collaborative work in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and participate in program activities. The tenure home for the appointment will reside in a department appropriate to the candidate’s discipline, i.e., social sciences or arts and humanities. To ensure full consideration, applications must be received by December 1, 2009. Applications and three letters of reference, in PDF format, should be sent via email to Dr. Michael Cullinane at mmcullin@wisc.edu and Professor Kris Olds at kolds@wisc.edu. For additional information, see http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/pvl/pv_062881.html and http://hmongstudiesmadison.wordpress.com/. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an equal opportunity employer and encourages women and minorities to apply. A criminal background check may be required prior to employment.

To my mind some of the most compelling research conducted recently on food security and rural poverty in rural Laos, comes from Jutta Krahn’s research and the World Food Program’s 2007 study… The main conclusions from the WFP work are worth consideration.

The research suggests that the current model of promoting foreign direct investment into resource megaprojects in Laos, has not, to date, resulted in a broad-based improvement in food security or nutrition in the countryside.

It seems to me that instead of demanding more details on the options and alternatives to hydropower megaprojects (there are many good options and local initiatives), the onus should rather be upon the proponents of hydropower megaprojects, to provide legally enforceable guarantees, based on detailed, nationally and independently reviewed plans, studies, impact assessments, and baseline research, that their projects— which will inevitably undermine wild fishery stocks— will yet produce overall improvements in local nutrition, food security, incomes, and development options for immediately affected communities, while also providing solutions to the broader problems with child malnourishment and underdevelopment in rural and upland areas.

Given the track record in Laos and the Mekong region, with uncompensated and unmitigated socio-ecological externalities from large-scale hydropower development, including Nam Theun II, I would argue that the weight of existing evidence still favours the hydropower skeptics.

These are important points. Food security is, unquestionably, a high priority and threats to food security need to be taken very seriously in assessing the social and environmental impacts of projects. Here is a very short extract from the long and exceptionally detailed World Food Programme report that Keith refers to:

Although no single indicator can easily identify the food insecure, food insecure households can be described as farmers with low engagement in fishing and hunting or unskilled labourers. They practise upland farming on small plots of land in fragile areas with steep slopes. Often, they do not possess kitchen gardens. They are mostly asset poor, low-formally educated, illiterate and from non-Lao-Tai ethnic groups. They live in villages with little or no key infrastructure, and suffer from bad sanitary conditions. (page 94)

To me, this suggests that while food insecurity can certainly be compounded by inappropriate projects or programmes, its fundamental cause lies is unproductive agriculture in highly resource constrained environments (of course, resource constraints can be socially created as much as they are demographically driven).

This reminded me of a graph often referred to by one of my colleagues when I was involved in AusAID’s review of the Nam Theun 2 dam (click the graph for a larger version).

The graph plots GDP per-capita against the percentage of GDP derived from agriculture. The pattern is stark: the poorest countries (in terms of GDP per-capita) are those that derive higher proportions of their GDP from agricultural activity. Note the position of Laos. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that pattern was repeated within Laos, with poverty and food insecurity most marked in provinces where the local economy is most dependent on agricultural production.

A standard development position would be that poverty and food insecurity is best addressed by facilitating the movement of people and resources out of low productivity agricultural pursuits and into other forms of economic activity. Laos is moving in this direction – according to the World Bank the percentage of GDP derived from agriculture was 61 percent in 1990 and 42 percent in 2007. Over a similar period the rate of poverty is reported to have declined from 45 percent to 33 percent.

So, for me, the key big picture question is this: does large-scale infrastructure investment facilitate this transition in a way that fairly balances positive and negative impacts? Is Keith right to argue that “the weight of existing evidence still favours the hydropower skeptics”?

It’s hard not sympathise with a campaign like this, and there is certainly a strong need for greatly improved social and environmental management of major infrastructure development in Laos. I encourage New Mandala readers who want to add their name to contact Ian.

But I am a little uncomfortable about a couple of things. First, the “independent scientific paper” referred to in the letter appears to be a self-published report by Ian himself. Given the rather technical nature of the fisheries issues involved, a peer reviewed paper would add much more strength to the campaign.

Second, the letter concludes by calling for approaches that would “prioritize alternative options for meeting Laos’ development needs, options that would in fact increase people’s food security and decrease poverty.” I would like to see a little more detail on what those options might be.

[UPDATE 21 August 2009. See the comments below. This is a draft text. Ian Baird has advised NM that the final signed text will be released on 26 August.]

[UPDATE 2 27 August 2009. Here is a copy of the final signed letter.]

OPEN LETTER To Interested Persons:

We the undersigned scientists, fisheries specialists, nutritionists and development workers, are writing to express our concern about plans to construct the Don Sahong Dam across the Hou Sahong channel in the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos. We believe the project will have grave consequences for regional fisheries and the food security and livelihood of millions of people in the Mekong River Basin.

According to an independent scientific paper recently released, the Don Sahong project would block migrations of many important fish species that move up and down the Mekong River past the Khone Falls at various times of the year. Through fieldwork and a review of the available scientific literature, the paper reveals that many fish species migrate very long distances through the Hou Sahong Channel to upstream areas, where they form an important part of the diet of local people. The paper concludes that through blocking the migration of these fish, there is a “high risk that the dam could cause serious impacts to fisheries both far upstream and downstream from the Khone Falls, in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam, thus jeopardising the livelihoods of large numbers of people.”

According to the paper, the mitigation measures proposed in the project’s draft environmental impact assessment are unlikely to be effective. There is no known fish pass that could cope with the unique biological requirements of all the fish species that migrate past the Khone Falls each year. The proposal to widen the Hou Sadam is also likely to be ineffective because it would require major engineering works that would be extremely costly.

The paper concludes that fisheries losses in the region, and especially in Laos and Cambodia, could negatively impact the nutritional status of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people dependent on these fisheries, thus affecting the health of a large number of people. Figures indicate that in Stung Treng Province of Cambodia, almost 45% of children under five years old are underweight. As Cambodians depend on fisheries for the majority of their protein needs, losing a large quantity of wild-caught fish due to the Don Sahong Dam would further exacerbate the situation.

In Laos, recent research by the World Food Programme (WFP) has found that Laos’ rural population is experiencing serious nutritional problems, with 50% of all children being chronically malnourished. The Lao people are particularly lacking in meat, fish and edible oils, the exact food types that are threatened by the dam. If the dam causes even a 10% reduction in fisheries in central and southern Laos, the areas expected to be most seriously impacted by the Don Sahong Dam, this could have a serious impact on the nutritional status of people already living at the margins of food security.

For these reasons, we are concerned that the Don Sahong Dam would cause more problems than it would bring benefits to the Lao people, or other peoples in the region. If the dam goes forward, the corresponding drop in nutritional status for Lao and Cambodian citizens could result in setbacks in government and international donor efforts to alleviate poverty and meet various health-related United Nations Millennium Development goals. It could also negatively affect the nutritional status of people in Thailand and Viet Nam. This is a risk that we simply do not believe is worth taking.

We urge you to reconsider the development of the Don Sahong Dam and to prioritize alternative options for meeting Laos’ development needs, options that would in fact increase people’s food security and decrease poverty, rather than causing the opposite effect.

On the bus to Kampot a man told me that part of the construction site had collapsed due to the poor weather that had been occurring throughout the past week. Apparently it had been on the news. “Damn” I thought, an opportunity for a swim at the base of the dam wall was looking slim.

Flowing alongside Kampot is the Kamchay tributary to the Mekong. Further North is the Bokor National Park which will be largely flooded as a result of the Kamchay dam’s reservoir. Sinohydro, the company that built the phenomenally large Three Gorges Dam is responsible for the construction of the Kamchay project. It’s one of several large dams that Chinese state owned energy companies are constructing along the lower reaches of the Mekong in Cambodia and Laos.

“Onward” I said to a young chap on a scooter at 5am and soon we were going across the newly constructed bridge arching over the Kamchay and along the long, newly constructed road to the entrance of the dam site. Passing the barbed wire and moat encircling the ominous Sinohydro administration building, which would have fulfilled the deepest fantasies of masochistic NGO activists, we eventually arrived at a lowered boom gate prohibiting us from going further. The unkempt Khmer guard at the boom gate became animated and sternly gestured that we turn around.

Along the way back to Kampot I took some photos of the powerful current the dam is meant to take advantage of. Nearby there were farmers beginning to plow their paddies. Standing on the eroding river bank, there wasn’t much preventing me from falling in and going for that swim.

I wonder what sort of conversation the farmers along the Kamchay and the farmers who recently died at the Xiaowan dam in Yunnan could have had.

Two are dead and twelve missing (presumed dead) due to a landslide caused by monsoonal weather at the Xiaowan dam on the Mekong in Yunnan. Thanks to a reader for passing this on.

Amnat phunthi lae attalak thang chatphan: kanmuang watthanatham khong rat chat nai sangkhom thai 2 (Power, space and ethnic identity: cultural politics  of the nation state in Thai society) (2008) by Yot Santasombat et al (ISBN: 9789740541387). Published by the Princess Sirinthorn Anthropology Center, this 339 page volume is the result of field work by a new generation of researchers whose ideas challenge existing orthodoxies in Thai thinking. Here is the contents page and introduction for interested readers.

[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]

Visiting Chiang Saen in 1994 I was struck by the sight of this tour boat on the banks of the Mekong River. A little bit of research uncovered that it was owned by a company called MP Tour and Travel which was itself was owned by none other than Vatana Asavahame. Vatana was a Mekong integration pioneer and was hoping to cash in on what he thought would be a lucrative tourist trade up the Mekong river to Sipsongpanna. I think he managed one or two high profile trips, but the Mekong rapids and regulatory restrictions imposed by Burma and Laos ultimately defeated him. He also built a shopping centre close to the Golden Triangle. It had a big statue of a horse out the front, a symbolic reference to a former era of upper-Mekong trade. But whenever I visited, the shops were all but deserted.

Since then others have followed in his Mekong path, carving out a more lucrative business.

Vatana was also rumoured to have another interesting Mekong sideline. Here is a quote from my book, The Legend of the Golden Boat:

In 1996 I also heard rumours that a prominent Thai businessman and politician [Vatana] was active in the export of water up river from Chiang Saen to China. Of course he claimed that the water was fuel, but it is likely that the fuel – imported into Thailand tax-free as a transit cargo – was profitably sold on the domestic market through his national network of services stations. (76)

Thank goodness Thailand is now entering a new era of judicial integrity when the shenanigans of the elite will no longer be tolerated!

If you want to get yourself into the nationalist mood while on your way to a PAD rally, here is some current reading from the PAD reading list. Technical constraints prevent me from scanning it all, but the Preface and the “list of Thai territories lost to France” should be enough to get you hot and bothered.

Simulated soil moisture shows an important relationship to vegetation type: It was in general highest for agricultural areas; and lowest for grassland and woodland areas-except when antecedent precipitation was high (as is the case immediately following the rain season), when soil moisture was the lowest for forested areas. Thus, the vast forest to agriculture conversion that took place in the second half of the twentieth century was likely accompanied by an increase in soil moisture levels. Such an increase is exacerbated in those agricultural areas that are irrigated or where runoff is retained by bunds. (page 1745, my emphasis)

Why is this important? Who cares about hydrological modelling?

It is important because farmers, especially farmers in upland areas, are often unfairly blamed for causing hydrological problems (water shortages in particular) when they clear forested areas for agriculture. There is a persistent mythology within the region (and elsewhere) that forest clearing produces desication. The findings of this particular study add to the large body of good scientific evidence that this a highly misleading interpretation of complex catchment processes. Sub-soils can be wetter in agricultural areas because many forms of agriculture use less water than forests. And, as the quote above indicates, farmers often use a range of practices to encourage water to soak into agricultural soils.

Blaming hydrological problems on deforestation is easy because it is consistent with conventional wisdom. But it is often inaccurate.