The politics of scale, position, and place in the governance of water resources in the Mekong region (original) (raw)
Related papers
Deliberation and scale in mekong region water governance
2010
Understanding the politics of deliberation, scales, and levels is crucial to understanding the social complexity of water-related governance. Deliberative processes might complement and inform more conventional representational and bureaucratic approaches to planning and decision-making. However, they are also subject to scale and level politics, which can confound institutionalized decision-making. Scale and level contests arise in dialogues and related arenas because different actors privilege particular temporal or spatial scales and levels in their analysis, arguments, and responses. Scale contests might include whether to privilege administrative, hydrological, ecosystem, or economic boundaries. Level contests might include whether to privilege the subdistrict or the province, the tributary watershed or the international river basin, a river or a biogeographic region, and the local or the regional economy. In the Mekong Region there is a recurrent demand for water resources development projects and major policies proposed by governments and investors to be scrutinized in public. Deliberative forms of engagement are potentially very helpful because they encourage supporters and critics to articulate assumptions and reasoning about the different opportunities and risks associated with alternative options, and in doing so, they often traverse and enable higher-quality conversations within and across scales and within and between levels. Six case studies from the Mekong Region are examined. We find evidence that scale and level politics affects the context, process, content, and outcomes of deliberative engagement in a region where public deliberation is still far from being a norm, particularly where there are sensitive and farreaching choices to be made about water use and energy production.
Struggling with scales: revisiting the boundaries of river basin management
This article reviews, illustrated by two case studies, how struggles around scales play out in three globally hegemonic trends in river governance: (1) stakeholder participation for (2) integrated water resources management (IWRM), conceived at (3) the watershed or river basin level. This 'holy trinity' 1 has found blanket acceptance and support both in top-down (donors, governments) and bottom-up [nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)] directions as a way of democratizing water management, rationalizing water resource use, and managing conflict between water users in river basins. The precepts underlying these trends however have largely gone unquestioned, and the basin scale has become 'naturalized'. This continuing hegemonic frame tends to obfuscate how boundaries are often manipulated for political ends and how different stakeholders frame the 'natural' scale in quite different ways. In this article we notably question the way boundaries get drawn and scales framed in light of water infrastructure, such as dams, canals, locks, and pipelines, which not only act as 'pipelines of power' but also seemingly impose management scale, 'naturalizing' water management in a different, semi-deterministic way. Rather than providing a full-fledged literature review, we build our argument drawing from cases from Ecuador and Turkey, each in its own way showing that depoliticizing discourse hides a political reality that may be better captured by 'polycentricity'. Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this articl e. the turn of the millennium. This continuing hegemonic frame tends to obfuscate how boundaries are often manipulated for political ends and how different stakeholders frame the 'natural' scale in quite different ways. Resource management scales are not 'naturally pre-given' but get 'named and framed' in various often contested social practices and their interactions with -and transformations of-infrastructure and the natural environment. However, this naming and framing, which imposes specific management scales that 'naturalize' and 'depoliticize' water management in a different, semi-deterministic 'natural and logical' way aims to hide, negate and blur the political realities upon which these new scales are created. Analysis of the politics of scale which, following Brenner, 5 is understood here as the political struggles within spatial scalar hierarchies that are oriented toward the reorganization, reconfiguration and even transcendence of existing Volume 1,
Conservation and Society
Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are generally considered an important component of formal decision-making processes about development, serving to ensure that a project's environmental impacts are considered in decisions about whether and how it will proceed. Scale is an important part of the narrative built into the assessment. Building on a rich literature at the intersection of human geography and political ecology, I focus on the way that scale is remade through the environmental impact assessment process for the Hatgyi hydroelectric dam proposed on the Salween River. Proposed near the stretch of the river that makes up the Thai-Burma border, the scales of governance for this cross-border project challenge assumed definitions of 'local' impacts for 'national' decision-making. By illustrating how scale-making is accomplished through producing and mobilising ecological knowledge, I illustrate how the scale of the local and the nation are at stake in these projects. [Open Access]: http://www.conservationandsociety.org/text.asp?2014/12/4/386/155582
Water Governance and the Politics of Scale
Water Alternatives, 2012
ABSTRACT: This introductory article of the themed section introduces a series of papers that engage with water governance and the politics of scale. The paper situates the ongoing 'politics of scale' debates, and links them to discussions germane to water governance. We call for closer attention to the inter-relationships between power and social networks in studies of water governance, with particular reference to both institutional dynamics and scalar constructions. Framed in this way, we suggest that the engagement at the intersection of politics of scale and water governance moves the concept of scale beyond the 'fixity' of territory. The paper reflects on the ways in which the recognition of scale as socially constructed and contingent on political struggle might inform analyses of water governance and advance our understanding of hydrosocial networks.
A framework for analysing transboundary water governance complexes, illustrated in the Mekong Region
Journal of Hydrology, 2012
In this paper we present a framework for analysing transboundary water governance complexes, illustrated in the Mekong Region. In this region, the sharing of waters between countries adds a critical dimension to decision making about producing food and energy, maintaining vital ecosystems, and sustaining livelihoods. Hydropower, dams, diversions, expanding cities and irrigation schemes are all in the mix. The key elements of the framework are: context, drivers, arenas, tools, decisions and impacts. The use of deliberation, technical and advocacy tools is explored and normative governance improvements are suggested.
Scales and power in river basin management: the Chao Phraya River in Thailand1
Geographical Journal, 2007
Interventions on hydro/ecological systems by different categories of stakeholders characterised by different political, decision-making and discursive power, and varied access to resources, tend to generate costs, benefits and risks that are distributed unevenly across spatial and temporal scales and across social groups. This is due to the interconnectedness of users through the hydrologic cycle entailed by their dependence upon the same resource. As pressure over resources increases and basins 'close', this interdependence becomes more critical, increasing the frequency and seriousness of water shortages and conflicts. A political ecology approach seeks to identify and understand the mechanisms that underpin the transformations of aquatic socioenvironmental systems. Basin interconnectedness, with its hydrological, ecological and social dimensions, and three instances of the concept of scale are shown to be relevant to the understanding of these transformations. The paper analyses the case of the Chao Phraya river basin, in Thailand, and shows how land and water resources have been appropriated and identifies the different interest groups and their related discourses and power; it examines how they have adapted to socio-environmental changes, and highlights how risks, costs and benefits have been distributed.
Scales and power in river basin management: the Chao Phraya River in Thailand
Interventions on hydro/ecological systems by different categories of stakeholders characterised by different political, decision-making and discursive power, and varied access to resources, tend to generate costs, benefits and risks that are distributed unevenly across spatial and temporal scales and across social groups. This is due to the interconnectedness of users through the hydrologic cycle entailed by their dependence upon the same resource. As pressure over resources increases and basins 'close', this interdependence becomes more critical, increasing the frequency and seriousness of water shortages and conflicts. A political ecology approach seeks to identify and understand the mechanisms that underpin the transformations of aquatic socioenvironmental systems. Basin interconnectedness, with its hydrological, ecological and social dimensions, and three instances of the concept of scale are shown to be relevant to the understanding of these transformations. The paper analyses the case of the Chao Phraya river basin, in Thailand, and shows how land and water resources have been appropriated and identifies the different interest groups and their related discourses and power; it examines how they have adapted to socio-environmental changes, and highlights how risks, costs and benefits have been distributed.