Panel featuring Professor Ian Baird (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Professor Nga Dao (York University)

Monday, May 14, 2018
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
6265 Bunche Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

The Political Ecology of Cross-Sectoral Cumulative Impacts: Modern Landscapes, Large Hydropower Dams and Industrial Tree Plantations in Laos and Cambodia

Environmental and social impact assessment is now a widely accepted tool in the Mekong Region for assessing the impacts of hydropower dams and large-scale industrial tree plantations. The cross-sectoral and cumulative effects of such projects have, however, not been sufficiently addressed. Where cumulative impacts have been considered, studies have focused on a single sector, such as multiple hydropower dams. A separation between land and water management frequently leads those assessing project impacts to overlook or underestimate project outcomes. This presentation examines such interactions between industrial plantations and hydropower projects, demonstrating that it is the diverse livelihoods of local people – based on everyday use of multiple resources – that crucially connects aquatic and terrestrial environments. The combined social and environmental changes wrought by resource projects in Laos and Cambodia can thus produce particular challenges for these communities, as multiple systems are enclosed and degraded. Case studies of social and environmental impacts occurring in the Mekong Region are presented: the Xe Bang Fai River Basin, in Central Laos; and the Sesan River Basin in northeastern Cambodia. The goal is to demonstrate the practical usefulness of adopting political ecology frameworks for thinking about these crucial aspects of agrarian change.

Ian G. Baird is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also affiliated with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Hmong Studies Consortium, the Asian American Studies Program and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. In 2018 he was awarded a Vilas Associates Award from UW-Madison to continue his investigations regarding the cross-sectoral cumulative impacts of hydropower dams and large-scale plantations in mainland Southeast Asia.

Political economy of natural resources and hydropower development in Vietnam post-socialism

Vietnam’s energy demand has been soaring in the last two decades in parallel with the development of the national economy. To meet the energy need, the government has approved master plans to build dams on each of the country’s ten largest river basins with high hydropower potential. From the year 2000 up to the present, thousands of large, medium, and small dams for hydropower production and irrigation have been intensively planned and constructed. Although these hydropower projects bring significant benefits to the national economy, the cost they incur local people along Vietnam’s rivers in general are also substantial. These various river developments have dramatically altered agrarian landscapes with powerful implications for rural livelihoods. Ecological changes due to mega-project development have constrained livelihood choices, while agrarian changes have produced new forms of inequality, including spatial inequalities. Furthermore, while hydropower projects are generally initiated by lowland Vietnamese linked to political power centers, project sites are often located in lands inhabited by ethnic minorities. As a result, damming rivers in Vietnam is about much more than the politics, economy and ecology of hydropower impacts; damming rivers speaks to relationships between center and periphery, highlands and lowlands, ethnic majority and minority peoples. In this presentation I draw on political economy of natural resources to argue that there is a complexity, and a tension, inherent in trying to reconcile upstream versus downstream dynamics with the subsequent creation of a socio-economically viable and sustainable environment. Only when these are squarely confronted, will it be possible to adequately deal with the problems and to improve dam development related policies.

Nga Dao is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Water Resources Conservation and Development (WARECOD), Vietnam, and adjunct lecturer in York University’s International Development Studies Program, Toronto, Canada.  She holds a PhD in human geography from York University, and has conducted research in Southeast Asia for more than 20 years, focusing on the issues of water governance and agrarian change in the region.

Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Geography, Emmett Institute for Climate Change and the Environment