Diana Suhardiman

Scalar Disconnect: The Logic of Transboundary Water Governance in the Mekong

This article provides an institutional analysis of the Mekong River Commission and brings to light the institutional dissonances between regional and national decision-making landscapes in the Lower Mekong Basin. The current scalar disconnect between regional and national decision-making processes reflects how international donors and member country representatives obscure potential conflict/tension in transboundary water governance in the Mekong. From a scholarly perspective, it questions academic approaches that assume that the state is the sole or primary actor in international relations.

Process-focused analysis in transboundary water governance research

Previous analysis of transboundary water governance has been focused primarily on state-centred approaches. The articles in this special section move us forward from this focus in three ways. First, they highlight the crucial role played by non-state actors in shaping water governance outcomes. Second, they show us how these actors can increase the ‘room for manoeuvre’ in negotiations. Third, they provide an entry point for developing process-focused approaches in transboundary water governance research. This article argues such an approach might improve our understanding of transboundary water outcomes and suggests new focus on how key actors form networks of alliances and shape decision-making landscapes at multiple governance levels and arenas. From a scholarly perspective, it brings to light the blurred boundary between state and non-state actors, as derived from a better understanding of the elusive links between actors and organisations; it unravels additional layers of complexity in the hydro-hegemony concept and bends the rigid notion of power asymmetry, towards the subtleties of power relations and interplays in transboundary decision-making processes.

Integrated water resources management in Nepal: key stakeholders' perceptions and lessons learned

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been prescribed in the global water policy literature for decades. This article looks at how the concept has been applied in Nepal. It highlights the normative approach in IWRM policy formulation, the existing institutional barriers to apply it and how these resulted in the framing of IWRM ‘implementation’ as merely a compilation of donor-funded projects. Current discourse on IWRM highlights the need to shift the emphasis from national policy formulation to local adaptive, pragmatic approaches to IWRM. This article brings to light the need to identify potential entry points to scale up locally rooted water management approaches towards the development of nested institutional set-ups in water resources management.

Legal Plurality: An Analysis of Power Interplay in Mekong Hydropower

The changing notion of state territoriality highlights overlapping power structures at international, national, and local scales and reveals how states can be “differently” powerful. This article analyzes how the interplay of these power structures shapes the dynamics of natural resource management in one of the worlds fastest changing transboundary basins, the Mekong. Taking the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic as a case study, we highlight the existing inconsistency and institutional discrepancies in land, water, and environmental policy related to hydropower and illustrate how they are manifested in multiple decision-making frameworks and overlapping legal orders. The resulting legal plurality reveals the inherently contested terrain of hydropower but, more important, it illustrates how the central state has been able to use contradictory mandates and interests to further its goals. The specific Mekong hydropower case demonstrates that an understanding of power geometries and scale dynamics is crucial to meaningful application of social and environmental safeguards for sustainable dam development. More broadly, the case sheds light on the important role of states’ various agents and their multiple connections, partially explaining how the achievement of the central states goals can be derived from legal plurality rather than hindered by it.

Do hydrologic rigor and technological advance tell us more or less about transboundary water management

Strict hydrologic definitions of basins coupled with technological advances including the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems have given us more accurate and detailed knowledge than ever before about the scale and extent of transboundary waters. This information has had both research and policy impact. The knowledge of the vast number and extent of basins has been used to bring attention to the overall issue of transboundary water management and understand how and why countries conflict and cooperate over water. Combining this information with ideas embedded in legal instruments such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses has given us new ways to look at the adequacy, and inadequacy, of existing transboundary institutions and to suggest policy change and institution building. But do precise data and clearly codified definitions always improve our understanding and decision making? Might they even lead us to incorrect conclusions and poor priority setting? This paper examined how the combination of universalized basin scale principles for international water management and increased mapping precision has resulted in policy prescriptions that sometimes run counter to what negotiators and managers have consistently and thoughtfully done in practice. The conclusion is not a call to cease using new technology nor to end the search for principles to guide our resource management actions. Rather it is a call for caution and balance as we apply technology and logic to specific locations in a complex world.

Between Interests and Worldviews: The Narrow Path of the Mekong River Commission

Hydropower development is occurring at a rapid, though controversial, pace in the Mekong. We highlight the role of scientific assessment in shaping the Mekong hydropower debate, taking the strategic environmental assessment of the twelve planned mainstream dams as a case study. While environmental impact assessments are designed as science-based decision-making tools, they have often been criticized in practice as a political means to justify already made development decisions. In this case we demonstrate how the Mekong River Commission, operating in a constrained political environment, has instead used environmental impact assessment as a way of providing political space and opening the discussion on dams to a wider public. The main argument of this paper is that scientific assessment can be politically maneuvered to shape governance alliances at both national and transboundary levels, and to a certain extent democratize decision-making processes.

Linking Irrigation Development with the Wider Agrarian Context: Everyday Class Politics in Water Distribution Practices in Rural Java

Abstract Poor performance of government managed irrigation systems persists globally despite numerous policies over the last four decades to address the problem. I argue that policy efforts to improve irrigation performance in developing countries fail in part because they are often formulated in isolation from the existing agrarian reality. This article uses the example of Indonesia to show the link between irrigation outcomes and the wider agrarian context and highlights how the interface between farmers and irrigation bureaucracies is shaped by the existing agrarian structure.

Environmental impact assessment: Theory, practice and its implications for the mekong hydropower debate

Hydropower development in the Lower Mekong Basin is occurring at a rapid pace. With partial funding from international financial institutions has come pressure on the riparian governments to ensure that the potential environmental and social impacts of hydropower projects are properly considered. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is one of the primary environmental management tools being proposed to fulfill these obligations. This article highlights some of the challenges that are inherent in applying EIA in the Mekong context through critical analysis of both its conceptual and institutional aspects. The main argument of the article is that while EIA application indicates a certain degree of environmental consideration, it is not necessarily sufficient to ensure good environmental practices. Lending institutions such as the World Bank have identified lack of implementation capacity as the biggest constraint to effective EIAs. Focusing on Laos, we show how EIA application should be equipped with necessary institutional arrangements and a transparent public participation process. This will ultimately require a shift within the region to allow environmental and social issues to be given significant weight. Keywords: Environmental assessment, Hydropower development, Public participation, Mekong

Characterizing private investments and implications for poverty reduction and natural resource management in Laos

We examine the patterns and characteristics of private investment in Laos, and how these evolve in relation to the Lao governments investment incentive policies in particular, and the wider State policies in general. Our goals are to: (1) systematically describe and analyze the patterns and characteristics of private investment in the country, and (2) analyze investment outcomes in terms of economic growth, poverty reduction and livelihoods. We argue that while private investments in the resource sector have contributed to economic growth, they have also negatively impacted local resources and communities. From a policy perspective, we highlight the need to examine the actual significance of policy incentives provided by the Lao government, especially with regard to its ability to direct investment decisions, in terms of both geography and sector.

Institutionalised corruption in Indonesian irrigation: An analysis of the upeti system

This article analyses the internal logic of the upeti system in Indonesian irrigation and brings to light how corruption rules are shaped through complex socio political relationships reflected in the organisational culture of the irrigation agency. Based on hundred interviews with water sector professionals the article highlights: 1) the importance of social relations in shaping institutionalised corruption; 2) how the upeti system justifies corruption practices as the prevailing social norm; and 3) the need for structural change to eradicate corruption. Illustrating how corruption rules are embedded in project management procedures, with projects highly dependent on donor funding, the article highlights the issues importance for international agencies and the need to be more politically grounded in promoting their development agenda. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.