Ian G. Baird

Transboundary Impact Assessment in the Sesan River Basin: The Case of the Yali Falls Dam

This case study of the Yali Falls Hydropower Dam in the Vietnamese portion of the Sesan River Basin demonstrates a range of institutional and political challenges encountered in the assessment of large-scale infrastructure projects with transboundary impacts. These challenges include the failure to implement standard international planning processes and the failure to follow due process in dam planning, construction and operation, despite having received funding for international expertise that could have enabled Vietnam to implement such standards. Weak technical and financial capacity on the part of the downstream country, Cambodia, has allowed the politically dominant upstream country, Vietnam, to impose its national interests on downstream communities in Vietnam and Cambodia. A transboundary impact assessment has only been implemented many years after construction was completed.

The global land grab meta-narrative, Asian money laundering and elite capture: : reconsidering the Cambodian context

The dramatic expansion of large-scale economic land concessions and acquisitions in the Global South has generated considerable concern amongst activists, journalists and academics recently. This has led to the increased prevalence of the term ‘global land grabbing’, which I argue represents a particular type of meta-narrative. In this article the global land grab meta-narrative is considered in relation to recent land alienation of Indigenous Peoples in the northeastern Cambodia province of Ratanakiri. While land grabbing is certainly a crucial problem, it is insufficient to explain the circumstances in Ratanakiri or in Cambodia more generally as ‘global land grabbing’. While foreign capital is associated with land grabbing in Cambodia, there are various other factors that also require consideration. Specifically, the role of Asian money laundering and elite capture requires increased attention. This article contributes to better understanding the particular ways that land dispossession plays out in particular places and contexts.

Dolphin-Safe Tuna from California to Thailand: Localisms in Environmental Certification of Global Commodity Networks

This article analyzes the historical development of the United States–based dolphin-safe tuna campaign and associated labeling scheme in the early 1990s as a form of commodity network regulation. Adopting a political ecology approach, and drawing on theoretical frameworks of global production networks, conventions theory, institutional analysis, and the politics of scale, we consider the processes whereby the U.S. nongovernmental organization (NGO) Earth Island Institute (EII) came to hold a key position of power in defining, monitoring, and regulating the use of the term dolphin-safe. EII created international organization networks to monitor the tuna packing industry, at that time heavily concentrated in Thailand. Although the dolphin-safe tuna labeling scheme is an important part of one of the most successful consumer-driven global environmental campaigns ever launched, it contained a number of conflicts of power, values, and modes of representation, mirroring large conceptual differences in environmental activism and social justice. EIIs view became embedded in the definitions and structures of the dolphin-safe tuna commodity network and the particular scaling of globalization that it encompassed.

The Imperiled Giants of the Mekong

Southeast Asia’s Mekong river supports a vast freshwater fishery. One of the species caught by local fishers is the Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), which according to The Guinness Book of World Records is the planet’s largest freshwater fish: It can measure 3 meters long and weigh 300 kilograms. But fewer and fewer examples of this huge fish have turned up in nets recently, and last year the World Conservation Union added this catfish to its list of critically endangered species. Although the loss of this charismatic fish would be a tragedy in itself, the plight of the Mekong giant catfish also highlights the precarious position of other Pangasiid catfish species inhabiting the Mekong river. Hogan and his colleagues explain their efforts to understand the migratory behavior of these fish in hopes of improving the chances for their long-term conservation.

The Don Sahong Dam: Potential Impacts on Regional Fish Migrations, Livelihoods and Human Health

Plans are underway to construct twelve large hydropower projects on the un-dammed lower and middle mainstream Mekong River in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. One of the planned projects is a 30–32 meter–high hydroelectric dam with an expected 240 MW installed generating capacity to be built on the Hou Sahong Channel, less than one kilometer north of the Laos–Cambodia border, in the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos. The projects objective is to generate revenue by exporting electricity to Thailand or Cambodia. Concerns have been raised about the Don SahongDam(DSD), however. The main ones relate to potential repercussions on aquatic resources, and especially wild-capture fisheries dependent on migratory fish. This article examines the regional implications of the DSD, including possible impacts on food security, nutrition, and poverty alleviation. Fisheries losses in the Mekong Region from the DSD would negatively affect the nutrition of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, especially in parts of Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand where nutritional standards are already low. Mekong fisheries are integral to food security in the region, and the DSD would make it difficult for governments, especially in Laos and Cambodia, to reach their health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals and their objectives for reducing poverty.

Irrawaddy dolphin Orcaella brevirostris in the Cambodian Mekong River: an initial survey

Irrawaddy dolphins Orcaella brevirostiris are found in coastal waters from the Bay of Bengal east to Palawan, Philippines and south to northern Australia. They also occur in three large tropical river systems in South-east Asia: the Mekong, Mahakam and Ayeyarwady. In March and May 1997 approximately 350 km of riverine habitat in parts of north-east Cambodia were surveyed, discussions took place with local people, and reported dry season dolphin habitat was mapped. Our objectives were to investigate the status, habitat and distribution of dolphins in north-east Cambodia and identify threats to the continued survival of dolphins in the Mekong River Basin. Nine groups of dolphins were observed in the Mekong River. A ‘best’ estimate of 40 animals were seen. Irrawaddy dolphins were generally confined to sections of the river with water levels >8–10 m during the dry season. It appears that the Mekong River dolphin population is rapidly declining. In 1997 there were probably no more than 100¨C150 dolphins left in north-east Cambodia (including southern Laos) and no more than 200 within the entire Mekong River Basin, although these numbers remain tentative. Anthropogenic mortality is high, albeit largely unintentional, and there is considerable risk that the dolphin population will become locally extinct in the Mekong River in the near future. The establishment of community-managed deep water Fish Conservation Zones with government support may represent the best opportunity for reducing dry season dolphin mortality from large-meshed gillnet entanglement. Efforts to establish protected areas for dolphins are currently underway.

Dams and disease triggers on the lower Mekong river.

Ongoing and proposed construction of several large hydropower dams along the mainstream Mekong River and various tributaries has created a number of unanswered environmental and societal questions for governments and communities in Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam [1]–[3]. Most concern over the controversial dam-building projects focuses on the extent to which river health and food security will be affected negatively. Foremost, the 85 or more proposed dams threaten to reduce the diversity and abundance of freshwater fish, the major animal protein source for many of the 67 million inhabitants of the Mekong River basin [4]–[7].

INTERNAL RESETTLEMENT IN LAOS

In this response to an article by Holly High, “The Implications of Aspirations: Reconsidering Resettlement in Laos,” published in Critical Asian Studies in December 2008 (vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 531–50), the authors do not dispute the notion that many people in Laos have aspirations for modernity and development. However, they are at odds with High in two key ways. First, she only presents a selective reading of authors who have written critically about highland to lowland resettlement in Laos, thus misrepresenting some of their ideas. Second, the empirical evidence High provides is insufficient or inappropriate to support her argument that people who are being resettled from the uplands to the lowlands in Laos are supportive of these state-sponsored schemes because they fit with their aspirations for modernity. The authors are concerned that Highs article may inadvertently serve to justify the views of those who advocate and fund centrally planned resettlement of ethnic minorities in Laos and who believe that non-participatory and top-down resettlement is acceptable if increased funding is available and better planning is conducted, even when those targeted for relocation would rather not move.

Rescaling and Reordering Nature–Society Relations: The Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Dam and Laos–Thailand Electricity Networks

In 2010, the largest hydropower dam ever constructed in Laos, the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) Power Project, was completed with crucial—indeed, deal-making—support from the World Bank. Although the vast majority of the electricity produced by the project is exported to neighboring Thailand, the most important negative social and environmental impacts have occurred in Laos. While much attention has focused on the dam reservoir, there have been significant effects downstream from the project along the Xe Bang Fai (XBF) River, a major tributary of the mainstream Mekong River. In this article we examine the complex relationships between energy produced by NT2 and energy consumption patterns in Thailand. We link varying electricity demand in Thai air conditioning, fluctuating water releases from the NT2 dam, and downstream changes in XBF hydrology. Taking a political ecology approach, we emphasize how NT2 is part of rescaling electricity production and consumption networks, changes to their modes of ordering, and the reworking of nature–society relations. Although NT2 involves a complex array of social and environmental civil society concerns for Thailand, Laos, and global society, this was largely obscured by the commercial and technical orientation of its novel governance systems.

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. However, the cross-sectoral and cumulative effects of such projects have 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. Here we examine 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 can thus produce particular challenges for these communities, as multiple systems are enclosed and degraded. We present case studies of social and environmental impacts occurring in the Mekong Region: in the Hinboun River Basin in Central Laos; the Xe Bang Fai River Basin, also in Central Laos; and the Sesan River Basin in northeastern Cambodia. We strive to demonstrate the practical usefulness of adopting political ecology frameworks for thinking about these crucial agrarian changes.