Structural Injustice, Slow Violence? The Political Ecology of a “Best Practice” Hydropower Dam in Lao PDR

ABSTRACT

Large areas of the rural Lao landscape are being rapidly transformed by infrastructure development projects. Arguably, it is hydraulic development that is contributing most significantly to rural socio-ecological change, due to the profound socio-political ruptures dams precipitate. The nationally iconic Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project, commissioned in 1998 and expanded in 2012, provides an illustrative case of hydropower’s complex social-ecological outcomes. Proponents have argued that the project represents a best-case example of planned, sustainable development, through successful mitigation of negative impacts and benefit-sharing with affected communities, and implemented in accordance with international good practice. This article questions the narratives of sustainability. It is argued that while the project could be considered successful in achieving certain economic objectives defined by the government and investors, evidence of social and environmental sustainability is questionable, raising questions about other dam projects in the country with weaker standards and oversight. Given the extent of negative impacts and associated social trauma in the Nam Hinboun basin, the article considers whether and to what extent such hydraulic development processes under authoritarian rule may be framed as expressions of structural injustice and slow violence.

KEYWORDS:

• hydropower
• Laos
• Mekong
• environmental justice
• slow violence

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the three anonymous referees, special issue co-editor Simon Creak, and the journal editor, for very helpful comments and critical suggestions on earlier versions of this article. Any remaining limitations are the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The lead author was part of an external evaluation of the project’s Environmental Management Division in 2004 and has visited the downstream impact areas on several occasions since, while the second author has conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study of a village in the middle Nam Hinboun basin since 2005.

2. In October 2014, EdL-Generation planned to raise up to $246 million on the Thai bond market, that would provide financing for an additional nine hydropower plants and allow it to increase its stake to 100% in four schemes (Reuters, October 15, 2014).

3. Source: http://www.thpclaos.com/index.php?lang=en. Accessed May 25, 2018.

4. Under THXP’s concession agreement, the company is contractually obligated to raise income levels in villages to a baseline standard of 20.4 million kip (about $2,450) per household.

5. This account is not unique with villagers at the upstream Phousaat resettlement site making similar claims (see also International Rivers 2014).

6. In a 2004 review of the THPC Environmental Management Division, Blake et al. (2005) found that there was a high drop-out rate of farmers practicing dry season rice farming, especially amongst poorer households, mostly due to high entry costs and unserviceable debts.

7. The first author heard several accounts of people drowning in the Nam Hai downstream of the powerhouse, including a five year old boy, caught unawares by rising water levels following periods of turbine shutdown and subsequent water release. These incidents were not systematically announced by THPC (see FIVAS 2007, 15–17).

8. Elsewhere in Laos, villagers that have demonstrated against infrastructural development projects, including dams, have experienced persecution, arbitrary detention and arrest by state authorities (Gindroz 2017).

9. Laos is not alone in the region in experiencing fundamental and repeated failures in creating economically successful or ecologically sustainable irrigation systems, without recourse to external subsidies, largely channelled through opaque state “hydrocracies”. There have been similar experiences noted in Northeast Thailand and Cambodia, for instance, at a range of scales (Hoanh et al. 2009; Blake 2016).

10. Most new infrastructure developments in Laos no longer have international financial institution involvement. Most are being funded through either the private sector in collaboration with state-run Exim banks, such as in THXP, or Vietnamese, Thai or Chinese state-owned banks. There are now many domestic Lao private sector interests developing smaller-scale hydraulic infrastructure that involve displacement and resettlement, including at least one on the Nam Hinboun.