Developing Bureaucracies for Environmental Governance: State Authority and World Bank Conditionality in Laos

Abstract

This paper considers the on-going production of bureaucracies for environmental governance in developing countries and the ways in which donor engagement is reshaped through localised bureaucratic dynamics. In Laos, World Bank conditions associated with the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project saw the establishment of the Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA). I examine internal dynamics at the WMPA headquarters in Nakai District, including formal institutions for forest management, informal institutions for recognising local authority and wealth redistribution and the personal aspirations of WMPA officials. In doing so, this piece contributes to current discussions about donor-driven institutional change, practices of state-making and the local “technocrats” who are personally confronted by the complex intersections of donor conditionality and state authority.

Key Words:

• Bureaucratic reform
• state-making practices
• environment
• development
• World Bank
• Laos

Acknowledgement

This paper draws on research on Laos from 2002-07 supported by the Australian National University and a two-month consultancy through the Wildlife Conservation Society with the WMPA in Nakai in 2006-07. The author has made subsequent visits to Nakai, but this paper is restricted to earlier years. While the WMPA cannot be anonymised because of the specificities of NT2, all senior staff and many junior staff no longer work there. The many discussions with consultants, officials and villagers in Laos are appreciated, as are the helpful comments on drafts from Michael Fabinyi and two anonymous referees. Practical support during the writing process was provided by James Cook University.

Notes

1 At the time of my fieldwork, a few hundred metres of pine forest separated the WMPA office from their closest neighbours, though logging and construction for NT2 later removed this physical divide.

2 UNPAN (2005) provides an overview of public administration in Laos. Though not detailed and somewhat dated, this reflects the paucity of information on the Lao bureaucracy.

3 A number of WMPA staff had studied in Vietnam and Thailand, with fewer having trained in other countries including Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia and Russia.

4 For example, one WMPA deputy director said when comparing Nakai to his home in neighbouring Bolikhamxai Province – “they are different in civilisation. Bolikhamxai has roads and electricity going to 80 percent of villages.”

5 For instance, Cleaver (2002, 13–14) suggests the alternative terms “bureaucratic” and “socially embedded” institutions. Despite her rejection of the notion of “informality,” she still uses the notion of “formalised arrangements” to describe “bureaucratic” institutions (Cleaver 2002, 13). I follow Lund (2011, 886) in viewing institutions as multifaceted and incorporating “actors, arenas and structure.”

6 In Weintraub’s (1997) terms, I am interested in “visibility” rather than “collectivity.”

7 Phou Khao Khouay NPA is an exception, being managed by the Ministry of Defence (Robichaud et al. 2001, 14).

8 Similarly, a former Director-General of the Department of Forestry sought the position of WMPA director, but the World Bank and other donors were strongly opposed because of his perceived role in earlier failed projects.

9 See: http://www.esabii.org/database/mammal/pholidota/manis_javanica.html. Accessed August 4, 2013.

10 Technical definitions draw distinctions between “watersheds” (lengnam) and “catchments” (anthong, or more officially, angkepnam), but commonly these terms are used interchangeably.

11 There were maps on the walls of the District Agriculture and Forestry Office with boundaries marked for Nakai District and the Nakai–Nam Theun NPA, but the legend was only in English.

12 The head of the District Agriculture and Forestry Office was missed because he was away from Nakai that day and he was too important for his deputy to stand as substitute. I was able to join this event by chance as an electricity blackout had interrupted office work and also I was already familiar to district officials.

13 World Bank-required monitors and other observers reported persistent problems with salvage logging – a responsibility of the Lao government – which was sometimes also linked to illegal rosewood logging from inside the Nakai-Nam Theun NPA (for example, McDowell, Scudder, and Talbot 2006, 2010).

14 This also drew on increasing concerns about the problems in the implementation across Laos (for example, Bouahom et al. 2004).

15 The majority of residents in Nakai are ethnic minorities. On the complex issue of ethnicity in Laos, see Vatthana Pholsena (2006). There were also three foreign long-term technical advisors and other foreign short-term advisors worked at different time with the WMPA.

16 For example, a foreign consultant related how he had a copy of a national decree relating to compensation for land used in development projects when working in a northern province. When he met with head of the Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office, he was told he was not allowed to discuss the decree with villagers and that the province had its own policy. Other similar examples abound.

17 For instance: “[t]he July Board Update noted the need to strengthen the authorizing environment for Watershed protection, and Government is currently finalizing a new Prime Minister’s Decree to this end” (World Bank 2010, 5).

18 Nunberg and Nellis (1995, 29) conclude that: “[t]here is little doubt that salary supplements have a corrosive and distorting effect on civil service morale and management. Most important, they undermine the possibilities for meaningful structural reform in the longer term. The insidious aspect of this problem is that in many instances the offenders are the donors.”