Governing 21st century dams: hydropower, knowledge politics and popular struggles in india’s eastern himalayan borderland
- Autores: Amelie Huber
- Directores de la Tesis: Begüm Ozkaynak (dir. tes.), Fikret Adaman (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: David Saurí i Pujol (presid.), Giacomo D'Alisa (secret.), Erik Swyngedouw (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Ambientales por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
Narratives of hydropower as straightforward, green and indispensable for socio-economic development and a low-carbon energy transition are facilitating a boom in the construction of large dams, especially in emerging and developing economies. In spite of the dubious credentials of dams in environmental sustainability, social justice, economic viability and risk and safety, these discourses dominate policy debates and have carried the sector out of a marked recession in the 1990s. A growing number of conflicts and evidence on the profound and troubling socio-ecological transformations caused by this rapid, large-scale expansion of dam construction calls for scrutinizing and problematizing both the policy consensus on sustainable hydropower, and the reasons for its persistence.
In this thesis I contribute to this task through a fieldwork-based, political-ecological analysis of hydropower conflicts in the Eastern Himalayan region of India, one of the world’s emerging hydropower hotspots. Conceptually informed by the literatures on anti-politics, depoliticization and the strategic unknowns, I unpack the interplay between state- and local level processes of hydropower governance, different forms of popular response, and the political-economic relations that shape the politicized environment of hydropower. My analysis is based on a qualitative research approach, with three overarching objectives: (i) to identify those factors that produce a highly heterogeneous pattern of public acceptance of and resistance to controversial hydropower infrastructure; (ii) to analyze how and with what socio-ecological implications hydropower governance navigates the (hydro-)geological risks characterizing the Eastern Himalayan hazardscape; and (iii) to understand how state and local level processes help to promote one-sided win-win narratives on sustainable hydropower, despite their apparent contradictions.
The three empirical chapters of this thesis demonstrate how different anti-political governance practices (depoliticizing discourses, reprisals, the manipulation and policing of knowledge, memory and narratives, and the production of uncertainty and ignorance) restrict the political space for the contestation of hydropower development and obfuscate problematic issues, thereby facilitating the circulation of one-sided narratives as described above. I argue that this approach to hydropower governance is driven by political-economic pressures and vested interests and serves strategically to minimize public interference, facilitate investments and accelerate the implementation of project plans.
My analysis also shows, however, that anti-politics has ambiguous material and political effects. First, by neglecting and obscuring key socio-ecological concerns such as dam-related hazards and safety risk in policy processes, public discourse and historical memory, anti-political maneuvers produce and exacerbate uneven risks, vulnerabilities and processes of social marginalization, thereby condoning disastrous outcomes. Second, the mobilization of uncertainty in governance processes creates opportunities for the subversion of dominant risk discourses, which is illustrative of how the very means to provoke closure can open up generative possibilities for counter-hegemonic struggles and knowledge claims. Third, by failing to institute effective grievance-sharing mechanisms, anti-political hydropower governance tends to run against inherent societal antagonisms, fueling the potential for conflict it seeks to curtail.
This research contributes insights about the appeal, consequences and ethical problems associated with complex forms of knowledge politics and anti-politics enacted in the governance of development and environmental interventions. Further, it underlines the viability, legitimacy and constructive contributions of social resistance against controversial environmental interventions and the problematic hegemonic narratives driving these. Finally, in pointing out often overlooked and obscured dimensions of sustainability and “clean development”, this thesis adds to an emerging body of research about the implications of hydropower activities in the Himalayan hazardscape, and to the broader literature that calls into question the alleged climate compatibility of large hydro.
