Hydropower in the Himalayan Hazardscape: Strategic Ignorance and the Production of Unequal Risk

Abstract

Rapidly expanding hydropower development in areas prone to geological and hydro-climatic hazards poses multiple environmental and technological risks. Yet, so far these have received scant attention in hydropower planning processes, and even in the campaigns of most citizen initiatives contesting these dams. Based on qualitative empirical research in Northeast India, this paper explores the reasons why dam safety and hazard potential are often marginal topics in hydropower governance and its contestation. Using a political ecology framework analyzing the production of unequal risks, I argue that a blind-eye to environmental risks facilitates the appropriation of economic benefits by powerful interest groups, while increasing the hazardousness of hydropower infrastructure, accelerating processes of social marginalization. More specifically, this paper brings into analytical focus the role of strategic ignorance and manufactured uncertainty in the production of risk, and explores the challenges and opportunities such knowledge politics create for public resistance against hazardous technologies. I posit that influencing the production of knowledge about risk can create a fertile terrain for contesting hazardous hydropower projects, and for promoting alternative popular conceptions of risk. These findings contribute to an emerging body of research about the implications of hydropower expansionism in the Himalayan hazardscape.

Contested Knowledges: Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development

“…"A range of powerful, transnationally allied groups and organizations have historically promoted the construction of these projects: politicians, bureaucrats, landed classes, and industrialists, multinational corporations, the World Bank, and other international organizations, as well as transnational professional associations of engineers and scientists" [7] (p. 3), which he calls an informal international "big dam regime". Underlying this regime are the deeply rooted values, norms and principles that, together, have promoted a development vision that was conceptualized nearly a century ago and which has been unleashed since the 1950s and 1960s (see, in this issue [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]). This vision equated development as the largescale, top-down, techno-centric pursuit of economic growth through the intensive exploitation of natural resources, that commonly disregards alternative knowledge systems, development trajectories and human suffering.…”

“…Hydropower and other mega-hydraulic projects have long been a deeply controversial issue, generating intense local, national and transnational disputes among proponents and opponents. Large-scale water infrastructure development has been shown to generate profound social and environmental impacts, the more so since the burdens and benefits are unevenly distributed among population groups and locations [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Commonly, mega-hydraulic projects aim to supply water and/or energy to industrial growth sectors, large-scale capitalist export agriculture, and the growing thirst of mega-cities and urban zones [18,19].…”

Contesting Hydropower Dams in the Eastern Himalaya: The Cultural Politics of Identity, Territory and Self-Governance Institutions in Sikkim, India

“…Since 2003, over 168 large dams for hydropower development have been proposed in the Eastern Himalayan Region of India [1,2]. The push for hydropower development in the north-eastern region of India (see Figure 1) by both Central and State Governments, have made these developments highly conflict prone [1,3,4].…”

Dams and Damages. Conflicting Epistemological Frameworks and Interests Concerning “Compensation” for the Misicuni Project’s Socio-Environmental Impacts in Cochabamba, Bolivia

“…However, from our examination, we concluded that the popular interest in and defense of the project did not result in a more protective stand towards affected host communities. Similar to the position and actions of dominant mega-hydraulic proponents in other cases around the world (e.g., [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]), the popular supporters (city inhabitants and valley peasants) ignored the fate of the affected highland indigenous communities.…”

“…Similar to cases described by Dye [16] and Hidalgo, Boelens and Isch [58], the Misicuni compensation process was an example of top-down thinking, valuing supposed experts' knowledge over engagement with the local community within the logic of contracting experts for rapid assessments. While the Misicuni Company technicians and university consultants focused on physical size and monetary value, indigenous families were concerned with their ability to continue their livelihoods (see also [24,74]). Community leaders framed the destruction of livelihoods as the main unfairness in the compensation process.…”