The temporal politics of big dams in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia: by way of an introduction

Lesotho's white gold: the political ecology of temporality and the economy of anticipation in resource extraction and large dam infrastructural projects

“…The social and environmental consequences of large dams have been extensively debated (Kirchherr and Charles 2016;Tilt et al 2009), with critics arguing the local effects -resettlement, dislocation, decreased access to natural resources -reveal the contradictions and flawed logic of dams as national development solutions (Scudder 2006). Typically the poor and marginalized absorb a disproportionate share of the costs of these projects (Bromber et al 2014;Roy 2000), such as development-induced resettlement (Hussain 2008), leading to local and global opposition in India (Khagram 2004) and in Chile (Borgias and Braun 2017), and long-term consequences, such as higher rates of poverty for successive generations as the Gwembe Tonga experienced after relocation for Zambia's Kariba Dam (Scudder 2006).…”

“…As the significant social and environmental consequences of dams are justified through narratives that promote the benefits for national development, the communities that absorb the most direct consequences of large-scale development become part of a rationale of "local pain for national gain", or of what is best for "the greater common good" (Roy 2000). Large-scale dam projects are almost without exception sited in poor, rural, and politically, ethnically, or socially marginalized communities, ironically structuring the "local pain" to disproportionately affect already disempowered populations (Braun 2015;Bromber et al 2014). I argue these patterns associated with large-scale development, such as the building of mega-dams, are best interpreted through the combined fields of development studies and political ecology in order to understand the relations of power and how they shape the planning and implementation of how environmental goods and resources are valued and rationalized over time.…”

“…Jenkins argues "a regional scale approach to political ecology provides utility as a heuristic to conceptually frame the concepts of governance, resource access, and ecological degradation between larger processes of economic restructuring and more localized micro politics" (2016: 182). Similarly, the social and economic histories of regions shape how national development trajectories are envisioned, and these shared histories can be drawn upon to legitimize project plans in the present (Cross 2015), while marginalizing alternatives (Bromber et al 2014). These narratives -in this case, development and prosperity through resource extraction -are bound to "local socioeconomic or ecological effects of larger political economic affects" in scalar ways, elucidating how "region in political ecology can be used as a conceptual tool at the borderlands of micropolitical global or national political economic processes to help one arrive at common themes" (Jenkins 2016: 184).…”

“…This longitudinal approach demonstrates the importance of temporal and affective dimensions to our understanding of the complex, multi-faceted consequences of resource extractive mega-dam projects such as the LHWP. As large dams continue to be built in the developing world, and at a faster rate than any other time, and as large dams are re-cast as carbon-low, green energy solutions in the era of climate change (Bromber et al 2014), this research extends important theoretical and empirical insights to better capture how the social and environmental costs of these mega-projects unfold dynamically over time, in place, and in relation to the anticipatory aspirations attached to resource extraction and development.…”

Building a Dam, Constructing a Nation: The ‘drowning’ of Capel Celyn

“…For example, Kaika (2006) has explored the construction of the Marathon Dam, built in the 1920s, arguing that the project's neoclassical ornamentation represented the construction of parallels between Athens’ modernisation and the successes of Ancient Greek civilisation. Within this process, the infrastructure became a set piece of nationhood, similar to other objects of modernist prestige, such as space programmes, international sports tournaments and the nuclear bomb (Bromber, Féaux de la Croix, & Lange, ; Mitchell, ). Within this reading, hydroelectric projects provide common spectacles that grasp the attention of citizens and consolidate a state's power, demonstrating the techno‐economic power resources of the state itself (Mitchell, ).…”