Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Chris Sneddon, Dartmouth College

; Michelle Irengbam, Dartmouth College

Description:

The future of large dams and hydropower development is uncertain and contested. While governments, engineering firms, and development professionals see the coming decades as a boom time for hydropower (Ansar et al. 2014; Zarfl et al. 2015), communities and their allies in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the planet have organized sustained social movements questioning the efficacy and ethics of continuing to dam rivers (Kirchherr 2018; Thorkildsen 2018; Flaminio 2021). Past and current hydropower developments have engendered conflict across a range of spatial and temporal scales. In the face of the degradation of riverine ecosystems and livelihoods, displacements, and cultural dispossession, such conflicts are often violent (Del Bene et al. 2018, Owusu et al. 2017). Although hydropower conflicts are often described in terms of their interrelated social, political and environmental dimensions (Sneddon 2002), the literature thus far lacks a clear definition of what constitutes conflict, how to categorize different forms of conflict, and what conflicts generate over the short- and long-terms in relation to “solutions”. Additionally, these conflicts also occur across a wide range of spatial scales, from struggles over transnational river basins such as the Mekong and Nile, to more localized conflicts pitting communities against states or private actors (Sneddon and Fox 2006; Flaminio 2021). The vast majority of scholarship on water conflicts focuses on the transnational scale while those at the subnational or local levels, although occurring more frequently, are often overlooked or downplayed. Yet a focus on local level conflicts arising from opposing water ontologies may offer a broader and more nuanced understanding of conflict dynamics and how to promote more socio-ecologically just human-river relations (Boelens 2015; Yates et al. 2017).
In addition to a lack of nuanced theoretical work on the assumptions that underpin how conflicts are understood, we see multiple opportunities to initiate novel approaches to conflicts over hydropower development. These include: how to most effectively visualize conflicts through maps and other forms of cartographic representation drawing on critical data analysis (Alley et al. 2014); the role of financialization of hydropower in engendering conflict (Ahlers 2020); the different forms of violence (propagated by dam projects (Blake and Barney 2018); and many others. Thus, we seek to revisit past and contemporary thinking on water conflicts by bringing together cases from across the globe and highlighting the importance of subnational and localized conflicts, while also brainstorming ways to effectively bring together theory and praxis on the future of hydropower development.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda