Integration, participation and the politics of water resources management in the Sesan river basin
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis uses a framework of contextualised critical hydropolitics with reference to political ecology and environmental justice in order to investigate different framings of water resources management practices in the Sesan transboundary river basin. The study applies an ethnographic approach to observe and assess how participation and integration are conceptualised and manifested in the form of debates and discussions at public meetings and other contexts. The result of the empirical research shows that integration and participation are framed and interpreted in various ways, shifting from a critique and challenge to existing ways of doing things toward an appropriation of progressive discourse by more powerful actors to claim legitimacy and maintain authority in water governance. The case of IWRM-led planning in the Mekong and Sesan demonstrates how integration and participation become programmatic- the circumstances that the voices of the dam-affected people and their concerns are programmatised and grassroots grievances and responses to the impacts of Sesan dams relevant to transboundary governance are downplayed and depoliticised. As a result, the involvement of the dam-affected people in water resources management continues to be short-changed and they are generally left out of the Sesan decision-making process. In the case of Sesan advocacy, as demonstrated by grassroots movements such as the 3SPN, integration and participation are framed in terms of what may be termed a ‘justice-orientation’ to transboundary governance which has greater significance in bringing about justice for the dam-affected people. The thesis concludes that the social framings of Sesan transboundary impacts through a discourse of integration and participation are devices for hegemonic actors such as development bank agents and water managers to claim their legitimacy in Sesan water resources management and impose their views of governance on other actors.
Author: Worawan Sukraroek
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W87792916