Evolution of Dam Policies

Evolution of Dam Policies
Author: Waltina Scheumann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3642234038

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) report (2000) “Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making” set a landmark in the ongoing controversy over large dams. Now that more than ten years have passed, one has to realize that the WCD norms matter. However, their real chance of becoming implemented relies on whether their core values, strategic priorities and guidelines are accepted by national decision-makers and are translated into official policies and practices. The book’s major concern is whether the big hydropower states have improved their standards for environment and resettlement, and whether international standards are applied or exist only on paper. The introductory and synthesis chapters present the methodological approach and discuss the findings. Other chapters analyze changes in dam policies in the big hydropower states Brazil, China, India and Turkey; the role of non-governmental organizations in advocating against the Turkish Ilisu Dam project on the Tigris River; the strategies of International Rivers and World Wildlife Fund for Nature in the global hydropower game; the policies of the German government and its positioning in the dam debate, and the engagement of Chinese actors in building the Bui Dam (Ghana) and the Kamchay Dam (Cambodia).

Contested Knowledges

Contested Knowledges
Author: Esha Shah
Publisher:
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN: 9783038978114

Locally and globally, mega-hydraulic projects have become deeply controversial. Recently, despite widespread critique, they have regained a new impetus worldwide. The developmentand operation of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects are manifestations of contested knowledge regimes. In this special issue we present, analyze and critically engage with situations where multiple knowledge regimes interact and conflict with each other, and where different grounds for claiming the truth are used to construct hydrosocial realities. In this introductory paper, we outline the conceptual groundwork. We discuss ‘the dark legend of UnGovernance’ as an epistemological mainstay underlying the mega-hydraulic knowledge regimes, involving a deep, often subconscious, neglect of the multiplicity of hydrosocial territories and water cultures. Accordingly, modernist epistemic regimes tend to subjugate other knowledge systems and dichotomize ‘civilized Self’ versus ‘backward Other’; they depend upon depersonalized planning models that manufacture ignorance. Romanticizing and reifying the ‘othered’ hydrosocial territories and vernacular / indigenous knowledge, however, may pose a serious danger to dam-affected communities. Instead, we show how multiple forms of power challenge mega-hydraulic rationality thereby repoliticizing large dam regimes. This happens often through complex, multi-actor, multi-scalar coalitions that make that knowledge is co-created in informal arenas and battlefields.

The Evolution of Natural Resources Law and Policy

The Evolution of Natural Resources Law and Policy
Author: Lawrence J. MacDonnell
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2010
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781604424300

Natural resources law is a dynamic field of practice, with a rich history that reaches back several centuries. The authors look at current challenges and offer ideas about the future while demonstrating that the federal government's role continues to be a complex one as markets and private actors become more visible participants in the current policy arena. Part I provides foundational analyses of the law, while the second part reviews thematic issues in the area.

Dilemmas of hydropower development in Vietnam

Dilemmas of hydropower development in Vietnam
Author: Ty Pham Huu
Publisher: Eburon Uitgeverij B.V.
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9059729595

Hydropower is one of the biggest controversies in Vietnam in recent decades because of its adverse environmental and social consequences, especially negative impacts on displaced people who make way for hydropower dam construction. This book explains the controversies related to hydropower development in Vietnam in order to make policy recommendations for equitable and sustainable development. The book focuses on the analysis of emerging issues, such as land acquisition, compensation for losses, displacement and resettlement, support for livelihood development, and benefit sharing from hydropower development. The analysis emphasizes the role of different stakeholders in the decision-making process for hydropower development in Vietnam as a means to find a better governance model.

Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy

Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy
Author: David Reed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351685465

The prosperity and national security of the United States depend directly on the prosperity and stability of both partner and competing countries around the world. Today, U.S. interests are under rising pressure from water scarcity, extreme weather events and water-driven ecological change in key geographies of strategic interest to the U.S. Those water-driven stresses are undermining economic productivity, weakening governance systems and fraying social cohesion in scores of countries and, in the process, undermining the vitality of rural livelihoods, fostering local and ethnic conflicts, driving broad migratory movements and contributing to the growth of insurgencies and terrorist networks. While the U.S. intelligence community has steadily expanded natural resource concerns in their global threat analyses, our overseas development assistance remains locked into provision of water and hygienic services rather than responding to the full sweep of global water challenges including governance and policy failures, growing conflicts over water and the need for promoting sustainable transboundary water arrangements in partner countries. A fundamental departure from the past is urgently needed. Based on 18 case studies, Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy provides an analytical framework to help policy makers, scholars and researchers studying the intersection of U.S. foreign policy with the environment and sustainability issues, interpret the impacts of water-driven social disruptions on the stability of partner governments and U.S. interests abroad. The book also delivers specific recommendations to reorient U.S. development and diplomatic engagements that can forestall and prevent social disruptions and ensuing threats to U.S. prosperity and national security.

The History of Large Federal Dams

The History of Large Federal Dams
Author: David P. Billington
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2005-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780160728235

Explores the story of Federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction.

Inequality and Uneven Development in the Post-Crisis World

Inequality and Uneven Development in the Post-Crisis World
Author: Sebastiano Fadda
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1315388812

In the years following the financial crash, two issues have become central to the debate in economics: inequality and the uneven nature of sustainable development. These two issues are at the core of this book which aims to explain three key questions: why inequality has increased so much in the last three decades; why most advanced economies are stagnating or are experiencing moderate economic growth; and why, even where economic growth is occurring, the quality of that growth is questioned. Inequality and Uneven Development in the Post-Crisis World is divided into three parts. The first part concerns the theoretical aspects of inequality, and ethical issues regarding economics and equality. The second part explores empirical evidence and policy suggestions drawing on the uneven levels of development and unprecedented levels of inequality experienced among advanced economies in the context of global financial capitalism. The third part focuses on sustainable development issues such as full employment, social costs of global trade liberalization, environmental sustainability and ecological issues. Along with inequality these issues are central for capitalism and for economic development. This volume is of interest to those who study political economy, sustainable development and social inequality.

Resettlement Policy in Large Development Projects

Resettlement Policy in Large Development Projects
Author: Ryo Fujikura
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2015-06-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317748557

Hydropower generation by construction of large dams attracts considerable attention as a feasible renewable energy source to meet the power demand in Asian cities. However, large development projects cause involuntary resettlement. Of the world’s forty to eighty million resettlers, many resettlers have been unable to rebuild their livelihood after relocation and have become impoverished. This book uniquely explores the long-term impacts of displacement and resettlement. It shows that long-term post-project evaluation is necessary to assess the rehabilitation and livelihood reconstruction of resettlers after relocation. It focuses on large dam projects in a number of Asian countries, including Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, which are often ignored in Displacement studies in favour of China or India. Drawing on a wealth of empirical data over ten years, it presents crucial factors for successful resettlement by analysing lessons learned. The range of countries allow for a diverse and complex set of factors and outcomes to be analysed. Many of the factors for successful resettlement recur despite the cases being different in implementation period and location. The book presents highly original findings gathered by local researchers in the field directly talking to resettlers who were relocated more than a decade ago. This original book is a unique resource for researchers and postgraduate students of development studies, environment, geography, sociology and anthropology. It also makes policy recommendations for future resettlement programs that are of great value to development policy makers, planners, water resources engineers and civil society protest groups.

A Watershed in Global Governance?

A Watershed in Global Governance?
Author: Navroz K. Dubash
Publisher:
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2001
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN:

Will governments be running the world in the next century? In this era of globalization, who will make the rules on investment, human rights and environment? How can citizens participate? These are some of the questions a team of researchers from World Resources Institute (WRI, Washington, D.C.), Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT, Dar Es Salaam) and South Asia address in an independent assessment of the World Commission on Dams (WCD).

Dams and Development

Dams and Development
Author: World Commission on Dams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 834
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1134898053

By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process - provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams - presents a new framework for water and energy resources development - develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities with corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making. Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario.