Search Results (3)

Megadams are controversial ventures. Despite their contentious benefits, the negative impacts on local communities are enormous. This has prompted substantial disapproval and resistance, particularly from the communities that endure the most of its adverse effects. While many megadams have been constructed in the face of opposition, others have been halted or altered as a result of the fierce protests of affected people and their allies. A better understanding of the latter is key to promoting equitable and just water governance throughout the implementation of hydraulic infrastructure. Based on ethnographic and historical research carried out between 2014 and 2017, the article shows the power relations, social actors and historical-contextual factors that have influenced the development of the Daule-Peripa and Baba megadams on the Ecuadorian coast. From a political ecology and subaltern studies perspective, this article describes and analyses the social, territorial, and historical interconnectedness of the local communities of Patricia Pilar and Daule-Peripa dam in coastal Ecuador that successfully stopped the construction of a dam and had a great influence on its final hydraulic design. I argue that, given the adequate socio-political conditions and a systematic process of knowledge and experience exchange among affected communities, anti-dam struggles can emerge with significant capacity to influence in their favour the megadam implementation processes and other hydraulic infrastructures. Full article

The paper assesses social impacts of a mega-dam project (Merowe Dam in Sudan) as perceived by host and affected communities (i.e., upstream, downstream, and relocated residents), which is not commonly seen in the literature. Primary survey and interviews were conducted with 300 residents, government officials, the Dam Implementation Unit (DIU), NGOs and other key informants. Five inter-related areas of impact were scrutinized: (a) displacement of communities; (b) resettlement of displaced communities in a new location; (c) technological factors; (d) social mobility factors; and (e) economic and political institutions. Results show that Merowe Dam exerted positive as well as adverse social impacts on local communities. Increase in home sizes, opportunities for children’s schooling and quality of life improvement ranked as the top three positive impacts with residents located downstream scoring relatively higher than relocated and upstream residents. Relocated residents also showed positive attitudes towards the provision of essential services (schools, health facilities, availability of running water, electricity, marketplace, etc.), thereby enabling them to enjoy and flourish in their social lives. The adverse impacts are centered on intangible factors, such as, sentimental effects closely related to their feelings, loss of history, memories, nostalgia about the old place, and grievances regarding compensation packages and its management. Therefore, it is important to recognize the need for long-term monitoring of the resettlement process and provide emotional support to those displaced and resettled. Furthermore, there is also a need to address the livelihood requirements of local communities in the affected region. Full article

Mega-dams are commonly designed, constructed, and implemented under governors’ rule and technocrats’ knowledge. Such hydraulic infrastructures are characteristically presented as if based on monolithic technical consensus and unidirectional engineering. However, those who are affected by these water interventions, and eventually governed by the changes brought by them, often dispute the forms of knowledge, norms, morals, and operation and use rules embedded in mega-hydraulic engineers’ designs. Protests may also deeply influence the design and development of the technological artifacts. By using approaches related to the Social Construction of Technology and Partha Chatterjee’s politics of the governed, this article shows (i) how protests against the Baba dam in coastal Ecuador greatly influenced the dam’s designs, protecting communities’ lands from being flooded; and (ii) how, at the same time, techno-political decision-makers deployed hydraulic design as a dividing rule, turning potentially affected communities against each other. We conclude that megadam designs are shaped by the power interplay among governors and governed, with the latter being internally differentiated. By critically analyzing the role of technology development—materializing changing ‘political context and relationships’—we show how contested and adapted dam design may favor some stakeholders while simultaneously affecting others and weakening united dam-resistance movements. Full article