Large hydropower and legitimacy: a policy regime analysis, applied to Myanmar

Hydropower development in capacity-constrained countries can unfold through unsound policy arguments, narrow institutional and implementing arrangements, and ad hoc decision making processes. To derive insights for more legitimate policy making, we provide the first holistic account of Myanmar’s legitimation struggles over large hydropower, focusing on Myitsone, the country’s most controversial dam, during the period 2003–2011. Our analysis takes a policy regime perspective (specifically, a “political economic regime of provisioning” framework). Among our findings: (1) frequent use of non-rationally persuasive argument among contending actors; (2) a spiral of declining policy legitimacy, which is amplified by civil society mobilization, and halted by a 2011 decision to suspend Myitsone; (3) rejection of Myitsone but conditional acceptance of large hydropower among some elements of civil society. Opportunity and capability for more technically informed, inclusive discussion exists in Myanmar, but given hydropower’s complexities, urgently deserves to be augmented. Although Myitsone in Myanmar is an exceptional case, we offer three propositions to assess and improve policy legitimacy of hydropower

Laur Kiik's Quick Files

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Conspiracy, God’s Plan, and National Emergency: Kachin Popular Analyses of the Ceasefire Era and its Resource Grabs

International audienc

Conspiracy, God’s Plan, and National Emergency: Kachin Popular Analyses of the Ceasefire Era and its Resource Grabs

International audienc

Wild-ing the Ethnography of Conservation: Writing Nature's Value and Agency In

When reading ethnographic literature on nature conservation, one may wonder: where has nature gone? Social anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how the environmental projects of governments and transnational NGOs encounter, dispossess, clash culturally with, and try to govern native people across the world. Yet, these diverse ethnographies often say little about what motivates those encounters firstly: local and global nature, especially wildlife, plants, and the planet’s ecological crisis. Thus, this paper seeks ways how ethnographic writing on conservation practice could better reflect that the planet’s many self-willed, struggling, and valued non-humans, too, enter conservation’s encounters. To find paths toward such a ‘wild-ing’ of ethnography, the paper locates and reviews disparate materials from across the social-anthropological literature on biodiversity conservation. The review is structured through three questions: How does and could the ethnography of conservation represent nature’s value? How can it show that animals, plants, and other nature make and meet worlds? How can it incorporate natural science data about non-human worlds and ecological crisis? Altogether, we understand nature conservation clearer through the interdisciplinary and more-than-human ethnography of world-making encounters. Such wilder ethnography may also better connect people’s suffering and nature’s vanishing – as problems both for anthropology and conservation science

Conspiracy, God's Plan, and National Emergency: Kachin Popular Analyses of the Ceasefire Era and its Resource Grabs

This chapter draws from periods of ethnographic field research in the Kachin region from 2010 to 2015, covering the lead up to the breakdown of the ceasefire and the discourses that emerged in relation to it subsequently. It therefore discusses in critical terms how large parts of Kachin society understand the ceasefire era and the reasons for its collapse in 2011. It focuses particularly on popular understandings of the large-scale resource grabs that defined much of that era. The chapter lays out a dominant Kachin nationalist-theoretical framework by discussing three core terms: Wunpawng Mungdan (territory/ ‘Kachin country’), Wunpawng myusha (people/ ‘Kachin nation’), and Karai Kasang (divinity/ Christian ‘God’). The chapter then tackles how Kachin nationalists deploy these terms in specific ways to understand their 1994-2011 ceasefire experiences; in doing so, they express ideas of ethno-national emergency, divine predestination, and ethnocidal conspiracy. These understandings guide many people in Kachin society to commit to resistance and the ethno-patriotic project of co-building a ‘land yet-to-be’, instead of engaging in a ceasefire based on compromise. Amid the current battles, anger and humanitarian crisis, the question of whether one wants ‘our Kachin nation’ to pursue full state independence or merely federal autonomy within Myanmar has become a sensitive and barely voiced debate inside Kachin society. While exploring these theories and popular analyses, this chapter steps into an open critical dialogue with Kachin nationalists themselves, suggesting ways in which these understandings are contradicted or complicated by other social realities. This is to draw a fuller, fairer, and more balanced picture of the complex social dynamics in this region. Simultaneously, the chapter cautions against the tendency to make homogenising claims about Burma’s minority ethnic nations, as if these were simple, monolithic entities rather than the internally diverse, class-stratified and complex societies that in fact they are. * See more at: http://kachinceasefire.weebly.com/laur-kiik.htm

Dodo dilemmas: conflicting ethical loyalties in conservation social science research

In a time of deepening social and ecological crises, the question of research ethics is more pertinent than ever. Our intervention grapples with the specific personal, ethical, and methodological challenges that arise at the interface of conservation and social science. We expose these challenges through the figure of Chris, a fictional anoymised composite of our fraught diverse fieldwork experiences in Australia, Burma, Indonesian Borneo, Namibia, and Vanuatu. Fundamentally, we explore fieldwork as a series of contested loyalties: loyalties to our different human and non-human research participants, to our commitments to academic rigour and to the project of wildlife conservation itself, whilst reckoning with conservation’s spotted (neo)colonial past. Our struggles and reflections illustrate: Firstly, that practical research ethics do not predetermine forms of reciprocity. Secondly, while we need to choose our concealments carefully and follow the principle of not doing harm, we also have the responsibility to reveal social and environmental injustices. Thirdly, we must acknowledge that as researchers we are complicit in the practices of human and nonhuman violence and exclusion that suffuse conservation. Finally, given how these responsibilities move the researcher beyond a position of innocence or neutrality, academic institutions should adjust their ethics support. This intervention highlights the need for greater openness about research challenges emerging from conflicting personal, ethical, and disciplinary loyalties, in order to facilitate greater cross-disciplinary understanding. Active engagement with these ethical questions through collaborative dialogue-based fora, both before and after fieldwork, would enable learning and consequently transform research practices

Large hydropower and legitimacy: A policy regime analysis, applied to Myanmar

Hydropower development in capacity-constrained countries can unfold through unsound policy arguments, narrow institutional and implementing arrangements, and ad hoc decision making processes. To derive insights for more legitimate policy making, we provide the first holistic account of Myanmar's legitimation struggles over large hydropower, focusing on Myitsone, the country's most controversial dam, during the period 2003-2011. Our analysis takes a policy regime perspective (specifically, a "political economic regime of provisioning" framework). Among our findings: (1) frequent use of non-rationally persuasive argument among contending actors; (2) a spiral of declining policy legitimacy, which is amplified by civil society mobilization, and halted by a 2011 decision to suspend Myitsone; (3) rejection of Myitsone but conditional acceptance of large hydropower among some elements of civil society. Opportunity and capability for more technically informed, inclusive discussion exists in Myanmar, but given hydropower's complexities, urgently deserves to be augmented. Although Myitsone in Myanmar is an exceptional case, we offer three propositions to assess and improve policy legitimacy of hydropower

Recognizing reflexivity among conservation practitioners.

When deciding how to conserve biodiversity, practitioners navigate diverse missions, sometimes conflicting approaches, and uncertain trade-offs. These choices are based not only on evidence, funders' priorities, stakeholders' interests, and policies, but also on practitioners' personal experiences, backgrounds, and values. Calls for greater reflexivity-an individual or group's ability to examine themselves in relation to their actions and interactions with others-have appeared in the conservation science literature. But what role does reflexivity play in conservation practice? We explored how self-reflection can shape how individuals and groups conserve nature. To provide examples of reflexivity in conservation practice, we conducted a year-long series of workshop discussions and online exchanges. During these, we examined cases from the peer-reviewed and gray literature, our own experiences, and conversations with 10 experts. Reflexivity among practitioners spanned individual and collective levels and informal and formal settings. Reflexivity also encompassed diverse themes, including practitioners' values, emotional struggles, social identities, training, cultural backgrounds, and experiences of success and failure. Reflexive processes also have limitations, dangers, and costs. Informal and institutionalized reflexivity requires allocation of limited time and resources, can be hard to put into practice, and alone cannot solve conservation challenges. Yet, when intentionally undertaken, reflexive processes might be integrated into adaptive management cycles at multiple points, helping conservation practitioners better reach their goals. Reflexivity could also play a more transformative role in conservation by motivating practitioners to reevaluate their goals and methods entirely. Reflexivity might help the conservation movement imagine and thus work toward a better world for wildlife, people, and the conservation sector itself