Social Innovation and Chinese Overseas Hydropower Dams: The Nexus of National Social Policy and Corporate Social Responsibility

The nexus between hydropower dams, social policy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a currently understudied topic. This paper aims to fill parts of this gap by discussing these issues in relation to the world's largest builder of hydropower dams, Chinese state-owned enterprise Sinohydro. This paper draws on the analysis of firm strategy documents and CSR documents and gains additional insights from key informant interviews. The research finds that in 2011 Sinohydro developed its first comprehensive policy framework for social and environmental safeguards that was in line with international standards set by the World Bank/International Finance Corporation. These policies were however later replaced by weaker, vaguer policy. The paper suggests there is a need for Sinohydro and other dam-builders to re-engage with social innovation to mitigate some of the negative social and environmental implications of hydropower dams

Chinese Overseas Hydropower Dams and Social Sustainability: The Bui Dam in Ghana and the Kamchay Dam in Cambodia.

There is a shortage of empirical studies on the relationship between Chinese hydropower dams and social sustainability. Comparative research on Chinese-funded and Chinese-built hydropower projects is rare. This article aims to fill parts of this gap by discussing these issues in relation to Chinese overseas hydropower dams in Ghana (Bui Dam) and Cambodia (Kamchay Dam). Both projects are built by Sinohydro and financed by ExIm Bank. This article draws on in-depths interviews and focus group discussions with local communities affected by the dams, institutional actors in Ghana and Cambodia, Chinese actors, and dam builders. The article uses an environmental justice perspective as an analytical framework. The article concludes that the dam projects could improve their social sustainability framework in practice and theory; social benchmarking should be introduced and social policies need to be improved to be in line with international social standards on hydropower projects

South-South technology transfer of low-carbon innovation: large Chinese hydropower dams in Cambodia

Large dams have been controversially debated for decades due to their large‐scale and often irreversible social and environmental impacts. In the pursuit of low‐carbon energy and climate change mitigation, hydropower is experiencing a new renaissance. At the forefront of this renaissance are Chinese actors as the world's largest hydropower dam‐builders. This paper aims to discuss the role of South–South technology transfer of low‐carbon energy innovation and its opportunities and barriers by using a case study of the first large Chinese‐funded and Chinese‐built dam in Cambodia. Using the Kamchay Dam as an example, the paper finds that technology transfer can only be fully successful when host governments and organizations have the capacity to absorb new technologies. The paper also finds that technology transfer in the dam sector needs to go beyond hardware and focus more on the transfer of expertise, skills and knowledge to enable long‐term sustainable development

Space, state-building and the hydraulic mission: crafting the Mozambican State

This article explores the role of large-scale water infrastructure in the formation of states in sub-Saharan Africa. We examine this through a focus on government agents and their shifting hydro-developmental visions of the state in colonial and post-colonial Mozambique. Over time, the focus, underlying principles, and goals of the hydraulic mission shifted, triggered by contextual factors and historical developments within and outside the country. We identify the making of three hydraulic paradigms, fostering different imaginaries of ‘the state’ and social and spatial engineering of the territory: the ‘Estado Novo’ (1930 - 1974), the socialist post-independence state-space (1974 - 1987) and the neoliberal state (1987 - present). We then conclude by discussing how the shifting discursive justifications for infrastructure projects consolidate different state projects and link these to material re-patterning of hydrosocial territories, showing that whilst promoted as a rupture with the past, emerging projects tend to reaffirm, rather than redistribute, power and water within the country

Potential for anthropogenic disturbances to influence evolutionary change in the life history of a threatened salmonid

Although evolutionary change within most species is thought to occur slowly, recent studies have identified cases where evolutionary change has apparently occurred over a few generations. Anthropogenically altered environments appear particularly open to rapid evolutionary change over comparatively short time scales. Here, we consider a Pacific salmon population that may have experienced life-history evolution, in response to habitat alteration, within a few generations. Historically, juvenile fall Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) from the Snake River migrated as subyearlings to the ocean. With changed riverine conditions that resulted from hydropower dam construction, some juveniles now migrate as yearlings, but more interestingly, the yearling migration tactic has made a large contribution to adult returns over the last decade. Optimal life-history models suggest that yearling juvenile migrants currently have a higher fitness than subyearling migrants. Although phenotypic plasticity likely accounts for some of the change in migration tactics, we suggest that evolution also plays a significant role. Evolutionary change prompted by anthropogenic alterations to the environment has general implications for the recovery of endangered species. The case study we present herein illustrates the importance of integrating evolutionary considerations into conservation planning for species at risk

Dams and Development

The dams debate is simple because behind the array of facts and figures, of economic statistics and engineering calculations, lie a number of basic and easily understood principles. If adhered to and routinely applied, these principles would not only go a long way towards responding to the controversy surrounding dams, but would markedly improve decision-making on water and energy resources, achieving better outcomes. In identifying these principles, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) has not had to look far; they are the same principles that emerge from the global commitments to human rights, development and sustainability. The report sets out to distil more than two years of intense study, dialogue and reflection.dams, energy, rehabilitaion, resettlement, river irrigation, water quality, water quantity, forests, submergence, equity, water resources, Sociology, Economics