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Socialist hydropower governances compared: dams and resettlement as experienced by Dai and Thai societies from the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands

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Abstract

Research on hydropower development has shown that a diversity of social and environmental impacts of dams is distributed unevenly among various state and corporate actors and riparian populations. This article analyses how two neighbouring socialist states, China and Vietnam, govern dam-induced resettlement along their respective sections of the Red River Watershed. Our investigation focuses on resettlement villages created during the construction of the Madushan (China) and Ban Chat (Vietnam) reservoirs and testifies that resettlement policies on both sides of the border serve statist modernization agendas that fail to acknowledge Dai (China) and Thai (Vietnam) ethnic minority livelihoods. While local populations endure the greatest impacts from dam-induced changes in water allocation and the ensuing consequences for land resources, the benefits of hydropower development are first and foremost shared among state-owned and/or state-backed energy companies. These companies reap huge profits from their role as power generators for capitalist production, while also benefiting from state authorities underevaluating resettled communities’ livelihood assets. A comparison of the two cases reveals that despite the border that separates China and Vietnam, and despite both states emphasizing different resettlement discourses, governance of dam-induced resettlement is strikingly similar.

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Notes

  1. Ethnic minorities account for 8% of the Chinese population and make up 33% of Yunnan’s population (YBS 2012). In Vietnam, the Kinh majority makes up 86% of the country’s population. The Thai composes 60% of Lai Chau Province’s population.

  2. Formal land use rights are recognized in contracts in both countries, while parallel usufruct regimes oversee land tenure arrangements that are officially less formal but still potentially recognized within resettlement plans.

  3. For an overview of different forms of development-induced displacement and related literature, see Terminski (2013).

  4. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics aid was key to the Vietnamese hydropower programme until the mid-1980s. By the time the WCD convened, Vietnam lacked the resources to develop dams on its own.

  5. Central level regulations refrain from using words with a more binding effect.

  6. Briefly put, the NPV equals the value of net cash inflows from the electricity sale during the lifetime of the plant minus total investment costs, discounted over the lifetime of the dam.

  7. The Madushan Dam participates in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon credit trading mechanism. For a review of the impacts of carbon finance upon this project, see Rousseau (2017).

  8. The Ban Chat Dam is one of three dams composing the Son La Dam complex, the others being the Huoi Quang Dam (520 MW) and Son La Dam (2400 MW). The Son La Dam complex triggered the most important resettlement scheme in Vietnam’s history, with over 91,000 displaced following the creation of its reservoir.

  9. The Handai is a subgroup of the Dai ethnic minority.

  10. The mu is the most widely used unit of measure for land in rural China. One mu = 1/15 of a hectare.

  11. The most common ethnic distribution pattern in this area is one where Dai societies settle in the lowlands, Yi communities in the midlands, and Hani groups in the highlands (Uhlig 1969).

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Acknowledgements

The first author acknowledges support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and International Development Research Center (IDRC). The second and third authors acknowledge support from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Germany), the Région Midi-Pyrénées, the University of Toulouse 2, the Province of Son La, the French Embassy in Vietnam, and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD).

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Correspondence to Jean-François Rousseau.

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Rousseau, JF., Orange, D., Habich-Sobiegalla, S. et al. Socialist hydropower governances compared: dams and resettlement as experienced by Dai and Thai societies from the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands. Reg Environ Change 17, 2409–2419 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1170-0

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