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Ovesen, Jan (1993). Anthropological Reconnaissance in Central Laos: A Survey of Local Communities in a Hydropower Project Area. Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology. No. 13. Stockholm: Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University.
In the annals of anthropologists working in the Lao development industry, Jan Ovesen’s 1993 study of local communities along the Theun, Hinboun and Gnouang Rivers must be amongst the earliest. Ovesen’s study represented a consultancy, which formed part of the feasibility study for the Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project (THHP)– amongst the first dam projects in Laos constructed under the Independent Power Producer model. While there are a number of useful ethnographic observations made the study, ultimately I forward that the report is perhaps more valuable as an example of ‘applied anthropology gone astray.’
Ovesen’s study was conducted during the initial planning stages of a series of major development interventions on the Nam Theun-Kadding and Nam Hinboun watersheds in central Laos, which include the Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project, the Nam Theun 2 project and the recently completed Theun-Hinboun Expansion Project. In this and the next two New Mandala postings, I will explore in more detail how these projects have produced significant socio-ecological changes along the Hinboun River, and how ‘ecological knowledge’ has been produced and applied (or not) in the process.
Ovesen arrived in Laos with two objectives for his study: i) a determination of the cultural groups present in the area of the then proposed Theun-Hinboun hydropower project, ii) an evaluation of whether any of the local groups present in the project area may be disadvantaged by the development and operation of the project.
Theun-Hinboun Watershed (Souce: International Rivers)
First, I note the positive aspects of the study. Ovesen makes a series of interesting ethnographic observations regarding the local communities he visited along the Nam Ngouang, Nam Theun and Nam Hai. His informants reported that on the Nam Hai, crop losses due to flooding might occur every 8 to 10 years, a situation attributed to backwater effects from the main Mekong channel. Lower down the Nam Hinboun, Gordon Claridge (1996) reported that rice paddy crops would be flooded for short periods of time each year, with paddy lost to prolonged flooding in one out of every 4 years. Ovesen’s observations on the agricultural practices of local residents are useful–for example how riverside farmers might continue with conducting upland swidden agriculture even though the opportunities existed for moving into wet rice production (e.g. ownership of buffalo, potentially suitable terrain). Ovesen writes:
…the reality is that competence in paddy cultivation is not something people are born with. In the upper Nam Hai plain, at least, most of the inhabitants are relative newcomers from the Nam Theun area, where paddy cultivation was never part of their traditional cultural knowledge. (p. 21)
This fits with my research experiences lower down the Hinboun, where villagers reported only moving into wet rice in the 1960s, and only after a couple of farmers from Northeast Thailand and southern Laos, with knowledge of wet rice cultivation, married into the village. Ovesen also reported on a hybrid form of wet- rice/ swidden cultivation on the Nam Hai, whereby farmers planted bunded lowland paddy for up to 5 years and then left the fields to fallow for a couple years. “Wet rice” and “swidden” are two ends of a spectrum of agricultural technology, with a range of farmer practices, in places such as the Ngouang-Theun-Hai-Hinboun watersheds, falling in between these poles.
Ovesen’s observations concerning the importance of fishing are of general interest (reported as very important on the Nam Theun and Nam Gnouang, moderately important on the Hinboun and less so on the Nam Hai). And he argues that the importance of forests for village livelihoods can “hardly be overstated” (p. 30). His notes on the ethnic origins of the Lao Kaleung and Tai Khang people of this area of Laos is also of interest– for the Tai Khang, arriving from Vietnam through Sam Neua and Xieng Khouang, with a cultural heartland in Ban Phontan, in present day Bolikhamxai province (p. 26-27).
Unfortunately, Ovesen’s study goes off the rails when it comes to an understanding of upland ecology and hydropower interventions. I suggest that the problems are linked to three key biases: a) Ovesen’s presumption of a pre-existing socio-ecological crisis of swidden agriculture in the Nam Gnouang/Nam Theun, which is inferred, not demonstrated through evidence; b) an assumption that hydropower development interventions would then effectively help to ameliorate or redress this crisis; c) a lack of attention to the likelihood of new social and ecological externalities created by hydropower development, particularly for downstream areas along the recipient river (the Nam Hai- Hinboun). These biases lead the author into an overly favourable judgment of the Theun-Hinboun inter-basin diversion project, and indeed into making sweeping recommendations for large-scale population resettlement.
Based upon 17 days of local fieldwork, on his third visit to Laos and his first trip to the project area, Ovesen arrives at the conclusion that there a severe ecological crisis was in play on the Nam Theun-Nam Gnouang area, and given this purported crisis, that “…positive measures be taken in connection with the project to induce the greater part of the population of the Nam Theun/Nam Gnouang area to move into the Nam Hai area and take up paddy cultivation” (p. 24). He bases his notion of an ecological crisis upon four points:
- a reported 8 year swidden fallow period in the local villages he visited
- a reported separation of 6 km of villages from some of their upland rice fields
- a reported high rate of population increase
- and the broad notion that swidden would produce on average less rice per hectare than bunded wet rice paddy
There are significant and I would argue quite unwarranted assumptions at work here, which disregards alternate options for improving village livelihoods and the sustainability of the swidden/wet rice/fishing/forest livelihood system without resettlement programmes or the development of the Theun-Hinboun inter-basin hydropower scheme.
Based upon these insights, Ovesen then recommends that local people from the Nam Theun and Nam Gnouang be persuaded to move to another watershed, the Nam Hai plain, through the provision of
- free transportation of disassembled houses and belongings
- appointment of agricultural advisors
- supply of electricity along the Nam Hai
- electrical pumps and pipes for irrigation of the paddy fields
We will revisit these ideas of establishing dry season irrigation in project mitigation and compensation initiatives in my next two postings.
The study concludes with a rather glowing endorsement of the proposed Theun-Hinboun hydropower project. Ovesen writes:
I have been unable to detect any ways in which the project could in the long run adversely affect any of the population groups in the area…The import of such elements will inevitably affect the ‘traditional’ culture of the local population in various ways, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, or something that should be avoided at all costs…. If the aforementioned recommendations are followed, it is my considered opinion, supported by the results of the study, that the project, from an anthropological point of view, may only have positive (direct and indirect) effects on the society and culture of the local population. (p. 73)
Ovesen indicated his hope that the implementation of the Nam Theun ┬╜ project (as the Theun-Hinboun project was known at the time) would mean the cancellation of the Nam Theun 2 project. This did not come to pass. Not only were the Theun-Hinboun (start up in 1998) and Nam Theun 2 (2010) projects both constructed, but the Theun-Hinboun Expansion project (constructed to compensate for the river drawdown effects of NT2) then also flooded the Nam Gnouang valley in 2012,and doubled the inter-basin diversion of water from the Gnouang-Theun-Kidding system into the Hai-Hinboun system.
On the one hand, this report could be considered as an interesting if relatively minor footnote in the history of Lao hydropower development. As an example of applied anthropology, it strikes me as odd, to say the least, that an academic anthropologist with an admittedly limited understanding of local context, could be so willing to endorse such dramatic social and ecological engineering interventions. More seriously perhaps, this study arguably formed part of a discursive process that minimized (in the extreme) the probable ecological outcomes of a major inter-basin diversion hydropower project such as that of Theun-Hinboun Hydropower. The implicit assumption appeared to be that because no actual resettlement was entailed in the first THPC project, therefore there would be no significant social impacts. Because the state of ‘expert’ knowledge was so favourable, no baseline studies were conducted prior to the startup of THPC, and indeed the rhetoric of project supporters was that more water would produce more fish for downstream villagers (FIVAS, 1996).
Struggles over competing interpretations of the social-ecological effects and outcomes of the THPC project, and struggles over the production and legitimacy of ecological knowledge about this watershed, continued in the years after the Ovesen study (e.g. Shoemaker, 1998; IRN, 1999; Shoemaker, 2000). In my next posting, I will highlight a 2007 document, interpreting how the situation on the Nam Hai and Nam Hinboun had changed in the ten years since the start-up of the THPC project, prepared by a hydropower consultant insider ‘gone rogue’.
References
Claridge, Gordon (1996). An Inventory of Wetlands of the Lao PDR. Bangkok: IUCN.
International Rivers Network (1999). An Update on the Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts of the Nam Theun-Hinboun Hydroelectric Dam and Water Diversion Project in Central Laos. 15-17 August 1999. www.irn.org .
FIVAS (1996). More water, more fish? http://www.fivas.org/sider/tekst.asp?side=107
Shoemaker, Bruce (2000). Theun-Hinboun Update: A Review of the Theun-Hinboun Power Company’s Mitigation and Compensation Program. December 2000.
Shoemaker, Bruce (1998). Trouble on the Theun-Hinboun. A Field Report on the Socio-Economic and Environmental Effects of the Nam Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project in Laos. April, 1998. www.irn.org/programs/mekong/threport.html.
This is an interesting subject. I’ve just finished reading a chapter in Parnwell and Bryant’s Environmental Change in SEA on Theun Hinboun and ‘appraisal optimism’. I look forward to the next two instalments.
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Jan Ovesen’s book will ultimately go down as an example of how not to conduct a study of potential hydropower impacts. He was so wrong about so many important things. Unfortunately, this sort of study does nothing but give foreign anthropologists a bad name.
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I have approved this reluctantly. I am at a loss to understand why academic critique on a topic like this should be anonymous. AW
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It is a bit curious to offer such a strong, serious, and negative verdict on what was a short term research project and was not primarily aimed at academics. The little report from 20 years ago can at least be situated in real concerns affecting a range of real people whose interests are sometimes at odds. The issue is not (in my opinion) that Ovesen’s predictions and proposals are wrong, but that he suggests that these have to be solved by giving the affected people some options regarding stable livelihood, and that the rest has to play out in local politics that is invested in some mutually beneficial outcomes. That, to me, is more “with it” than a lot of academic anthropology.
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Hi Leif:
Not sure how this study could be considered as an example of engaged anthropology, given:
– a clear anti-swidden agriculture bias, dressed up as anti-romantic hard-headed realism
– combined with an apparent inability to consider that a major inter-basin transfer hydropower project might produce some social-ecological externalities for a vulnerable local population
– and the promotion of project mitigation measures based on sweeping programs of population resettlement, and vague ideas about inducing local people to take up alternative intensive agriculture based on a pie-in-the-sky irrigation mega-project scheme.
If that’s an example of “more with it” applied anthropology, that’s setting the bar fairly low, even for the early 1990s?
My intention is not to overstate the importance of the study, as you mention it was a minor research report based on short term fieldwork. However, for understanding the environmental history of the Hinboun watershed, it deserves a mention.
It’s an interesting document which shows how one outside anthropological expert was understanding the social ecology of the Hinboun, before the ‘age of hydropower’ in central-southern Laos.
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It’s also interesting to note that no less of an anthropologist than Professor Tania Murray Li, then at Dalhousie University in Halifax– and now Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Culture of Asia at University of Toronto– apparently found Ovesen’s characterisation of the Hai-Hinboun communities and the locally beneficial outcomes of the Theun-Hinboun hydropower project convincing.
At a time when conducting research in Laos was very difficult, and as the country was just opening up after almost two decades of Communist isolation, Ovesen’s study was likely not without its pro-hydropower ideological effects, and at least some informed academics were reading the study at the time of its publication.
The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. August 1994. 31(3): 362-363.
Book Reviews
Ing-Britt Trankell, On the Road in Laos: An Anthropological Study of Road Construction and Rural Communities. Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology, No. 12, 1983.
Jan Ovesen, Anthropological Reconnaissance in Central Laos: A Survey of Local Communities in a Hydropower Project Area. Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology, No. 13, 1993.
p. 362:
“….If Trankell’s study draws the rather standard anthropological conclusion that development is a bad thing, particularly from the point of view of class and gender inequality, Ovesen’s provides a market contrast. The hydropower project proposed for the area did not involve major flooding or compulsory resettlement. Some communities could remain in the vicinity, but, he argues, only for the protection of their rights to forest resources from incoming hydro construction workers. He considers that the hydro area (Nam Theun/nam Gnouang) is currently populated and farmed beyond its carrying capacity, and much of the population should be encouraged and assisted to move to the neighbouring Nam Hai plain, which has potential for irrigation. His study indicates that, unlike other upland and indigenous peoples who are deeply attached to their ancestral lands, these communities have migrated into the area in the past few decades, as a result of war and the search for better land. Some indicated to him that they would be willing to move on again, especially if assisted. Again, contrary to the standard dichotomy between upland/swidden and lowland/padi peoples of Southeast Asia, he shows that most of the communities are involved in a mix of farming practices. Even those already on actual or potential padi land could use some training in padi cultivation, since they too are relative newcomers to the area and not very skilled at it. Ethnic identities are correspondingly much more complex than dichotomous models (employed also by the Laotian government) imply. The picture presented, then, is one of ethnic identities, farming practices, systems of land rights, relations with government authorities, and the physical location of communities in considerable flux. Anthropological reconnaissance proves its usefulness here, both for practical planning, and to highlight issues for further research.”
– Tania Murray Li, Dalhousie University
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Keith, I think my response was more to the anonymous comment #2. But in general I think that any rapid rural appraisal of this sort (done in less than 3 weeks, and under epistemological constraints, as your piece notes) cannot be taken as more than something to start a conversation, and to come up with some lines for future research (as Li’s review notes). A long-term look at what happens with dams and such is much needed, and I look forward to the follow-up posts.
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There is indeed such a long-term perspective, contained in the numerous papers of Dr Thayer Scudder, who describes himself as a “social and cultural anthropologist”. He has been doing longitudinal studies of the impacts of dams (and some other large-scale infrastructure projects) on local people in Africa (e.g. Kariba and Aswan high Dam), India, Sri Lanka, and most recently, the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos. Much of his experiences and lessons are contained in his book:
SCUDDER, T. (2005) The Future of Large Dams: dealing with social, environmental, institutional and political costs, London, Earthscan.
I am eagerly awaiting him publishing his findings from the NT2 dam in due course, a project he was rather inexplicably optimistic would buck the trend elsewhere in the developing world of overall failure in resettlement experiences from large dams and he was instrumental and vocal in supporting its construction and funding by the World Bank, as a member of the three person Panel of Experts team.
An interesting insight into his current opinions on large dams (and many other topics besides) can be found in the following public lecture at the University of the Pacific:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWYiKzMj_Qg
I wonder what Oveson’s findings and reflections would have been, if he had not been in the employment of the project developer’s. This fact surely clouded his views on local social and ecological conditions more than the fact his study was conducted in less than 3 weeks? Or is this one of the “epistemological constraints” you refer to, in which case it would be good if you could be more explicit about what these constraints might entail for anthropologists working for dam project consultancies and how they might be overcome to minimise pro-developer interest bias in subsequent publications? Or perhaps Oveson genuinely believed that the THHP project would have minimum impacts on the indigenous people and environment and he was correct to endorse drastic social and ecological engineering across several river basins, as highlighted by Keith?
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Leif,
You are right that a study this short, and by someone with few language skills and not much knowledge about the situation in the area more generally, should not be taken as more than something to start a conversation. The problem is that this study was taken much more seriously than that, and it had the effect of justifying what is now well-known to have been a really destructive project. Even the project developers now acknowledge that there were a lot of serious impacts that were not initially anticipated, although in my view they should have been. It would have been reasonable to have suggested some possible ideas for future consideration, but the language in the report was much more authoritative and confident than should have been the case for an anthropologist. Ultimately, I believe that the report was not written in a responsible way. There was enough known at the time (I was living in Laos at the time) to have warranted much more caution on the part of the author. As academics, we need to take the implicit authority granted to us much more seriously. When connected with development projects that have the potential to change thousands of lives in very serious ways, we need be especially cautious. The author of this report was not.
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Keith Barney’s posting in the ‘annals’ of anthropologists in Lao hydropower development was brought to my attention only a few days ago. I shall restrict myself here to a few comments and refer to my more detailed reflections in a chapter published in 2009. (1)
To begin with, the only reason that I may now figure in Barney’s annals is that I decided to publish my report without asking permission from anybody, instead of having it put away, in abstracted and heavily edited form, in the overall EIA report, which was not in the public domain. I published in the interest of transparency and possible collegial dialogue, but over the years it has also brought some flak from anti-hydropower environmentalists. So Barney is continuing a time-honoured practice.
I have no ideological commitment for or against hydropower (but living in a country that derives 45 per cent of its domestic electricity production from hydropower, and none from fossil fuels, I recognize some advantages). My main commitment was to the welfare of local population who had had a major infrastructural development project dumped on them. The limitations of this old study, in terms of both time and scope, are obvious. I am a social anthropologist and made no claims to expertise in watershed ecology; my brief did not include such a study. I did not propose an ‘irrigation mega-project scheme’ but a modest development of paddy fields on the Nam Hai plain with irrigation from water leaving the power station; at the time, a concern among proponents of rural development was the relatively low productivity of paddy cultivation in the country, and it was commonly assumed that local irrigation schemes might improve food security. Barney acknowledges my rejection of a clear-cut paddy/swidden distinction, but goes on to accuse me of ‘clear anti-swidden agriculture bias’; I do not get the point. I did not talk about a ‘severe ecological crisis’ along Nam Theun/Nam Gnouang; I reported the population’s perception of their situation, and I still believe they knew (better than me) what they were talking about. I did not make ‘sweeping recommendations for large-scale population resettlement’; I noted that quite a few people had already moved from the Nam Theun to the Nam Hai and suggested that others who wanted to follow suit should get some help, because they perceived that such a move would improve their livelihoods – in terms of food security as well as access to health and education facilities and transportation (factors deemed necessary for poverty reduction).
If my recommendations were as inappropriate as Barney claims, he may take comfort from the fact that they were completely ignored by the project planners. Once I had submitted my draft report at the end of my one-month contract, I had no further involvement in the scheme.
I had occasion to pay a brief visit to the area in 1999. ‘Spontaneous’ in-migration had transformed the quiet village where I had stayed into a sprawling rural town, easily accessible by a paved road. The power plant’s ‘operators’ village’ was placed in park-like surroundings, complete with tennis courts and a golf course, and with a high wire fence around it. Outside the people lived their lives much as before, fetching water in buckets from the little stream. No electricity had been installed, and no measures of rural development were in evidence. I think the people had deserved better.
Given that my report had absolutely no practical impact on the project, it is curious to be accused of almost single-handedly having directed ‘a discursive process that minimized (in the extreme) the probable ecological outcomes of a major inter-basin diversion hydropower project’. I am at a loss to understand how this ‘discursive process’ could be immune to influences from all the ecological knowledge that has presumably been accumulated in the meantime.
(1) ‘The Loneliness of the Short-Term Consultant. Anthropology and Hydropower Development in Laos’. S. Hagberg and C. Widmark (eds), Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid. Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 2009. (Electronic off-print available on request: [email protected])
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