Journal articles by Ming Li Yong
Political Geography, 2022
The Lao People's Democratic Republic's aspirations to become the 'battery' of Southeast Asia has ... more The Lao People's Democratic Republic's aspirations to become the 'battery' of Southeast Asia has involved plans for a cascade of hydropower dams on the mainstream of the transboundary Mekong River. This has triggered the unprecedented undertaking of public stakeholder consultations under the Mekong River Commission's Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA). This paper focuses on PNPCA stakeholder consultations organized in Thailand and Cambodia, and seeks to understand how these stakeholder consultations, despite their merits in information sharing, have come to be criticized by civil society as a 'rubber stamp' for 'participation' in Lao hydropower development. Building upon the literature on public participation in development, critical hydropolitics, and stakeholder engagement in Mekong water governance, we seek to conceptualize a critical politics of public participation by adopting a relational approach towards identifying the key challenges relating to participation. We suggest that a relational approach must consider how the interrelations between the multiple formal and informal tracks of stakeholder engagement shape one another and overall opportunities for participation, and how power relations within these spaces impact on perceptions towards public participation. Distrust towards state-organized participatory spaces can be traced from the stateorganized participatory spaces to another key interrelation: the power relations between state and nonstate actors in the multi-scalar political spaces that extend beyond participatory spaces. This paper examines how antiparticipatory forces pose a challenge to the emergence of both state and nonstate participatory spaces, providing additional insights into the state-society dynamics that influence environmental outcomes around large-scale infrastructural development.
WIREs Water, 2023
The transboundary Mekong River spans China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and p... more The transboundary Mekong River spans China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and provides critical ecosystem services that support millions of people across the river basin. However, the exploitation of its water resources for state-led development, especially in the realm of hydropower development, not only threatens the livelihoods and food security of communities across the river basin, but also reveal the challenges of governing the Mekong River as a transboundary commons. In focusing on how environmental injustice is produced through hydropower development and the power dynamics within hybrid governance arrangements in the Mekong River Basin, this paper seeks to examine how a grounded perspective of environmental justice may be understood in this context by linkages between the principles of environmental justice and the Mekong literature in three ways. First, the production of, and challenges against distributive injustice in the Mekong River Basin must engage with a strong tradition of scalar analysis in the field of transboundary water governance, particularly in understanding how a politics of scale underlies contestations around the Mekong River. Second, the principle of justice as recognition can be situated within a body of literature that interrogates the politics of knowledge that runs through Mekong water governance, although the co-production of knowledge types must be acknowledged. Finally, a recent body of literature questioning the legality of dam-building and public participation around Mekong hydropower dams are closely tied to issues of procedural justice, and reveal the importance of recognising plurality in ideas around transparency and accountability.
Environmental Policy and Governance, 2022
This study proposes a conceptualisation of transboundary environmental publics (TEPs) to interrog... more This study proposes a conceptualisation of transboundary environmental publics (TEPs) to interrogate the distinctive pathways through which contestations over public participation and 'stakeholder engagement' in transboundary environmental governance have emerged. While much attention has been paid to how the discourse and practices of public participation have been co-opted by powerful actors to serve vested interests, fewer studies have questioned how the contingent and fragmented nature of 'publics' entangled with a politics of representation have contributed towards the failings of public participation. This paper examines how state and nonstate TEPs have emerged as multi-dimensional, material and discursive entities within hybrid hydropower governance arrangements in the Mekong River Basin. Public participation in relation to hydropower dams on the Mekong River's mainstream is intertwined with the contingent formation of TEPs through the Mekong River Commission's Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA). Contestations over public participation may be understood by examining the specific ways in which 1) 'publics' were assembled, 2) notions of 'place' were interpreted, 3) scalar constructions were influenced by centre-periphery power dynamics and 4) temporality was defined. To understand how this convening of 'publics' fundamentally influences the potential for meaningful public participation, this paper contrasts the TEPs formed through the PNPCA and the Save the Mekong Coalition (STMC), a transnational activism network. The STMC TEP provided reimaginations of scalar constructions and broadened definitions of publics, places, and temporality in participation, reflecting how the topographical and discursive practices that underlie the creation of TEPs have important implications for their legitimacy and effectiveness in influencing decision making.
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 2020
In Northern Thailand's Chiang Khong district, which lies along the banks of the Mekong River and ... more In Northern Thailand's Chiang Khong district, which lies along the banks of the Mekong River and the Thai-Lao border, an community-based environmental movement under the leadership of the Rak Chiang Khong conservation group emerged in response to processes that have appropriated territories traditionally used by locals for state-led economic exploitation. The Rak Chiang Khong has put up fierce opposition to large-scale development projects such as the China-led navigation project, which planned to blast ecologically and culturally significant rapids, and hydropower dam development along the Mekong River. As a result, local-level gover-nance arrangements of the transboundary commons in Chiang Khong have shifted to counter threats both within and beyond the borders of Thailand. Through adapting fishing arrangements, engaging in community-led research and establishing village conservation zones, overlapping forms of territorialisation have emerged in response to socio-ecological changes to the river. These new forms of territorialisation are produced by complex configurations of political, cultural, and ecological histories, political-economic changes, and transboundary dynamics. These territorial strategies have been key towards reclaiming the transboundary commons of the Mekong River for riparian communities, and providing a deeper understanding of the values that drive community involvement in the transboundary environmental governance of the Mekong River.
Political Geography, 2015
Third World Quarterly, Jul 2012
Hydropower development on the mainstream of the Mekong River in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) has ... more Hydropower development on the mainstream of the Mekong River in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) has become one of the most pressing issues on the development agenda, being touted as the way forward in solving energy, development and sustainability needs in the region. Despite dominant and compelling arguments in favour of such development, a growing anti-dam lobby has taken to arguing that hydropower development will threaten the economic, social, environmental and food security of some 62 million people living in the LMB. The anti-dam lobby comprises a heterogeneous assemblage of actors, agencies and networks, working to provide critical and alternative geographical (re)imaginations of the LMB. This paper explores these multiple perspectives afforded by the anti-dam lobby through the lens of knowledge production. The anti-dam lobby, it will be seen, engages in a politics of legitimacy and re-scaling with the pro-hydropower lobby, played out through varying strategies, while highlighting urgent and critical knowledge gaps which need to be taken seriously for future development in the LMB.
Social Science Journal, 2013
Within the Mekong River basin, an extensive program of large hydropower dam construction is in pr... more Within the Mekong River basin, an extensive program of large hydropower dam construction is in progress. Whilst economic or politically feasible large hydropower dam construction in Thailand and Vietnam – and to a lesser extent the upper Mekong (Lancang) in Yunnan Province, China - is now increasingly exploited, in Laos and Cambodia significant unexploited hydropower potential remains. Here, plans for new hydropower dam construction are principally a joint endeavor between the private sector and state agencies. The region’s large hydropower dam construction is taking place within a context of deepening regional economic integration, including cross-border electricity trade that facilitates hydropower dam construction, and is shaped by a measured degree of variegated neoliberalization that is reflected in government policies on water resources development and energy security, as well as broader macroeconomic policy.
This paper first outlines the new political economy of hydropower development in the Mekong basin including the partial-liberalization of Thailand and Vietnam’s electricity sectors, and the neoliberalization of hydropower dam construction in Laos and Cambodia. The paper then proposes the concept of “partial enclosure” to explain how non-local impacts caused by hydropower dam construction on regional commons constitute a form of enclosure. Under the condition of “partial enclosure,” regional common pool resources may become degraded but not necessarily decimated which can still result in significant impacts to communities who depend upon these resources for their wellbeing. The concept of “partial enclosure” is applied to three forms of transboundary commons of the Mekong River: the temporal characteristics of Mekong River’s flood pulse; sediment movements; and migratory fisheries. It is argued that given the neoliberalizing policies in the region’s electricity and water sectors, and the growing role of the private sector in hydropower development that is converting resources previously held as commons to privatized ones, the notion of enclosure is particularly apt and the enclosure of the river’s common pool resources is now well underway.
Book Reviews by Ming Li Yong
Contemporary Southeast Asia, 2022
2017, her book investigates the deterioration of the Tonle Sap Lake's ecosystems and natural reso... more 2017, her book investigates the deterioration of the Tonle Sap Lake's ecosystems and natural resources, telling a story that rings familiar with researchers who also study the lake: "Everyone told us the same thing: the water was lower than ever, the fish were smaller than ever, there seemed to be none in the lake" (p. 9). The scale of the problems faced by Tonle Sap Lake inhabitants is immense, and these problems are deep-rooted and intertwined in complex ways. Chapter One demonstrates the centuries-old significance of water around the lake and its floodplains. It also shows parallels between how extreme drought contributed to the decline of the Angkor kingdom and the contemporary decline of the lake's fisheries. Chapter Two traces a lost age of fish abundance, and the impact of the French and Khmer Rouge regimes on fisheries management. Chapters Three and Four explore the drivers of fishery decline, dissecting the complex interrelationships and tensions between conservation, commercial fishing, illegal fishing, deforestation and corruption. The trans-boundary dynamics and implications of hydropower development in the Mekong River Basin are also examined. Chapters Five to Nine explore the challenges that various vulnerable and marginalized communities face in adapting to these environmental changes. In these chapters, the author highlights the vicious cycles of debt and precarity arising from the lack of alternative and sustainable water-based livelihood options, social safety nets and government support. The strength of Seiff's book lies in her evocative, poignant and immersive descriptions of people, their stories and life that takes place in tandem with the Mekong's flood pulse. This allows readers to clearly visualize and empathize with the struggles that lake communities face. The tensions that they navigate between
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 2012
Papers by Ming Li Yong
Volumes, fluidity and flows: Rethinking the ‘nature’ of political geography
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Journal articles by Ming Li Yong
This paper first outlines the new political economy of hydropower development in the Mekong basin including the partial-liberalization of Thailand and Vietnam’s electricity sectors, and the neoliberalization of hydropower dam construction in Laos and Cambodia. The paper then proposes the concept of “partial enclosure” to explain how non-local impacts caused by hydropower dam construction on regional commons constitute a form of enclosure. Under the condition of “partial enclosure,” regional common pool resources may become degraded but not necessarily decimated which can still result in significant impacts to communities who depend upon these resources for their wellbeing. The concept of “partial enclosure” is applied to three forms of transboundary commons of the Mekong River: the temporal characteristics of Mekong River’s flood pulse; sediment movements; and migratory fisheries. It is argued that given the neoliberalizing policies in the region’s electricity and water sectors, and the growing role of the private sector in hydropower development that is converting resources previously held as commons to privatized ones, the notion of enclosure is particularly apt and the enclosure of the river’s common pool resources is now well underway.
Book Reviews by Ming Li Yong
Papers by Ming Li Yong