Navigating Mekong’s Hydropower Politics: The Role and Reality of Strategic Environmental Assessment.
Hydropower development in the Mekong region serves as a critical case study for examining the role and limitations of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in transboundary contexts. Although SEA is designed to integrate social and environmental considerations into policy-making, its effectiveness is often hampered by political realities and the dominant drive for economic growth. The Mekong River Commission (MRC) and other regional governance institutions face challenges in prioritising socio-ecological impacts over national economic interests, which typically overshadow scientific data provided by SEA.
SEA differs from Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by addressing higher-level strategic processes, yet its assumed linear influence on policy-making is flawed. The expectation that SEA can guide rational, evidence-based decisions fails to account for the complex and politically charged nature of transboundary governance. In the Mekong region, national sovereignty and economic development often take precedence over environmental considerations, limiting the practical impact of SEA findings.
Moreover, the effectiveness of SEA is further constrained by the lack of robust domestic political and legal institutions to enforce its recommendations. While international lending institutions like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have attempted to integrate socio-ecological factors into their frameworks, the rise of new donors with less stringent environmental standards complicates this landscape.
The inherent subjectivity of SEAs, influenced by vested political interests, calls into question their objectivity and neutrality. Despite these challenges, SEA can still indirectly be an advocacy tool, empowering civil society to raise awareness and promote debate on environmental and social issues. However, the influence of civil society is limited by regional political constraints, underscoring the complex interplay between governance, development, and environmental sustainability in the Mekong region.
Ultimately, while SEA has potential as a mechanism for fostering more inclusive and sustainable policy-making, the broader political and institutional context constricts its capacity to counterbalance the dominant economic imperatives of hydropower development.
Introduction
Hydropower development in the Mekong region provides a useful framework for exploring the role of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in transboundary contexts, specifically those that are underpinned by regional environmental governance institutions, such as the Mekong River Commission (MRC). The broader role and effectiveness of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in transboundary contexts can be significantly restricted by the political realities of decision-making in policy processes, which affect both the content and application of assessments. Whilst these factors do not render SEA an entirely invalid mechanism (I shall explore the indirect ways in which SEA may contribute to more socially- and environmentally-considered policy-making), its effectiveness in overcoming the dominant imperative of hydropower development in favour of social and environmental considerations is limited.
Strategic Environmental Assessment
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is generally recognised as an instrument that is distinct from Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) owing to its application beyond projects to the higher-level strategic processes of policies, plans and programmes (PPPs) (Bina, 2007: 587), and on account of its explicitly strategic purpose and methodology (Bina, 2007: 589). The strategic nature of its approach and the processes in which it is involved thus position SEA as a mechanism that shapes policy progression and its outcomes (Kornov and Thissen, 2000: 199). It is promoted as doing so through its provision of a “comprehensive knowledge basis that enables policymakers and planners to become aware of and better understand the social and environmental consequences of decisions they are taking” (Erlewein, 2013: 141). The particular pertinence of SEA in transboundary settings, where broader strategy may offer potentially valuable solutions to ecological challenges, follows from this rationale.
Various critiques exist regarding the theory and methodology of SEA (see Bina, 2007). However, I wish to address two flawed theoretical assumptions regarding the realities of policy and decision-making processes upon which SEA is based.
The Myth of Socio-Economic and Ecological Rationality in Governance and Decision-Making
The first of these issues is the presupposition of a linearity, or tiering, in the planning process (policies are formulated, then translated into plans and policies and, finally, projects) (Erlewein, 2013: 141), in which case the findings of an SEA “cascade down the decision-making hierarchy and streamline subsequent, lower-level decisions” (Dalal-Clayton and Sadler, 2005: 23). This highly inaccurate reading of any policy-making practice, let alone one that takes place in a complex transboundary context, has been widely acknowledged as “naive concept” by numerous scholars (Bina, 2007: 589).
The second and related assumption is that providing scientifically authoritative information regarding the socio-economic and environmental implications of PPPs will lead to a rational policy that genuinely considers social and environmental aspects. The reality is that broader political, institutional, and economic factors are at play in governance and policy-making processes, and they generally take precedence over scientific data in determining policy outcomes (Kornov and Thissen, 2000: 191).
The capacity of SEA to promote socio-ecological considerations in policy and practice is thus based on assumptions of clearly structured policy planning processes that result in evidence-based, rational decision-making. These theoretical assumptions offer an inaccurate representation of real-world policy-making processes, particularly those that take place in complex transboundary contexts. This point is significant as it challenges the very value of SEA, which is significantly based on its ability to influence policy outcomes.
The Mekong River and Regional Hydropolitics
A closer look at the geopolitical realities of the Mekong region, as environmental governance institutions such as the MRC, reinforces this point.
The reality is that the nature of decision-making in the Mekong, including that which drives regional environmental governance, remains focused on national economic development and sovereignty. Scientific data presented through an SEA identifying social and ecological concerns (particularly those at the local level) has less weight than the realpolitik that dominates the hydropolitics of the region (Dore).
The MRC is representative of this order. Despite the regional and ecological premise of its existence and its own acknowledgement of the importance of inclusive public participation in decision-making processes (the Annual Report 2000, for example, articulated the necessity for “bottom-up” development decisions that incorporate “the voice of the people directly affected, and of other stakeholders”), the MRC nonetheless takes place on an inter-governmental stage where rationalist international relations remains the dominant logic, and economic growth and interaction the primary objective (Dore, 2003: 5).
This is not to suggest that the hydropolitics of the Mekong River Basin are uncomplicated “interactions among monolithic states” (Sneddon and Fox, 2006: 187). Indeed, the “multi-scalar, multi-actor” complexity of relationships that “simultaneously support and challenge the state” characterise the region and the hydropolitical context (Sneddon and Fox, 2006: 182). Yet the national- transnational- scales at which the ecological management of the Mekong takes place and, by extension, the scales at which institutions and decision-makers operate means that national-level discourses and drivers, such as economic growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, and realpolitik, take precedence over social and environmental considerations, even if they are presented in a scientific format such as an SEA (Sneddon and Fox, 2006: 183; and Dore, 2003: 8).
The Role of Institutions and Regulations
The role and effectiveness of SEA in the Mekong hydropower context are further limited by the absence of domestic political and legal institutions to ensure its genuine contribution to positive regional environmental governance. This is indeed noted to be true of most transboundary impact assessments (Kersten, 2009: 205). In this view, the means of overcoming this weakness of SEA in a transboundary context is strengthening political institutions to “force governments to consider a broader set of factors in their decision-making” (Kersten, 2009: 206).
Existing lending institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank, as well as international government donors, are frequently called on by civil society to act as regulators in this regard. As lending institutions, it is argued, these actors have the power to establish norms that promote participatory planning processes and to maintain consideration of socio-ecological factors that take place outside of nation-state frameworks (Dore, 2003: 13).
The Strategic Environment Framework (SEF) policy incorporated into the ADB’s Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) economic cooperation initiative in 2011 is one example of a response to this. Recognising criticism of past approaches that paid insufficient attention to socioecological dimensions of hydropower projects in the region, the ADB introduced the SEF to increase the transparency of impact assessment arrangements to mitigate “methodological and political dilemmas” connected to the social and environmental impacts of hydropower projects (Dore, 2003: 13).
Yet this reliance on institutional strengthening and influence to overcome SEA’s weakness in promoting genuine consideration of socio-ecological factors in the Mekong hydropower development process is problematic.
This is because, whilst development banks and Western donor nations remain key actors in the Mekong, the region’s landscape is also characterised by dynamic donor relations, where “new actors challenge the status of traditional actors” (Cooper, 2010: 138). Indeed, Cooper notes that “the emergence of new private sector actors means that the lower Mekong states no longer need the development banks to facilitate hydropower development” (2010: 138). These new donors, such as China and Qatar, “offer alternative avenues for infrastructure funding at a time when traditional donors are urging caution [or] the use of the MRC” (Cooper, 2010: 139). Thus, in contrast to the regional context less than a decade ago, planning and construction of mainstream and tributary hydropower are increasingly involving private sector companies and financiers with arguably less social and political obligation to consider the socio-ecological ramifications of hydropower projects (Cooper, 2010: 139).
Thus, it is questionable whether the enforcement of assessment standards by traditional institutions and donor governments effectively promotes social and environmental sustainability.
The Subjectivity of SEAs
Even when regulatory mechanisms for assessment are enforced, the politically charged context of large-scale developments raises the issue of the genuine objectivity of an SEA. Fisher (2008: 232) notes that the political contexts of major initiatives “usually involve actors with vested interests”, which subsequently places consultants undertaking SEAs under direct or implied pressure to “reach favourable findings”. Moreover, the reality of conflicting viewpoints in such contexts can lead to “claims of bias and lack of scientific rigour”, regardless of the findings (2008: 235).
The recognition of the vested political interests that regularly drive the demand for and formulation of SEAs, and their subsequent subjectivity, has led several commentators to articulate (or re-articulate) the ethical purpose of SEA as an advocative mechanism to promote environmental and social sustainability (see Fisher, 2008: 239, and Kornov and Thissen, 2000: 197).
These commentators subsequently take the stance that SEA practitioners should incorporate “values and arguments in addition to ‘facts’ in an analysis of a decision situation,” which would allow practitioners to use SEA to counter political bias in partial assessments (Kornov and Thissen, 2000: 199).
Whilst this approach has certain professional ethics implications in terms of neutrality and involvement of a different type of bias, it does introduce a crucial point regarding the role of SEA in advocating a “counter-narrative” to the dominant macroeconomic discourse in policy-making.
SEA as an Instrument of Socio-Ecological Advocacy
If SEA is limited in directly influencing policy-makers to make more socio-ecologically responsible governance decisions, the question then turns to its indirect role as an instrument of socio-ecological advocacy.
The specific case of the ‘Strategic Environmental Assessment of Hydropower on the Mekong Mainstream’ prepared for the MRC (ICEM, 2010) demonstrates that, where national- and transnational-level decision-making is unlikely to pay genuine heed to socioecological concerns, civil society may utilise information from an SEA to create a heightened awareness of social and environmental impacts and as a basis for promoting and informing debate that involves all stakeholders, including local communities. Indeed, civil society has taken an even greater role in “articulating the regional dimensions of river-basin development as they relate to local livelihoods” than intergovernmental institutions, such as the MRC and ADB (Ratner, 2003: 71).
Yet, whilst giving voice to marginalised communities is a valuable outcome in and of itself, the capacity to translate voice into tangible benefits to vulnerable communities is highly dependent on the power of civil society in affecting policy change at the state level. Although the role and influence of critical civil society in the Mekong region are increasing significantly, the restricted freedom of domestic civil society organisations (Ratner, 2003: 72) to “genuinely participate in decision making” remains characteristic (Dore, 2003: 27).
Conclusion
The role of SEA as a means of informing and mobilising civil society in its ability to contribute social and ecological considerations to the political decision-making process is important but should not be overstated, particularly in a complex, transboundary political context such as the Mekong region.
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[1] “Ecological rationality” is used by Bina, (2007: 592), but I include “socio-economic” rationality here also to include all aspects that may be considered within an SEA.
