Chapter 4: The Impact-Science Policy Stream
2. The Problem and Politics Stream
2.2 The “Recalibration” Period – The Early- to Late-2000s
The problem stream with impact-science is very much intertwined with Nu river hydropower development issue, as it ties in the perceptions and political position of a number of the actors involved in the Upper Mekong dam cascade’s decision-making. As such, the parallel stream of Nu river development will also be examined in part to understand the context and interplay with the Upper Mekong (Lancang) river development policy stream.
In 2003 the government announced the Xiaowan dam project. By this time, however, the energy industry reforms had already occurred and NGOs had gained a foothold in domestic discourse.
On August 17, 2003, roughly 3000 peasant activists affected by the Manwan Dam mobilized to seek a meeting with the Manwan Huaneng Power Company to air their grievances – later referred to s the “817 incident” (Magee 2006a; Mertha 2008). Although how they came together is unknown, it was led in part by the NGO Green Watershed (GW), under its founder Yu Xiaogang. The peaceful demonstration lasted three days, with the local Jingdong and Yuxian county and Manwan township governments promising to resolve the problems laid out by protesters (Magee 2006a; Mertha 2008).
No further progress was made, however
On the anniversary of the “817” incident, another meeting, organized in part by Green Watershed, of some 150 local community representatives. They created articles and reports on impacts. Local police stated the meeting was illegal. A few days later, members of GW went to Xiaowan, but the local government refused to meet with them to not consider the meeting illegal. Police eventually broke up the meeting, held at a
farmer’s house. These peasants aired their grievances with Huaneng and the local
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government, but were mostly left with only vague promises. Similar activities occurred again with the Dachaoshan dam a year later (Mertha 2008). Yu Xiaogang came under intense scrutiny, despite his organization acting lawfully and personal empathy from some local officials, GW’s strategies failed to make any significant policy change on existing dams on the Upper Mekong (Magee 2006; Mertha 2008).
The Nu River becomes a significant contextualizing stream for both He Daming, the head of the AIRC, and Yu Xiaogang, the founder of GW. On March 14, 2003, the Huadian Group, the electric company involved in developing the Nu river, and the Yunnan provincial government sign a letter of intent to develop the river before the project had been publically announced or endorsed by the State Council (Mertha 2008).
In a spring meeting, specialists from Kunming and Beijing met to discuss the project, with local experts supporting the measure, while experts from Qinghai University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) opposed (Magee 2006a; Mertha 2008).
Only local expert opinions were carried in local media.
He Daming entered the picture after the then SEPA consulted Wang Yongchen, an environmental activist, for a list of dam experts. He spoke in at a meeting for the Nu River Project in August of 2003, becoming the first local expert to oppose the project, whose opinion quickly snowballed in the media. Shortly after this coalitions formed, with most local experts and Yunnan government bodies (including the Yunnan EPA) backing the project12. Yu Xiaogang and GW, along with Friends of Nature, Wang Yongchen, and other NGOs quickly came out against the project, a move backed by SEPA (Mertha 2008). Eventually opposition to the project found a supporter in the National People’s Congress, a senior engineer at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, He Shaoling (Mertha 2008). He stated “The Nu River Dam project must go through an independent and authoritative investigation before any decision on its future should be made. Not only is this in accordance with Premier Wen’s call that China’s development must be based on science, but it is the law” (Cheung, 2004). Later, on February 18th, 2004 Premier Wen Jiabao, in regards to the Nu River stated: “given the high level of social and environmental concerns over the large scale hydro project, further careful research is required in order to reach a scientific decision” (Si 2011).
12 Interview 06: AIRC researcher
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The years 2004 to 2006 saw a flurry of activity from both sides, with many projects being delayed. Indeed, under Wen Jiabao’s tenure as premier, from 2006 to 2010 only a third of hydropower projects in China went ahead as planned (Walker 2013). Of primary importance for the Upper Mekong are the actions of Yu Xiaogang and He Daming and the AIRC. Although both vocal critics of the Nu river development project, He remained relatively within the purview of scientific assessments of the project, and refused to met with journalists and actively be in the public eye13. In late-October 2004, Yu Xiaogang, on the other hand, continued to push the envelope by unprecedentedly bringing two peasant activists to the United Nations International Conference on Hydropower and Sustainable Development (UNHSD). Of these activists – typically excluded from meetings of policy experts and officials – Ge Quanxiao spoke in front of the assembly discussing the social impacts of dams built on the Tiger Leaping Gorge and the lack of peasant’s voices in the decision-making process, despite legal guarantees assuring them of this right (Mertha 2008). Authorities were highly embarrassed by the speech, and were furious with Yu Xiaogang. As it was a United Nations meeting, the speech was put into the documents of the official proceedings of the event and as such, Ge’s remarks were able to reach outside of China’s government circles.
UN meeting brought about an important development. Despite the conclusion of the meeting finding that the Nu river project would have no significant environmental impacts, the NDRC shut down the project in December of 2004 (Mertha 2008). Later in the year, vice director of the NDRC, Zhang Guobao pushed for experts to create plans with less environmental impact (Mertha 2008). While from the outside it appears to be reevaluation of the impacts of the project itself, it is more likely an attempt to recalibrate the project to be more environmentally and social impacts in order to better ensure its continuation. Shortly thereafter on January 18th of 2005, Pan Yu, vice minister of the then SEPA began the “EIA Storm”, the suspension of 30 large-scale projects failing to adhere to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Environmental Impact Assessment (hereafter referred to as the EIA Law) (Xiong 2005). This followed from the “Urgent Notice of the State Council to Implement Proposal by the National Development and Reform Commission on Resolutely Stopping the Disorderly Construction of Power
13 Interview 05 & 06: AIRC researchers
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Stations” from the State Council, and SEPA’s own on-the-ground research (Xiong 2005).
Later on February 22nd, 2006, SEPA released two provisional measures to allow for public participation in EIA assessments (Mertha 2008).
These developments offer up two important trends in the central government in the mid-2000s. They derived from the State Council’s, under the leadership of Wen Jiabao, support of “scientific development” that seemed to take the form of a genuine concern from Wen Jiabao to properly address environmental and social impact concerns related to development. This created two different reactions among both the NDRC and SEPA. SEPA, as touched upon in chapter three, was a relatively weak bureau attempting to fulfill its organizational mandate and “flex its muscles” through the utilization of the EIA Law, passed in 2003. The support of the State Council of rising public concern over negative development impacts spurred SEPA to push harder for adherence to EIAs and greater public participation. The NDRC, on the other hand, seems to have taken this time to both acknowledge the negative impacts of development projects, while also using it as a means to recalibrate projects to pass the State Council’s standards of sustainable development. This is evidenced by the NDRC’s halting of the Tiger Leaping Gorge Project, despite hydropower company demands to move forward, described above (Mertha 2008). In hydropower company planning meetings, a journalist for the China Economic Times reported seeing reports on the mid- and lower- Nu river stating
“Hydropower development on the Nu river is unstoppable. Preparatory work of the next stage will be carried out as soon as the state approves” (Walker 2013), a distinct corollary to the 2012 statements from NDRC officials stating that “hydropower is a must” (Si 2011. This suggests that it was indeed, a rest period by which to recalibrate development projects.
This “recalibration” period does not seem to suggest a disingenuous shift within the NDRC. Rather, the genuine concern for potential impacts from development projects, along with a State Council pushing for a “scientific” assessment of development impacts, afforded a typically weak bureaucratic body, SEPA, an especially potent opportunity. As described in the Lieberthal’s FA framework, there were different “tiao” at work during this period. The decidedly more powerful pro-hydropower development “tiao” was made up of Yunnan provincial government, the MWR, the electricity corporations, and both the
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YDRC and NDRC (as evidenced by statements from the early- to mid-2000s described in chapter 3). Outside of the State Council itself, this “tiao” is the leading coalition of decision-makers that direct the development of the Upper Mekong. This grouping of bureaucratic actors decidedly represented a pro-large-scale hydropower development agenda for the sake of poverty alleviation, navigation, electricity, and so on, using
distinct scientific claims that claimed minimal impact. Prior to this period, relatively little from this “tiao” suggested much emphasis for developmental impacts beyond the
potential benefits derived from a given project, outside of science suggesting minimal potential impacts. Prior to 2003, SEPA and its bureaucratic status made it relatively difficult to fulfill its institutional mandate, which in turn saw many development projects beginning without environmental impact assessments (Mertha 2008; Yan 2012). During this time SEPA attempted to hold other actors to account for environmental impacts, to varying degrees of success. SEPA gained a significant amount of bureaucratic leverage from the EIA law of 2003, and the tacit support of the State Council and Wen Jiabao in 2004. Given their position of proper evaluation of environmental impacts, SEPA, along with a general shift in the multiple problem and politics stream, forced the reevaluation of the pro-hydropower development forces position on impacts. This eventually led to an important mixing of these rival positions towards the end of Wen Jiabao’s tenure, discussed in section 2.4 below.
However, this “recalibration” period did not leave He free from scrutiny from pro-hydropower actors. In Magee (2006a), he describes an academic discussion on April 8th, 2005 organized by the Yunnan Province Development and Reform Commission (YDRC) about the hydropower development on the Nu River. While not directly in regards to the Upper Mekong (Lancang) cascade, I think it’s worthwhile to paraphrase, as it offers insight into YDRC-epistemic community (EC) relations. The talks were headed by He Zuoxiu, a theoretical physicist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences;
Lu Youmei, former general manager of the Three Gorges Project Corporation and member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; Fang Zhouzi, a biochemist, physicist, and notoriously vitriolic supporter of hydropower development, and Yunnan governor Xu Rongkai as interlocutor for the expert group. As Magee describes, the “discussion” was less an academic meeting of minds than it was “something of a pep rally for Nu
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hydropower development, complete with character assassination of He Daming (AIRC) and Wang Yongchen (Green Earth Volunteers)” (Magee 2006a, 235). Fang Zhouzi derided He’s terms of “original ecological status” and “vertical forest and valley area biodiversity” as concepts made-up by He to garner more funding for himself and the institution (Mertha 2008). He concluded that his critics “used bullshit” to “speak outside of their area of expertise” (Mertha 2008, 138). The expert group admonished He and Wang to remain within their disciplines and not to comment on areas outside of which they were qualified to address, even though, as Magee puts it, the “expert group”
included several individuals no better equipped professionally or academically to
comment on Nu hydropower. Magee described this event as a clear attempt from a “posse of academic mercenaries” to discredit He and his colleagues, and their calls for better impact assessments and science.
Throughout the whole process, He Daming, “perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the world on the Nu River Valley” (Mertha 2008), had been under a lot of pressure from the government to remain quiet. As mentioned above, He refused to speak with the press and to take unnecessary risks that would garner him and/or the AIRC an unwanted spotlight in the media. However, it seems that these talks did little in the way of relegating He and the AIRC to pariah status, as in December 2005, he hosted a conference on transboundary water issues in Yunnan. While the provincial government had canceled a similar meeting as a sign that He’s calls for better science and
comprehensive impact assessments were unpopular with officials, this meeting was a success (Magee 2006a). Attendees, made up of scholars, officials, hydropower company reps, Mekong riparian country representatives, and so on cemented collaborative research projects and other professional linkages that had failed to appear through official
channels.
These attacks clearly came as an attempt by pro-hydropower actors to push the debate into what constitutes “real science” versus “fake science”, with the broader goal of setting what terms and contours by which the debate occurs. These debates and attempts at character assassination show politicization of differing scientific conclusions, and the larger attempt to define what science is used in “scientific development”. In Mertha’s (2008) field research, a government-relations office at a Chinese NGO discussed how the
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criticism by Fang Zhouzi of environmentalists as being “emotional” was a genuine concern among NGOs legitimacy in the eyes of the government. Using the example of biodiversity, the officer went on to state that the claim of dams being bad for biodiversity, depends on the measure of biodiversity. If you cannot give a means by which to measure it, “you are being ‘emotional’ if you oppose dams. If you can, it is easy for your
opponents to say that your numbers are way off. But this is because some of the most basic information is confidential” (Mertha 2008, 138). Indeed, the “grey” information is a significant constraint to not only NGOs advocating issues, but also a fundamental issue in accurate assessments of basin-wide impacts14. Objective scientific information becomes politicized through the fragmentation and emphasizing of various information sources, based either on legitimate uncertainty in the science and also by information hoarding by cautious experts and research institutions, rightfully concerned for the potential of being shut down. This puts advocates and NGOs at a distinct disadvantage in scientific debate in China, but does put ECs in a potentially very advantageous position relative to decision-makers.
After both the “radicalization” of Yu Xiaogang in 2004 and the anti-science attempts at character assassination in the 2005, He Daming and the AIRC did indeed come under continued pressure from the government15. In order to allow for the AIRC to continue research and for general scientific research on the basin to continue, He and the AIRC maintained a policy of low-key, strictly scientific research regarding both the Nu and Upper Mekong rivers. Unlike Yu Xiaogang, He Daming and the AIRC remained largely above the fray by a pointed effort to stay out of the spotlight, avoiding the mistakes local authorities were waiting for him to make. With the Nu specifically, He avoided writing the many technical articles and book chapters that could potentially derive from the huge amount of research He and the organization have amassed over the years (Mertha 2008). These are the primary sources of his perceived threat to the
government. First, he is a Yunnan local with a tremendous amount of scientific
legitimacy with, reportedly, national-level backing (Mertha 2008). Second, by pointedly remaining out of the political debate, He is seen as without an agenda. Rather, he simple
14 Interview 05 & 06: AIRC researchers
15 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
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makes scientific assessments based on the empirical evidence available to him. His credibility is why his opposition to the Nu River Project created such a potential threat to the project, and “is precisely what Fan Zhouzi attempted to undermine in his lecture at Yunnan University in April 2005” (Mertha 2008, 143).
However, this did leave He and the AIRC free from government pressure to remain out of the spotlight. According to one interviewee, this began a pattern of anti-science in the mid-2000s among other involved organizations opposed to the dams. This is perhaps best seen in the criticism of NGOs being too “emotional” or “irrational”
regarding topics with which they have limited information, as discussed above. The criticism and scrutiny that He Daming and AIRC came under in 2005-2006 seems to have been a turning point in the research organizations relationship with the government. Like the NGO mentioned above, it seems that He Daming and the AIRC had to distance themselves from Yu Xiaogang after his, as one interviewed researcher put it,
“radicalization” in order to maintain the funding to the AIRC and to protect the organization itself16. After the mid-2000s, He Daming began to consult with the
government (i.e. the MWR) and the hydropower companies to provide feasibility studies for both parties, although these actors were really “one in the same”17. A senior
researcher at AIRC put it quite simply, that although he has some trepidation regarding providing studies and information specifically for government and hydropower company research, at the end of the day it both provides the funding for the research center, the livelihood for the researchers there, and allows for the continuation of good science to be conducted 18. The strongest form of advocacy He or the center could conduct, as a
scientific research facility, was to provide an accurate understanding of the impacts of the dams based on the available empirical evidence, despite potential government pressure to do otherwise 19.
According to this research, though, He and the AIRC’s position as not only as a respected source of scientific information on Upper Mekong, it was one of the only major
16 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
17 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
18 Interview 07: AIRC researcher
19 Interview 03: AIRC researcher
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local research centers doing scientific studies on downstream dam impacts20. As such, this left the epistemic community of the AIRC in a prime consulting position for the hydropower companies and major decision-making bodies like the Yunnan provincial government, the WRB, and the NDRC. While Yu Xiaogang typically only advocated the socioeconomic impacts, his actions seem to have relegated him to the “pariah” status that He Daming was able to avoid. According to one interviewee, Yu Xiaogang has since been “black listed”, with his work now focusing on dams planned for the Upper Mekong in Qinghai and Tibet21. The same interviewee stated that after meeting with Yu twice, he was approached by the police to find out what he was researching, and was later told by Chinese academics that if he wished to continue researching in China it would be best not to contact him again22. These differences seem to suggest the potential of on-going influence over decision-makers. Yu Xiaogang undoubtedly achieved measureable impacts on the discourse surrounding socioeconomic impacts on both the Nu and Upper
local research centers doing scientific studies on downstream dam impacts20. As such, this left the epistemic community of the AIRC in a prime consulting position for the hydropower companies and major decision-making bodies like the Yunnan provincial government, the WRB, and the NDRC. While Yu Xiaogang typically only advocated the socioeconomic impacts, his actions seem to have relegated him to the “pariah” status that He Daming was able to avoid. According to one interviewee, Yu Xiaogang has since been “black listed”, with his work now focusing on dams planned for the Upper Mekong in Qinghai and Tibet21. The same interviewee stated that after meeting with Yu twice, he was approached by the police to find out what he was researching, and was later told by Chinese academics that if he wished to continue researching in China it would be best not to contact him again22. These differences seem to suggest the potential of on-going influence over decision-makers. Yu Xiaogang undoubtedly achieved measureable impacts on the discourse surrounding socioeconomic impacts on both the Nu and Upper