Chapter 4: The Impact-Science Policy Stream
2. The Problem and Politics Stream
2.3 The Timing of the Upper Mekong Cascade
Despite all the controversy surrounding the Nu river development project and its proposed projects in the early to late-2000s, the Upper Mekong (Lancang) cascade had in large part already become a fait accompli by the time the Nu river controversy began. By
20 Interview 03: AIRC researcher
21 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
22 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
23 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
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the time Yu Xiaogang and other related NGOs had readied themselves for the next round of hydropower development in Yunnan, much of the cascade had been completed or approved for building by the State Council.
The Manwan was completed in 1995, although later critiqued for having inadequate attempts assess ecological and sociopolitical impacts. The Dachaoshan – benefiting from a favorable policy environment of basin-wide monopolies and hydraulic and hydropower engineers graduating throughout the country – broke ground in August 1997, and had all six turbines completed in October 2003 (Chen 2003).
By 2003, at the time of the “817 Incident”, the Xiaowan dam had already broken ground and the river been diverted; in 2005 during SEPA’s EIA storm, the concrete for the dam itself was being poured; by 2007 the Xiaowan had already begun to impound water; and on March 2010 the dam was complete (Beijixing Dianli Wang 2013). In addition, in 1988 Guangdong and Yunnan had reached an agreement to jointly develop the Xiaowan dam (Yang 1998), and in 2002 became a key project of the State Council’s changes to the energy industry. The Jinghong dam presents a more interesting case as the State Council approved it in April 2004, two months after Wen Jiabao’s call to cease certain dubious development projects. The dam was later complete in June 2008 (Xinhua 2008a). Nuozhadu, the biggest dam on the Upper Mekong, broke ground in December of 2004, and is due to be completed later this year (Zhang 2012b).
As can be seen above, the point at which the development could have come under more public scrutiny, much of the cascade was not only either already complete or under construction, but also officially approved by a State Council sympathetic to the ideas of halting development for a reassessment of projects. Where then does this leave the application of impact science in the decision-making surrounding the development of the Upper Mekong? It enters the picture when downstream governments and the public begin to suspect that the upstream cascade is a major cause behind floods and droughts. The key then becomes what science is used to explain these instances to downstream nations, and how it is used.
Time Event
1985 Manwan begins construction 1995 Manwan completed
1996 State Council reorganizes Ministry of Electricity
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Chart 3: Timeline of the downstream impact science stream and relevant events. Dam construction in italics, events explicitly described above in bold.
1997 Dachaoshan begins construction; State Power Corporation of China created
1998 Ministry of Electricity disbanded 2000 Western Development Campaign started 2002 Five electricity companies formed
Xiaowan begins construction Water Law goes into effect
2003 State Council “National Climate Change Coordination Committee” formed
NDRC ““Action Guidline of Early 21st Century Sustainable Development”, “vigorously develop hydropower.
Environmental Impact Assessment Law goes into effect
August 17th “The 817 Incident”
October Dachaoshan dam completed 2004 Nuozhadu begins construction
Jinghong construction begins
April Wen Jiabao calls for halt of development projects
October Yu Xiaogang brings farmers to UNHSD meeting
December NDRC halts Tiger Leaping Gorge project 2005 SEPA “EIA Storm”
2008 NDRC “Department of Climate Change Response” formed
2009 MEP orders halt to all Huaneng hydropower projects due to lack of EIAs
Copenhagen climate talks 2010 Xiaowan dam completed
Mengsong dam cancelled 2011 Jinghong dam completed
Ganlanba function redesigned
NDRC & MEP: “River hydropower planning reports and planning review of environmental impact law”
2012 Wen Jiabao retires
2013 State Council approves 12th FYP for Energy
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2.3 The Re-prioritization of Hydropower – 2008 to present
The Mekong river itself had two major events that brought downstream impact science to the forefront of the provincial and central governments attention: the floods of 2008 (Gunn and McCartan 2008) and the droughts of 2010 (Cheng and Ma 2010) in Southeast Asia. Both of these occurrences brought consternation from downstream governments and publics regarding the potential influence of China’s upstream dams. As discussed in chapter 2, given the literature review of the available science and the
conclusions of the MRC (MacLeod 2010), I believe that the dams are unlikely to have had a significant role in those events. Indeed, as stated above, the MWR claims to have released more water than was received in inflow to the reservoirs. In addition, He Daming claims that through strategic filling of the Xiaowan reservoir – not impounding water in the dry season, and staggered water impoundment in the wet – the Xiaowan effectively limits it’s potential downstream hydrological impacts (Yang 2011).
As seen above, both of these events brought out very specific references from a number of hydropower and government bodies to scientific information regarding outflow volumes, sediment amounts, and impacts, and ecological impacts in both the immediate area around the dam and downstream. All of them came to the same conclusion: the current and future cascade do not now nor will they have a significant impact downstream, and in fact will help with navigation, saline intrusion, prevent soil erosion, increase energy security, and provide much needed development to an
impoverished region; more on that below.
The 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen presented a major shift in the framework surrounding the cascade itself and its benefits. In those talks, China committed itself to reducing national CO2 emission per unit of GDP by 40-45% by 2020, from a 2005 baseline, while also increasing its share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy
consumption to 15% by 2020 (NRDC n.d.). This began the inevitable shift in emphasis away from the previous frameworks of development, energy security, and environmental protection (in that order) in the early 2000s, to the clean-energy, low-emissions
development that began to truly take root in 2012. By the end of Wen Jiabao’s tenure, his
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grip on the holding back of hydropower development projects slipped. By January of 2013, the State Council approved the 12th FYP for energy development, which among others called for the construction of 160 GW worth of hydropower, raising the
nationwide capacity to 290 GW, and reduce coal consumption as a percentage of primary energy to below 65% by 2017 (Li et al 2014). This plan prioritized 50+ large-scale hydropower plants on the Jinsha, Yalong, Dadu, Lancang, and Yarlung Tsanpo rivers, many of which had been stalled under Wen Jiabao (Li et al 2014). As of mid-2013, 14 more dams are under construction or being planned on the Upper Lancang in northern Yunnan and Tibet, many of which began without government approval (Li et al 2014;
IRN 2013).
The “re-prioritization” of hydropower was not without its differences from the positions held by decision-makers in the early-2000s. As stated above, the framing of downstream impacts by the primary bureaucratic powers and decision-makers primarily revolved around poverty alleviation, regional integration, navigation benefits, and so on with minimal discussion of potential impacts. For example, despite repeated statements saying that the hydrological impacts of the Upper Mekong cascade will be limited due to China’s 13.5% contribution to the total output of the Mekong, in 2011 the Ganlanda dam’s function from electricity production was altered to regulatory reservoir specifically to adjust water flow volume changes from the greater cascade (see figure 11, below).
Billed as a means to regulate potentially drastic changes to hourly- and daily- flow volume changes and to stabilize outflow (Liu and Guan 2011; Yang 2011; Gao and Zhong 2014), the changes function as a tacit acceptance of potential downstream
hydrological flows previously stated as having minimal impacts. A proposal similar to He Daming’s claim that through careful mitigation, the hydrological impacts of the cascade can be minimalized to limited impact (He et al 2006; Zhang 2012). In 2010, the
Mengsong dam (then to be the southern most dam in the cascade) was cancelled due to concerns over migratory fish populations (Liu and Guan 2011; Yang 2011; Gao and Zhong 2014), again showing a tacit acceptance of downstream impacts previously left only briefly or not at all mentioned in statements from primary decision-makers. As will be seen in the policy stream section below, these formative years before Wen Jiabao’s retirement in 2012 brought evidence to show an altered framework had taken shape
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among the decision-makers and rival bureaucratic “tiao”s and “kuai”s in the early- to mid-2000s. Indeed, the two major bureaucratic players, the NDRC and the now Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), positions seem to have in some ways merged.
3. The Policy Steam
Like the problem and politics steam above, the laws have steadily progressed towards the incorporation of impacts into development projects. These trends seem to have begun in 2002 with the Water Law, which placed the theoretical control over a basin-wide plan in the hands of the Changjiang (Yangtze) Water Resource Commission (CWRC) (Magee 2006a). The next major step towards the incorporation of dealing with downstream impacts into development decisions came with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law coming into for on December 1, 2003 (Li et al 2014). This law called for the incorporation of economic, social, and environmental sustainability perspectives into all development projects, and also called for comprehensive planning and public participation in development projects (Yi 2013). As described above, the enforcement of this law by the then SEPA brought played an important role in realigning development priorities towards at least a nominal factoring in of biophysical and
socioeconomic impacts. The end of Wen Jiabao’s tenure saw both the 12th FYP (2010-2015) and the 12th FYP for energy in 2013 which called for an end to the carefully analyzing potential impacts from development projects through the reemphasis placed on
“scientifically” developed hydropower.
By this time the consensus within the central government seemed to have aligned with the provincial Yunnan authorities and Hydrolancang: the projects may go ahead, as they will effectively compensate for negative impacts. This is perhaps best seen in the NDRC and MEP’s jointly developed the “River hydropower planning reports and planning review of environmental impact law” (河流水電規劃報告及規劃環境影響報
告書審查暫行辦法) in the end of 2011 (Yi 2013). This is the first law from the
government stating that the hydropower planning process, planning process criticism, and
EIAs should be the most basic part of hydropower development. This lends further
support to the trend towards development with a minimalization of impacts. However, I
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could find little evidence of how and why this change about. It could very well be a merging of positions or a “winning-out” of a dominant framework and bureaucratic actor in which the MEP allows for further development so long as the mitigation and
minimalization of impacts is in fact being done. Given the evidence seen above, it seems
the latter is likely to be true.
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Figure 11: Timeline of major events and time periods related to hydropower development on the Upper Mekong and its impacts. Events in black boxes represent particularly important developments for each period.
4. The problem of perspective
Chapter three showed a distinct difference in what science was used to explain and understand the potential downstream impacts of the dam cascade. It was shown that the hydropower industry, and NGOs and academics had a distinctly different
understanding of downstream impacts. To understand these differences, it is best to understand stakeholder perspectives on hydropower development and its impacts, both positive and negative. Here, I used the research behind the Interdisciplinary Dam Assessment Model (IDAM) (see:; Brown et al 2008, 2009; Tullos 2009; Tullos et al 2010) to understand better the difference in stakeholder perspectives on hydropower development in Yunnan. The IDAM tool, as briefly touched upon in chapter 1 and 2, is an attempt to create an informed and transparent decision-making instrument around dam development. The impacts are put into three categories: biophysical, socioeconomic, and
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geopolitics. IDAM attempts to simultaneously assess the costs and benefits of a given project in terms of those three pillars (Tullos et al 2010). In Tullos et al (2010), the IDAM tool used 21 biophysical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical impacts of dam construction, each with its own independent analysts measured both by its scientifically objective impact, and its subjective salience with a given stakeholder. With certain impacts stakeholders were given measures of data quality and variability to properly assess the salience of an issue based data/information certainty.
Tullos et al (2010) surveyed fifteen water hydropower development experts in July 2009 in Kunming, and split them into three categories: professionals representing engineers, public officials, and the hydroelectric industry; representatives of
environmental and civil society non-governmental organizations (NGOs); and members of the academic community. The impacts were put into potential dam scenarios of varying scale, i.e. small local dams requiring only local approval, to a large-scale dam requiring the approval of both the NDRC and State Council (as is the case with the Upper Mekong). The results from the survey seem to follow along with the research contained in this thesis: overall academics and NGOs felt that the salience and importance of negative impacts exceed that of the positive impacts, while hydropower and government representatives saw positive impacts as greater than negative impacts, especially in terms of large-dams. Broken down into pillars, academics view biophysical and socioeconomic impacts to be greater than geopolitical impacts, with greater magnitude in the large dam scenario. NGOs perceived socioeconomic impacts, both positive and negative, as the most vital pillar out of the 3 groups. Most importantly, however, “hydropower and government officials perceived the greatest benefits and least negative impacts of the large dam scenario” (Tullos et al 2010). In addition, hydropower and government representatives rated the socioeconomic costs of large-scale development as nearly half the magnitude as academics did.
“Further and taken together, these results show not only that different stakeholder groups view the importance of different dam impacts differently, but also that they evaluate the magnitude of the same objective data differently” (Tullos et al 2010).
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This finding is key to understanding how and why certain information gains prominence in explaining downstream impacts. The fact that hydropower and government
representatives perceived the greatest benefits to large dams likely creates an inherent confirmation bias towards science suggesting milder impacts. The next step is to try to determine if this information was intentionally selected, or was it accepted and gained prominence as the dominant scientific explanation?
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Figure 12: Net magnitude and salience of dam impacts among academics, NGOs, hydropower representatives, and government representatives.
(Source: Tullos et al 2010, 82-83)
Throughout the process, Tullos et al (2010) found that for many of the participants, especially academics and NGOs, were hesitant to speak outside of their
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given area of expertise. Data gathered in China, was also problematic, as data, if available, is often collected from multiple locations or gathered by multiple agencies.
This is seen in chapter two with Walling (2009) and his reconstruction of Chinese datasets from multiple sources to create a reliable data source. The same concept seems to apply to stakeholders and decision-makers in China. While the AIRC most likely has the most reliable scientific information on the dams and their potential impacts, the information seems to be relatively contained within the center itself, and made for government and hydropower company consumption. Those articles published by AIRC researchers seem to base their studies on datasets also available to those scholars outside of China, while assessments made for the government and hydropower companies likely include data considered a state secret. This makes it more likely that the hydropower companies and government have higher quality information available to them than scholars building data sets from various data sets downstream that vary in compatibility.
This does not, however, ensure that the information is distributed throughout the entire decision-making apparatus nor does it free information from confirmation and selection bias.
Another important conclusion from Tullos (2009) and Tullo et al (2010), was outside of the “lateral” differences in stakeholder perspectives (i.e. academics and NGOs vs. government and hydropower officials), there is likely going to be “vertical”
differences in differing views regarding levels of decision-makers within the government.
As is seen above, this is certainly the case for the Nu river project with a very willing Yunnan provincial government attempting to push forward with a resistant central government in the early to mid 2000s. However, with the Upper Mekong this does not seem to be a factor as the cascade seems to have resided, for the most part, within the framework of development for poverty relief, or more recently low-carbon development.
“The job of the dam engineer is to engineer the dam. Valuing biological and social and ecological impacts has not been the job of the five big power companies. It has been the job of the basin commission, and the minister of water resources, and the ministry of fisheries. The extent to which they are excluded from the conversation, those priorities don’t get taken into account” (Darrin Magee, interview 03).
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Rather, hydropower companies are considering designing from a more power generation, water storage, and dam longevity perspective. They are not necessarily considering impacts 400 km downstream. The problem, then, is not a problem of a lack of
information or exposure to information, but rather a problem of perspective. He Daming himself, according to one interviewee, is an interesting case as his beginnings changes as a hydropower engineer in his undergraduate studies, to his current position as a
geographer has changed his views of dams. The problem is as much a matter of perspective as it is job description24. During the conclusion of another such discussion with stakeholders in July of 2011, like the one above held in 2009, a head engineer dam builder stated that due to the difficulty in factoring in all the potential impacts within the IDAM tool, China simply does not assess them25. In an interview with another researcher, he stated that he found it unlikely that hydropower companies examine impacts to water and sediment flow in terms other than those that may impact electricity production (e.g.
sedimentation), and therefore profit26.
All of these factors come together to show that the sciences behind downstream impacts, whether positive or negative, are very likely subject to confirmation bias, misinterpretation from incomplete information likely based on a lack of interdisciplinary communication and understanding, and at times intentional misrepresentation. In turn, these very much advance some understandings of scientific information over others, which encouraged by the promotion of this information by actors close to decision-making, could very well influence understanding of development and the consequences of decisions. This comes at the exclusion of other scientific understandings of the same topic.
24 Interview 06: AIRC researcher
25 Interview 03: Darrin Magee Darrin Magee, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Hobart and William Smith College.
26 Interview 05: AIRC researcher
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5. The Marginalization of the Negative Impact Science Policy Stream
5.1 Negative Impact Science versus Mitigated Impacts
As was seen in chapter three and above, the downstream impact science policy stream exists next to much larger, and much more dominant policy trends and focusing events that have effectively pushed one subset of the policy stream out of the discourse among decision-makers in China: the negative impact science policy stream. This is not to say that all science regarding the negative impacts has been pushed out of development decisions in China. Rather, a distinct set of science showing negative impacts has been prioritized and emphasized over other science. Specifically, the negative impacts derived from decreased sediment flow (e.g. floodplain fertility, fish and vegetation habitats, especially the Tonle Sap lake), the negative implications of an increased dry season flow and shaving off peak flood flows (e.g. agricultural productivity, fish spawning activity, sediment transport, etc.), and related ecosystem impacts have effectively been
unacknowledged by decision-makers. Rather, the science emphasizing impacts that may be mitigated have gained prominence.
Importantly, since the mid- to late-2000s, He Daming and the AIRC have been put in a position to consult with Hydrolancang, and seem to represent a position of careful mitigation of downstream impacts. In He et al (2006), they warn that with the
Importantly, since the mid- to late-2000s, He Daming and the AIRC have been put in a position to consult with Hydrolancang, and seem to represent a position of careful mitigation of downstream impacts. In He et al (2006), they warn that with the