Contested Knowledges Water Conflicts on Large Dams and Mega- Hydraulic Development Edited by Esha Shah, Rutgerd Boelens and Bert Bruins Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Water www.mdpi.com/journal/water Contested Knowledges Contested Knowledges: Water Conflicts on Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development Special Issue Editors Esha Shah Rutgerd Boelens Bert Bruins MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Esha Shah Rutgerd Boelens Wageningen University Wageningen University The Netherlands The Netherlands Bert Bruins Wageningen University The Netherlands Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Water (ISSN 2073-4441) in 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water/special issues/ Water-Conflicts) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. 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Contents About the Special Issue Editors ..................................... vii Preface to ”Contested Knowledges: Water Conflicts on Large Dams and Mega- Hydraulic Development” ................................................ ix Rutgerd Boelens, Esha Shah and Bert Bruins Contested Knowledges: Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 416, doi:10.3390/w11030416 ..................... 1 Karen Bakker and Richard Hendriks Contested Knowledges in Hydroelectric Project Assessment: The Case of Canada’s Site C Project Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 406, doi:10.3390/w11030406 ..................... 28 Barbara Deutsch Lynch What Hirschman’s Hiding Hand Hid in San Lorenzo and Chixoy Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 415, doi:10.3390/w11030415 ..................... 46 Amelie Huber Hydropower in the Himalayan Hazardscape: Strategic Ignorance and the Production of Unequal Risk Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 414, doi:10.3390/w11030414 ..................... 64 Tuula Ter¨av¨ainen Negotiating Water and Technology—Competing Expectations and Confronting Knowledges in the Case of the Coca Codo Sinclair in Ecuador Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 411, doi:10.3390/w11030411 ..................... 87 Jeroen Warner, Sarunas Jomantas, Eliot Jones, Md. Sazzad Ansari and Lotje de Vries The Fantasy of the Grand Inga Hydroelectric Project on the River Congo Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 407, doi:10.3390/w11030406 .....................105 Coleen A. Fox and Christopher S. Sneddon Political Borders, Epistemological Boundaries, and Contested Knowledges: Constructing Dams and Narratives in the Mekong River Basin Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 413, doi:10.3390/w11030413 .....................119 Paul Hoogendam and Rutgerd Boelens Dams and Damages. Conflicting Epistemological Frameworks and Interests Concerning “Compensation” for the Misicuni Project’s Socio-Environmental Impacts in Cochabamba, Bolivia Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 408, doi:10.3390/w11030408 .....................137 Rinchu Doma Dukpa, Deepa Joshi and Rutgerd Boelens Contesting Hydropower Dams in the Eastern Himalaya: The Cultural Politics of Identity, Territory and Self-Governance Institutions in Sikkim, India Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 412, doi:10.3390/w11030412 .....................157 Juan Pablo Hidalgo-Bastidas and Rutgerd Boelens Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 409, doi:10.3390/w11030409 .....................180 v Bibiana Duarte Abad´ıa, Rutgerd Boelens and Lucas du Pr´e Mobilizing Water Actors and Bodies of Knowledge. The Multi-Scalar Movement against the R´ıo Grande Dam in Malaga,´ Spain Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 410, doi:10.3390/w11030410 .....................200 Esha Shah, Rutgerd Boelens and Bert Bruins Reflections: Contested Epistemologies on Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development Reprinted from: Water 2019, 11, 417, doi:10.3390/w11030417 .....................221 vi About the Special Issue Editors Esha Shah is an Assistant Professor with the Water Resource Management Group at Wageningen University. She has held research and teaching positions at the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at University of Sussex, UK, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Between 2013 and 2015, she was a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla. For 9 months, between October 2017 and October 2018, she was a fellow with the Nantes Institute of Advanced Study in Nantes, France. Her research interests include history and anthropology of science and technology, including water control infrastructure, debates on modernity and agrarian development in India, history and genealogy of development co-operation, debates on genetically modified crop biotechnology and, more recently, the role of subjectivity in shaping objective knowledge. https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Esha-E-Esha-Shah-PhD.htm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Esha Shah6. Rutgerd Boelens is a Professor of ‘Water Governance and Social Justice’ at Wageningen University, a Professor of ‘Political Ecology of Water in Latin America’ with CEDLA, University of Amsterdam, and a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Peru and the Central University of Ecuador. He directs the international Justicia H´ıdrica/Water Justice alliance (www.justiciahidrica.org). His research focuses on political ecology, water rights, legal pluralism, cultural politics, governmentality and social mobilisation. Among his latest books are “Water Justice” (with Perreault & Vos, Cambridge University Press, 2018), “Water, Power and Identity. The Cultural Politics of Water in the Andes” (Routledge, 2015) and “Out of the Mainstream: Water Rights, Politics and Identity” (with Getches & Guevara-Gil, Earthscan, 2010). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rutgerd Boelens/publications and http://www.cedla.uva.nl/20 research/researchers/pub list/Rutgerd Boelens pub.html. Bert Bruins is is a lecturer at the Water Resources Management group of Wageningen University. In addition to teaching, he was involved in a research program entitled ‘Hydropower development in the context of climate change—Exploring conflicts and fostering cooperation across scales and boundaries in the Eastern Himalayas’ and in various higher education capacity building projects (in Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia and Nepal). He is also the Programme Director of the BSc and MSc programmes on International Land and Water Management at Wageningen University. vii Preface to ”Contested Knowledges: Water Conflicts on Large Dams and Mega- Hydraulic Development” Since the early 1980s, large dams have been at the centre of intensely contentious debates regarding their profound social and environmental impacts. All over the world, the design, construction and operation of large dams are amongst the most prestigious, but also the most sensitive and contested, developmental issues. As a result of the long-fraught conflict and controversy regarding large dams, which has spanned over two decades, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was constituted. In 2000, it published its renowned report Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making. The WCD is an independent, international commission comprised of leaders from all sides of the debate; it has proposed guidelines for improving dam performance and governance by incorporating principles of participation, equity and transparency. The WCD has, so far, conducted the most rigorous evaluation of the role and impact of large dams on society and the environment, and its formation was accompanied by hopes that broad-based agreements would be forged to control the adverse effects of large dams on society and the environment. Despite the WCD process, the issue of large dams continues to remain highly contentious with respect to the conflict over providing hydropower, irrigation and flood control to limited segments of society while devastating the basic rights and livelihoods of many others and damaging shared rivers and ecosystems. More recently, the debates on climate change, increasing energy demand and challenges to the use of fossil fuels have prompted a renewed interest in hydropower, which is increasingly promoted as a source of clean energy. In addition, traditional development banks and developers have been steadily challenged by competitors from the private sector and the Capital invested by rising and powerful economies, such as China, for positions as primary investors in large dams in Africa and Latin America. These private actors barely follow the WCD guidelines and have adopted aggressively competitive approaches to investment in large dams, often in combination with the goal of strengthening their interests in extractive industries, such