Rights, Rivers and Renewables Lessons from Hydropower Conflict In
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Utilities Policy 55 (2018) 189–199 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Utilities Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jup Rights, rivers and renewables: Lessons from hydropower conflict in Borneo T on the role of cultural politics in energy planning for Small Island Developing States ∗ Rebekah G. Shirleya, , Jettie Wordb a Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, USA b The Borneo Project, Berkeley, CA, USA 1. Introduction accepted ideals turn in to practice. There has generally been a failure to meaningfully engage with customary law and the implementation of 1.1. The intersection between indigenous rights and Small Island Developing culturally inclusive planning policy (Techera, 2010). Given the growing States (SIDS) number of large-scale energy projects being developed in SIDS, the magnitude of their potential impacts, and how directly cultural dy- The special role of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in global namics can affect decision-making processes in such spaces, it is critical environmental protection and the universal importance of their fragile to advance discussion of the role of cultural politics in energy planning ecosystems was solidified in the Declaration of Barbados andthe for SIDS. Barbados Program of Action (BPOA, 1994). Indigenous peoples have In this paper we deconstruct the case of an energy mega-project in also obtained a greater voice at the international level in the past two Borneo - an island in the Pacific shared by three sovereign countries, decades, with the Decade of the World's Indigenous People from 1995 and home to some of the last remaining primary forest of Southeast and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Asia. We explore the chronology of government-led plans to build out (UNDRIP) adopted in 2007. Many SIDS of Africa, the Caribbean and the over 18 GW of hydropower in the Malaysian state of Sarawak and the Asian-Pacific are populated by indigenous peoples who have beentra- local conflict that emerged. Through an actor-oriented political ditional stewards of their ecosystems, and their biological and cultural ecology approach we identify the state- and non-state actors, their diversity. Together, their ecological importance and the historic mar- claims and the strategies they use to mobilize their claims. This de- ginalization of their indigenous peoples has propelled Small Island scriptive exercise shows the failure of international indigenous rights Developing States (SIDS) to the forefront of the environmental move- laws to intervene in the practicalities of local decision-making. It ment (Shirley and Kammen, 2013). SIDS are internationally recognized articulates how deeply embedded yet invisible cultural politics is in for their critical role in the Paris Agreement of 2015 and as dominant the energy planning process and emphasizes the need for main- players in encouraging increasingly aggressive country commitments streaming inclusivity in planning policy. Based on insights from the during continued UNFCCC deliberations. Borneo case study we identify specific ways in which the interna- Yet today SIDS remain host to more and more extractive industry, tional community and science communication are actively supporting such as large-scale mining, logging and power generation, having indigenous communities in small islands mobilize their claims in lieu drastic impacts on indigenous communities and their ecosystems. The of inclusive planning processes. Finally, we provide recommendation 1 GW coal plant planned for Lamu, Kenya (Ogolla, 2016; Carvallo et al., for SIDS policy makers to encourage practical and culturally appro- 2017), the 23 new coal power plants being built across the Philippines priate energy planning in line with the ethos of our international (Gegeset al., 2014), or the 13 GW coal power plant recently approved in indigenous rights law. the Sundarbans Islands, Bangladesh (Bedi, 2018), all point to increasing stressors placed on SIDS in an age of rapid economic development. Each 1.2. The story of a mega-dam resurgence in Borneo of these cases is shrouded in controversy, being fervently protested by local indigenous-led environmental movements that question the very The forested Baram Basin of Sarawak, East Malaysia is home to rational and need for the projects. While lip service has been paid numerous indigenous and ethnic minorities such as the Kayan, Kenyah, through the now many international legal protocols that make direct Iban and Penan. Dozens of villages string along the Baram River, on reference to indigenous rights, it is arguable whether these universally land historically and legally acknowledged through Native Customary ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.G. Shirley). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2018.09.010 Received 28 February 2018; Received in revised form 11 September 2018; Accepted 24 September 2018 0957-1787/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. R.G. Shirley, J. Word Utilities Policy 55 (2018) 189–199 Rights (NCR). In the late 2000s, the Baram Basin became the next basin ‘manufacture’ of a storyline (Huber and Joshi, 2015) about hydropower scheduled for dam construction according to the state's development and its economic benefits for the state along with the exclusionary use agenda to create cheap hydroelectricity to attract heavy industry to the of the law evokes earlier discursive constructions and action strategies state for economic development – called the Sarawak Corridor of that served to legitimize controversial development schemes during Renewable Energy (SCORE). Highly controversial, the 2.4 GW Bakun colonial and post-colonial regimes of the twentieth century such as Dam was commissioned in 2012 in the neighboring Rajang Basin, timber logging, large scale palm oil plantation and mining expansion. causing massive displacement and major civil unrest. There had since Furthermore, as our Baram example illustrates, hydro development been rumors of another 1.2 GW dam planned for Baram. can be not only a means to commodification and wealth extraction from One morning in August 2013 a notice appeared in the local news- water resources, but also a means of extending state control into pre- paper. A government gazette announced that the Ministry of Resource dominantly rural areas. Water resources then, we posit, can be thought Planning and the Environment had legally acquired 4000 hectares (ha) of as a new frontier in neo-capital resource commodification. Building of NCR land for building an access road. The Ministry's authority to on aged, entrenched cultural relationships, the recent mega-dam re- acquire native lands came directly from the Sarawak Land Code. surgence represents a new era in the long history of resource conflict. Persons had sixty days from the date of notice to submit all documents Conceptualizing infrastructure like this, as socio-technical systems, required for compensation claims. No provision for objections. With the points to the inherent inertia against leaving established, centralized failures of the Bakun resettlement scheme still fresh, a local alliance of patterns of control. This is the very reason why cultural politics and affected communities formed almost immediately to raise awareness on power asymmetries in decision-making processes need to be more ex- the land acquisitions and the dispossession they represent. The Baram plicitly acknowledged. Given the ecological and cultural sensitivity of Protection Action Committee (BPAC), supported by the Sarawak-wide SIDS and other marginalized spaces bearing the brunt of industrial network SAVE Rivers and the national coalition of Indigenous People expansion it is critical that energy planning advance toward an in- (JOAS), established two road blocks in the basin – one at the access clusive and data-informed exercise. road near the small town of Long Lama and one near the dam site itself - Borneo's mega-dams have now attracted tremendous media atten- to prevent construction, surveying work and logging at the proposed tion and have prompted a small but growing academic literature. dam location. For a year the roadblocks stalled preparatory construc- Writers primarily appraise the dams with respect to cost recovery, tion work. technical performance and their contribution to energy security (Choy, In December 2014 another gazette was posted, this time announcing 2005; Oh et al., 2011; Sovacool and Bulan, 2011a, 2011b, 2012). More the acquisition of over 38,000 ha of NCR lands for the construction of recently, Aiken and Leigh provide a comprehensive and extensive the dam and its reservoir. By this time the local Baram alliance had analysis on the aftermath of dam development induced displacement several cases in high court that challenged the State's legality in ex- and resettlement in East Malaysia (Aiken and Leigh, 2015). While de- tinguishing the rights of indigenous people to ancestral land. They scriptions of impact are an important part of the discussion, we aim to found that 26 villages would be displaced by the Baram dam and its extend the conversation a step further. We argue that energy planning 400 km2 flooded reservoir area, affecting more than 20,000 people. processes must not only ask about the distribution of costs and benefits Furthermore, both gazette announcements were issued before a Social but must also investigate the history of cultural dynamics and their role and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) had been completed for