The Role of Science in Hydropower Development Decision- Making in China: The Case of the Upper Mekong Dam Cascade

• Main Authors: Michael Joseph Madden, 馬天林
• Other Authors: Lee, Ho Ching
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/q8v82s

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 外交研究所 === 102 === Yunnan, China is home to the headwaters of the Mekong (Lancang) River, which flows through five countries. China has completed five large dams in a cascade, and is preparing two more. Decision-makers have framed the downstream environmental effects of this cascade based on specific side of the scientific debate surrounding the cascade’s impacts, using one set of scientific research over another. Using Mertha’s additions to the “fragmented authoritarianism” framework for political context, this research uses Kingdon’s policy stream and Haas’s epistemic communities framework to contextualize science in China’s hydropower development. Thoroughly considering the scientific literature, this study finds that decision-makers have not considered the full scope of research, and concludes that primary decision-makers (hydropower companies and government actors) characterized the effects of the cascade as limited and possible to mitigate by excluding actors who emphasized evidence of negative downstream effects from the process. Though these hydropower projects were “recalibrated” to have fewer environmental effects in the early 2000s, and though stakeholders acknowledged negative ecological effects and purported to mitigate and minimize these effects in hydropower development when such development again became a priority for China in this decade, this study finds that decision-makers’ understanding of effects as possible to mitigate is based on scientific research that emphasizes the limits to negative effects, rather than the predicted consequences a number of other studies have found. This has led to the marginalization of negative downstream impact science among decision-makers.