Internationalizing the political economy of hydroelectricity: security, development and sustainability in hydropower states

Abstract

Our study offers a comparative assessment of the economic, sociopolitical and environmental implications of the world's largest source of renewable electricity, hydropower. Theorists from many disciplines have questioned both the proper role and ostensible benefits from the generation of electricity from large-scale hydroelectric dams. In this study, we use 30 years of World Bank data from 1985 to 2014 and a research design with three mutually exclusive reference classes of countries: major hydropower producers, members of OPEC and all other countries. This is precisely so our analysis moves away from 'dam-centric' or single case study approaches to comparative analysis at the international scale. We examine and test six separate hypotheses related to (a) military conflict, (2) poverty, (3) economic growth, (4) public debt, (5) corruption and (6) greenhouse gas emissions. Our analysis lends statistical support to the idea that there is such a thing as a 'hydroelectric resource curse', although effects were not always significant and varied from small, medium to large. The possible benefits of hydroelectricityimproved energy access, economic development and positive spillover effects-are real, but they are all too frequently constrained. Planners, investors and researchers may therefore need to rethink their underlying assumptions about how they evaluate hydropower's risk.

The hydropower myth

“…In Myanmar and Thailand, for example, hydropower projects have enabled state elites to capture public resources for their own benefit. This can include capturing sites reserved for indigenous people or wildlife (Sovacool and Walter 2018).…”

“…They involve shifting power and re-negotiating costs and benefits of water use across different spatial and temporal scales (Bakker 1999). The global debate surrounding hydropower is considered to encapsulate the desire to increase access to energy services without inflicting significant environmental degradation and so providing sustainable development (Sovacool and Walter 2018).…”

“…The hydropower myth allows social and ecological externalities to be mitigated through adherence to best practice standards or technological measures, without proper scrutiny of the appropriateness or implementation of these standards or measures. This has significant implications as the current investment in hydropower is setting the energy, and so environmental, trajectories for future generations (Sovacool and Walter 2018).…”

Implementation through collaborative crisis management and contingency planning: the case of dam failure in Sweden

“…Hence, we argue that dam failure lends itself well to a concentrated in-depth case study of collaborative crisis management and contingency planning focusing a 'normal accident' in terms of infrastructure failure (Perrow 1999). At the same time, the changing energy demand propelled by climate change mitigation efforts entails the development of new hydropower installations leading to an increase in the number of dams around the world and in Sweden (Kirchherr and Charles 2016;Sovacool and Walter 2019;SvK 2019). Hence, there is ample motivation for studies aiming at increasing the understanding of dam failure governance itself.…”

In search of the good dam: contemporary views on dam planning in Latin America

“…Dams can also present a safety risk (Huber et al 2017;Louzada and Ravena 2019), destroying downstream settlements and causing fatalities through sudden flooding, when they fail, with long-lasting implications for public health (Freitas et al 2019), the environment and the local economy (Garcia et al 2017;Wilson Fernandes et al 2016). Planning and management of dams is made more complex where corruption, or at least overly optimistic economic appraisal enter the picture (Plummer Braeckman et al 2020;Sovacool and Walter 2019), with recent studies calling into question the economic viability of many large dams over the course of their life cycle (Ansar et al 2014).…”