Politicization of the Hydropower Dams in the Lancang-Mekong Basin: A Review of Contemporary Environmental Challenges

Abstract

To date, hydropower dams raise numerous interpretations about their impact on the Lancang-Mekong River. While most research studies analyze the negative aspects of hydropower development on people’s livelihoods and local environments, the hydropower sector was historically one of the most iconic economic segments facilitating transboundary water cooperation for decades. By using the constructive discourse analysis and critical political ecology approach, the presented text (1) outlines the current environmental narratives over the Lancang-Mekong hydropower development and (2) explores the politicization of the Chinese mainstream dams. The data were collected upon the multi-level content analysis of relevant sources and double-checked with the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and Conflict Database (LMCCD) monitoring over 4000 water-related events among six riparian countries between 1990 and 2021. Our data show that (i) there is a stark contrast in positive and negative narratives over the rapid hydropower development, (ii) the impact of mainstream dams on the river is more often discussed than that of tributary dams, (iii) implications of the hydropower dams are often interpreted upon the non-traditional research inputs rather than widely accepted studies, and (iv) developing the contradictory arguments through social and public media contributes to greater polarization of the multi-stakeholders’ viewpoints in the accountable research dialogue.

1. Introduction

Hydropower development in the Lancang-Mekong Basin has attracted significant media attention for decades. Since the 1950s, when the closer collaboration between four riparian states (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam) had been established, the Lancang-Mekong Basin was considered a highly apolitical and under-utilized international river [1,2]. During the political confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union [3,4], there were limited ways to promote peace among nations and lift out Southeast Asian states from poverty. Apart from providing development aid and other assistance [5,6,7], hydropower development slowly became a politically acceptable and economically viable solution for ensuring some sort of pragmatic and long-lasting cooperation that endured even the horrors of the Cold War era. To replicate the success of the hydropower development, many water cooperation mechanisms (Mekong River Commission (MRC), Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), ASEAN Mekong Basin Development Cooperation (AMBDC), etc.) have been launched since the end of the Cold War to follow the legacy of exceptional water cooperation. However, such open support for advancing the basin development was not fully accompanied by good water governance principles [8,9,10] and deep consideration of the complex hydro-meteorological changes.

While many hydrological studies [11,12,13] and international scientists [14,15,16] consistently warn against various negative consequences associated with the rapid hydropower development, most attention was paid to the Chinese mainstream dams [17,18,19] and several controversial water projects in downstream countries, particularly the Lower Sesan II, Xayaburi, Xepian-Xenamnoy and Yali Falls dams [20,21,22,23]. Perhaps the biggest politicization of the hydropower dams arose after April 2020, when a team of two researchers published a study regarding the negative impact of upstream mainstream reservoirs on the natural water flow [24]. The so-called Eyes on Earth Study (EoE Study) received unusual media attention for legitimizing the anti-dam narratives [25,26] and became widely accepted by a plethora of multi-stakeholders despite the strong criticism for simplification and misinterpretation of the research findings [27,28,29,30]. On the other hand, by escalating the pressure on the water data sharing, two additional hydrological monitoring initiatives addressing the Lancang-Mekong hydrological changes have been introduced [31,32]. Contradictory to the traditional view where both the Lancang-Mekong Water Cooperation and Information Platform (LMWCIP) and Mekong Dam Monitor (MDM) were driven by the politicization of the EoE Study, we believe that the behavioral change in existing transboundary water cooperation has not yet been achieved due to the lack of high-quality research inputs and shallow involvement of the downstream multi-stakeholders in the negotiation process.

As our literature review shows, the perception of the hydropower dams changes over time. Historically, the hydropower dams were considered a symbol of national pride and an archetype of the technical progress maximizing the benefits from the local environments [33,34,35]. With the new technologies and technical possibilities, the hydropower sectors underwent the gradual transition towards the grandiose multi-purpose dams dealing with all tangible water challenges. Moreover, besides the massive investments from foreign donors and other financial institutions, the rapid hydropower development was backed by the “Mekong Spirit” narrative as an ideological tool for facilitating regional water cooperation at all costs [36,37]. The popularization of hydropower development continued until the early 1990s. Since then, the optimistic view on the hydropower sector reached its peak and was widely considered a cheap, renewable and clean source of energy promoting the comprehensive basin development [38,39]. However, such politicization of the hydropower dams was redeemed by the pacification of the unwanted critique [40,41] and hiding most of the hydrological data over the water projects [39,42]. While the initial idea was to promote the transboundary water cooperation by all means and marginalize all undesirable civil movements blocking the path toward joint prosperity, the long-term legitimization of the hydropower dams in a non-transparent environment created a highly volatile space for corruption and contributed to greater research uncertainty over these projects. Many dams were then built upon the shallow hydrological studies and controversial impact assessments to justify the hydropower development [43,44,45], including those economically infeasible, socially insensitive or environmentally troublesome projects [46,47].

By using the constructive discourse analysis and critical political ecology approach, the presented text (1) outlines the current environmental narratives over the Lancang-Mekong hydropower development and (2) explores the politicization of the Chinese mainstream dams. The paper is divided into a few parts. The connection between critical political ecology and politicization of hydropower dams is explained in Section 2. The data sources and methodology of research are presented in Section 3. The research results from the extensive literature review are demonstrated in Section 4. In Section 5, we discuss the research findings and make some conclusions regarding the current discourse practices.

2. Critical Political Ecology and Politicization of Hydropower Dams

The political ecology was developed in the late 1960s as an interdisciplinary theoretical approach analyzing the complex interaction between humans and nature [48,49]. Unlike the traditional environmental theories examining the degree of utilization of natural water resources facilitating sustainable human development, political ecology investigates how multi-stakeholders construct, disseminate and justify various arguments during the negotiation process [21,50,51,52]. While most attention is paid to the official speech acts in which the policy-makers confront, interpret and legitimize desirable practices [53,54,55], the control over natural resources is primarily driven by tangible factors rather than biophysical ecological aspects [56]. In contrast with political economy and geopolitics, the political ecology considers any challenge as a window of an opportunity for re-considering the research stereotypes by advancing the research dialogue over the non-traditional environmental issues [57,58,59]. To examine the asymmetry between the various versions of the truth and clarify the tendencies for rejecting the opposite interpretations [60,61], we studied the contradictory scientific and non-scientific viewpoints related to the Lancang-Mekong hydropower development. Compared to the Middle East and Central Asian international rivers, where hydropower development is often associated with water-scarcity conflicts [2,62], the Lancang-Mekong Basin disputes are generally triggered by enlarging the pie of benefits from abundant shared waters and incompatibility of national interests between different political systems [63,64].

2.1. Politicization Strategies

By drawing on discursive framing theories and the critical hydropolitics [65,66,67,68,69], there can be identified several mechanisms stimulating the actual outcomes in the transboundary water interaction. As is shown in Figure 1, both scientists and non-scientists have numerous options on how to affect hydropower development. First, there are the coercive mechanisms, which can be described as a subset of actions requiring physical force and other forms of intimidation. Unlike the local water wars or various acts of water terrorism [62,70], the coercive power is standardly exercised through imposing economic sanctions, adopting various trade embargos or using military force to blockade the geostrategic chokepoints. Yet, in the Lancang-Mekong Basin, this type of mechanism was mainly demonstrated by multiple non-participatory actions or threatening the opponents by adopting various retaliatory actions [37,71,72]. Second, the leverage mechanisms represent the group of activities delimiting the influence of other multi-stakeholders. Whereas the downstream governments use this mechanism to multiply the tangible benefits from foreign donors, the regional powers mobilize their funds and re-distribute their development aid to form stronger alliances and ensure the balance of power in the region [39,65]. Third, there are transformative mechanisms that re-frame the existing water knowledge and re-interpret the contested water issues. Such behavioral change is traditionally influenced by raising public awareness about controversial water projects, co-producing the water knowledge with civil society and improving the access and scope of the shared hydrological data through remote sensing [25,68,73]. However, due to the unequal capacities of the riparian governments to produce their water knowledge, a strong reliance on the third party’s datasets and harmonizing the national interests according to the Mekong Spirit of water cooperation [39,74], the actual debate over the sustainable hydropower development only enlarged the number of multi-stakeholders and institutionalized the political labelling rather than encouraging the actors to initiate the structural reforms. Hence, regardless of the clash of research viewpoints among researchers to make better science (contestation) and the increasing number of the communication platforms to address the multi-stakeholder interests (compliance), it is the enlarging pie of research uncertainties that reiterate the existing water narratives and cement the current status quo between scientists and non-scientists.

2.2. Politicization of Science

In the post-truth era, the line between science and politics can sometimes be very blurry. While putting faith in technocratic solutions present one of the viable strategies for how to depoliticize the research discourse and address the unsatisfactory political responses [75,76,77], both the scientization of politics and the politicization of science are neither good nor bad [78,79,80]. What changed is the way multi-stakeholders interpret their visions and negotiate with other actors. For scientists, it is the “science without politics” [81] that ensures the exclusivity of the academic community and paves the path to unlimited research outlooks [82]. For non-scientists, it is the required time, expected costs and simplicity of the scientific conclusions that are more important to decide whether to continue with certain water management practices or not [25,83]. This is also the case for the Lancang-Mekong hydropower dams. As it shown in Figure 2, most of the mainstream hydropower dams are distributed in the Upper Lancang-Mekong Basin which raise concerns about the sustainability of the river. Such rumours can be notably identified when the unusual severe droughts (2004, 2015, 2019) and sudden floods (2008, 2014) hit the downstream countries [26,84,85]. Despite the fact that many scholars believe that these water insecurities were mainly driven by hydro-meteorological reasons rather than man-made projects [86,87,88], calling the Chinese hydropower dams as the main culprit for amplifying the environmental risks is a very popular preconception in recent years. Whenever both scientists and non-scientists applied this narrative to emphasize China’s utilitarianism [89,90] and other geostrategic intentions in Southeast Asia [71,91], this narrative was more often used to transfer various responsibilities for joint river management and multiply the fears from upstream countries [16,17,21].

Until 2016, many foreign observers claimed that China’s government would highly unlikely join any initiative that would require further regulations of the upstream hydropower development [15,37,39]. The gradual behavioral change of China’s government in its engagement in transboundary water governance appeared after the establishment of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) in early 2016. China’s government not only committed to promote joint basin development and share more information about its water operations but also to release more water from upstream dams to alleviate the seasonal droughts [93,94]. Other progress associated with the growing politicization of Chinese hydropower dams can also be found in terms of facilitating closer research collaboration with the MRC since late 2019 [95,96] and strengthening the policy-research dialogues addressing the current water insecurities [97,98]. Nevertheless, despite the prolonged communication shortcomings, historical prejudice, and other aspects undermining the trust among multi-stakeholders, changing the quality and quantity of shared waters is far beyond the capacity of Chinese mainstream dams [30,87,99].

2.3. Scientization of Politics

In the name of science, many multi-stakeholders propose various solutions for ensuring sustainable hydropower development. So far, the plethora of multi-stakeholders seem to be in favour of the small-scale hydropower development [100], improving the existing hydropower operations by undertaking various technical reforms [101,102,103] and enhancing the capacity building of the dam operators [21,104]. Other forms of satisfaction present the better transparency of the operational hydrological data [2,22,34], conducting more detailed socio-environmental assessments of the tributary dams [11,12] or improving the multi-track research dialogue through good water governance [105,106]. Nevertheless, the scientization of politics may not necessarily mean salvation for scientists. Instead, it may create the environment formalizing the power inequalities among multi-stakeholders and legitimizing the preferable knowledge [107]. In fact, scientists are not neutral arbiters nor privileged actors since their values and interests are highly influenced by their professional backgrounds [108,109]. A similar misconception also presents the strong faith in institutionalization and the legal bindingness of the water cooperation [2,105,110], where not every agreement or cooperation mechanism possesses the capacity to facilitate further research dialogue [69,72,111].

Yet, instead of elaborating the importance, capacities and responsibilities of the relevant multi-stakeholders involved in the decision-making process [23,39,44], we briefly designed the conceptual scheme explaining the key aspects affecting the behavioral change towards hydropower development (Figure 3). First, there are the biophysical, economic and political drivers that stimulate multi-stakeholder dialogue and indicate if it is feasible to build or not to build the particular water project [65]. Second, there are the inputs from the scientists and non-scientists that determine the fate of the proposed hydropower project. During the negotiation, the multi-stakeholders express different expectations, formulate various demands and demonstrate multiple needs to safeguard their interests [33]. Although the material, bargaining and ideological powers among multi-stakeholders significantly vary [112], it is the actor’s performance and form of communication that justify whenever the ratio between the tangible benefits and potential costs is politically acceptable. Third, regardless of the decision of the policy-makers and planned itinerary of the dam construction, any water infrastructure project can be potentially re-designed, postponed and even cancelled according to the actual needs and demands of the multi-stakeholders. However, once the hydropower dam is completed, the potential decommissioning of the hydropower projects can be politically, economically and ecologically troublesome, especially for developing countries, which may not be able to afford to cancel the existing contracts [39,71,102,103].

3. Methods and Data

The presented paper uses the constructivist discourse analysis to investigate the argumentation patterns over the water-related issues [113,114]. Compared to sentiment analysis, which is getting increasingly popular in socio-hydrology [115,116], the constructivist discourse analysis is more suitable for exploring the multi-stakeholder performance by re-considering their beliefs, values and other post-positivists aspects [117]. Moreover, whenever the hydropower dams are interpreted positively or negatively, a holistic context clarifying the different versions of reality help to deconstruct the current water narratives and re-define interconnected actions in human–water interaction. The data for this research were derived from the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation and Conflict Database (LMCCD) tracking the multifarious water-related events between six riparian states within the last 31 years (1990–2021). Unlike other water databases (e.g., Water Conflict Chronology Database, International Water Dispute Database), the LMCCD records over 4000 publicly accessible full-text sources. This helped us to overview the deviations of widely accepted interpretations over the Lancang-Mekong hydropower dams and revise the multi-stakeholder inputs in the last two years when the politicization of the hydropower dams re-emerged.

As is shown in

Table 1. List of searching parameters and keywords for retrieving data from the LMCCD.

Parameter	Keywords
Object	Hydropower dam, hydropower development, dam
Context	Governance, diplomacy, cooperation, conflict, management, data sharing, floods, droughts, upstream, protest, fishery, agriculture, climate change
State	China, USA, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam
Actor	Construction company, energy company, financial institution, assistant agency, bank, River Basin Organization, NGO
Other	Manipulation of water flow, water aggression, hydro-hegemony, water peaking, Eyes on Earth, Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, Mekong-U.S. Partnership, Mekong River Commission, communication, geopolitics, security, politics

, we outlined several parameters and assigned multiple keywords to retrieve the basic information about the past and current development pathways in the Lancang-Mekong hydropower development. Since the majority of LMCCD datasets were collected through the multi-level analysis of official and secondary documents over specific water issues [25,118] and already calibrated (i.e., excluded the duplicated, unverifiable, confidential and unpublished sources), using the traditional positivist methods (e.g., comparison of the most frequent references and the number of repetitive words) could potentially produce some biases in our research conclusions. Hence, we undertook a pre-screening of the LMCCD datasets before April 2020 and selected 1020 literature sources regarding the politicization of Chinese hydropower dams in the last 18 months (April 2020–September 2021). To enhance the scope and deepness of the contemporary interpretations, we added several keywords associated with hydropower development and other relevant references polarizing the current research dialogue. On the other hand, more research needs to be conducted to acknowledge the “close-door events” (e.g., panel discussion, workshops, regional meetings with multi-stakeholders) and other micro-events (e.g., local protests, letter of concerns, filled lawsuits) to fill the information gaps.

To ensure information consistency, the majority of data were derived from English-written sources rather than regional languages. The only exception presents a few Chinese official speech acts and several secondary sources that were repeatedly quoted and translated in various official and public media. In addition, we included the references from official MDM accounts on Twitter and Facebook media, which were frequently used for accelerating the water notification and simplifying the research jargon for a broad audience. Although these social media inputs can be considered less relevant compared to the other literature sources, we noticed some unusual nuances and other irregularities with the content shared through the official MDM websites. As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the constructivist discourse analysis and critical political ecology is not to distinguish between popular and unpopular claims [61] but rather to highlight the contemporary mainstream interpretations and indicate how the politicization of hydropower dams affect the accountable research dialogue. To fill the information gaps about current discourse practices stimulating the negotiation over the Lancang-Mekong dams, we divided the narratives into three groups according to the type of actor. First, there are the policy inputs that are derived from the official speech acts to monitor the actual changes in the political rhetoric of the state representatives. Second, there are the research inputs represented by various research assessments from interdisciplinary scientists and other experts to explore the plurality of research viewpoints on hydropower development. Third, there are the media inputs that include the newspaper articles sharing the expert opinions and other concerns from the civil society to examine the public perception of the current water disputes. However, more research needs to be conducted to better conceptualize the politicization of water science [119] and multi-stakeholder attitudes towards hydropower development [22,40,81,120].

4. Results

4.1. Overview of Contemporary Water Narratives

Our data show that there are numerous positive and negative narratives associated with hydropower development (

Table 2. Summary of the main consequences of the Lancang-Mekong hydropower dams.

Positives	Negatives
Energy generation Producing cheaper electricity Improving energy grid scope and stability Facilitating the international trade	Water quantity Decline of water sediments Sudden water fluctuations Changing the river landscape
Flood and drought management Mitigating seasonal flood costs Ensuring reasonable water flow Stimulating water conservation development	Water quality Affecting the water safety Decreasing the water temperature Influencing the water color 1
Irrigation Promoting food security Diversifying agriculture production Mitigating soil erosion	Environmental issues Aquatic biodiversity degradation Changing the bird life cycle Compounding water insecurities 2
Water navigation Easing navigability of the river Securing the water transportation Facilitating the cross-border trade	Social issues Inadequate compensations Improper relocation policies Communication shortcomings
Improving local livelihood Building critical local infrastructure Resettlement compensations Promoting local economies	Legal issues Ineffective water governance Non-binding water management Underdeveloped code of conduct
Other Technical and technological innovations Data sharing cooperation Promoting alternative sources of energy Re-considering water project development	Other issues Physical water project safety Vague technical solutions Dam re-sizing and decommissioning Slow and inconclusive research process

¹ To date, there is no definite research consensus on this issue. For further information, see [11,12,99,145]; ² To date, there is no definite research consensus on this issue. For further information, see [25,26,30].

). So far, most of the proponents emphasize the short-term regulatory positives [88,99,121] and long-term benefits from optimizing the utilization of shared waters on a collective basis [38,112,122,123]. Depending on the hydropower operations, location and natural conditions, many multi-purpose hydropower dams can positively facilitate water navigation, improve the efficiency of energy generation and provide other tangible benefits for riparian countries [124,125,126,127]. Other direct benefits may range from various compensations for the resettled communities [127,128] to regular water releases from water dam reservoirs, which are enhancing agricultural production [129,130] and reducing the cost of severe droughts [90,131]. Indirectly, the hydropower development is often accompanied by intense pressure on technical and technological innovations [11,12,46,118], deepening the joint transboundary water management [21,37,132] and improving the transparency of the operational hydrological data [31,133,134]. Others indirect benefits of hydropower development include decreasing costs of generated electricity, promoting the energy grid stability, enhancing technical safety, facilitating cross-border trade with energy production and delivering electricity to remote areas [21,135,136]. In addition, the strong lobby for hydropower development is continuously developing the discussion about the other alternative source of energies [137,138] and motivating both policy-makers and other multi-stakeholders to re-consider economically infeasible and other controversial large-scale water projects [20,21,139], including the Non-Navigational Channel Improvement Project, which was cancelled in February 2020 [140,141].

However, such regulatory benefits are not always being safeguarded. In fact, the frequent water regulations may reduce the influx of water sediments, decrease the biodiversity of animal and plant species, and contribute to soil erosion, particularly in Cambodia and Vietnam, which are mostly affected [14,19,21,142,143]. Other direct challenges connected with the water peaking phenomenon [88,99,144,145] include sudden water fluctuations [44,146,147], changing water color, and deteriorating ecosystem health due to the algae bloom [148,149], which produce methane emission caused by stored carbon in bottom sediments [150,151] and accelerate other cumulative environmental processes [152,153,154]. Because many negative consequences occurred as a by-product of multiplying the benefits [155,156,157] and securing the hydropower development in local environments [40,71,158], the large-scale water projects attract significant media attention and numerous speculations beyond the data [24,25,159,160].

Perhaps the most significant area of public awareness raises the indirect costs of the hydropower dams and the capacity of multi-stakeholders to ensure sustainable hydropower development. While many technical solutions, such as fish-friendly hydropower turbines, various fish-restoration projects and adaptive fish passage, have already been applied to mitigate the environmental cost of hydropower dams, their effectiveness was repeatedly questioned due to the rich aquatic biodiversity and insufficient testing [121,122,161]. Similar difficulties can also be found in numerous cases of inadequate compensations for relocated communities, lack of legal bindingness of regional water cooperation mechanisms, uncertain physical security of the water reservoirs or persisting communication shortcomings among multi-stakeholders [21,22,37,70]. Apart from the water mismanagement, many observers consider the absence of the re-sizing and decommissioning of the existing dams [12,13], weak legal responsibilities for non-state actors [23,71,111], abstract solutions and the slow research process as hotspots of new water disputes that may trigger further political tension among multi-stakeholders [25]. Hence, considering the current advancements in ensuring sustainable hydropower development, the political willingness and accountable research dialogue will be the key to initiating the structural behavioral changes towards the hydropower sector.

4.2. Politicization of Chinese Hydropower Dams

In April 2020, the Eyes on Earth in collaboration with the Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) and other partners published a hydrological study analyzing the actual impact of the upstream hydropower dams on the natural water flow [24]. The authors concluded that since 2017, the Miaowei (1400 MW), Huangdeng (1900 MW), Dahuaqiao (900 MW), Lidi (400 MW) and Wunonglong (990 MW) dams started to compound the alteration of the natural flow, which presumably compounded the dry season in early 2019 [24]. While the politicization of the EoE Study conclusions raised relevant concerns and served as a basis for the MDM [32], there is still no consensus on the EoE Study empirical findings. Yet, besides the lack of the peer-review process, exclusion of the left-bank tributaries, marginalization of the complex hydro-meteorological conditions and misinterpretation of the MRC hydrological data [27,28,30], the EoE Study has become a subject of numerous contradictory commentaries that polarize both scientific and non-scientific communities until now [25,26]. After reviewing the 1020 literature sources in the last 18 months (April–September 2020), we outlined several rhetorical patterns politicizing the Chinese mainstream dams.

4.2.1. Policy Inputs

As shown in

Table 3. List of policy-makers inputs de/politicizing the Chinese mainstream dams *.

US Policy-Makers	Chinese Policy-Makers	Other Policy-Makers
Michael Pompeo commentary (4/20)	Shuang Geng commentary (4/20)	Thailand unofficial commentary (4/20)
Michael DeSombre commentary (4/20)	Keqiang Li commentary (4/20)	24th MRC Dialogue Meeting (10/20)
David R. Stilwell commentary (6/20)	LMC JWG Meeting on LMWCIP (5/20)	Mekong People’s Council Forum (12/20)
Michael Pompeo commentary (9/20)	3rd LMC Leader’s Meeting (8/20)	Vietnam unofficial commentary (12/20)
David R. Stilwell commentary (9/20)	Keqiang Li commentary (8/20)	Prak Sokhonn commentary (3/2021)
1st MUP Meeting (9/20)	LMC Water Symposium (9/20)	Sreng Sataro commentary (5/21)
David R. Stilwell commentary (10/20)	Lijian Zhao commentary (9/20)	4th MRC Expert Group Meeting (9/21)
Indo-Pacific Conference (10/20)	2nd LMC JWG Meeting on water (9/20)	25th MRC Dialogue Meeting (9/21)
David R. Stilwell commentary (12/20)	1st LMC Water Resources Meeting (10/20)
David R. Stilwell commentary (12/20)	LMC Workshop on Hydropower (10/20)
1st FLM Policy Dialogue (1/21)	LMWCIP has been launched (11/20)
Ned Price commentary (2/21)	Zhaohui Luo commentary (11/20)
W. Patrick Murphy commentary (2/21)	Zhaohui Luo commentary (11/20)
Atul Keshap commentary (3/21)	Chunying Hua commentary (12/20)
EWC-MUP conference report (3/21)	Wenbing Wang commentary (12/20)
MUP Track 1.5. Policy Dialogue (3/21)	LMWCIP-MRC Water Data Meeting (3/21)
Kamala Harris commentary (4/21)	Chungying Hua commentary (3/21)
W. Patrick Murphy commentary (6/21)	LMC Delegates hydropower tour (4/21)
1st MUP Senior Official Meeting (6/21)	6th LMC Foreign Minister Meeting (6/21)
MUP training (7/21)	Wang Yi commentary (6/21)
W. Patrick Murphy commentary (8/21)	Wenbin Wang commentary (6/21)
2nd MUP Ministerial Meeting (8/21)	Keqiang Li commentary (9/21)
FLM Ministerial Meeting (8/21)
1st MUP Track 1.5. Policy Dialogue (9/21)

* The date abbreviations have been shortened according to respective month and year. For example, an event in September 2021 is re-written as a (9/21). Other abbreviations represent the Friends of the Lower Mekong (FLM) and Joint Working Group (JWG).

, most of the policy-maker inputs regarding the politicization of Chinese mainstream dams was made by the Chinese and US state officials rather than downstream governments. In fact, since both superpowers in late 2020 addressed the politicization of hydropower dams through additional hydrological monitoring platforms [31,32], the dialogue over the actual impacts of the hydropower dams was mainly oriented on justifying and refuting the EoE Study conclusions. The transition from expressing mild concerns and joint efforts for deepening the existing water cooperation was quickly substituted by escalating political accusations and other claims beyond the water context [162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169]. The US political rhetoric has become more aggressive and loaded with various euphemisms to trigger the emotional response from civil society and anti-dam movements [25]. Combined with the public sensitivity to any alteration of the water flow, long-term marginalization of the negative implications of the hydropower dams and a lack of systemic regulation of the hydropower development, the US official responses oscillated between offensive and defensive rhetoric. Surprisingly, while the US official discourse frequently put the EoE Study conclusions into the geopolitical context and with the references of newly established Mekong-U.S. Partnership (MUP) [170], the US official policy inputs strongly relied on the Eyes on Earth [171,172] and Stimson Center inputs [173] without further consideration of the critical research responses [27,28,29].

In contrast, the Chinese official responses towards the EoE Study were initially more conservative due to scheduled advancements in transboundary water cooperation [92,93,94] and the presence of various MRC science-based assessments, including the response report on the EoE Study [30]. For Chinese state officials, the EoE Study was perceived as another “problem-solution” scheme in which no matter how much effort will be put in addressing these concerns, the actual outcome of such progress is highly uncertain. From marginalizing the positive effects of water release from Jinghong hydropower dam in March 2016, more hydrological data were shared to comply with the commitments that are not operationalized by the downstream countries to demonstrate various forms of dissatisfaction with Chinese actions regardless of whether the initial inquiry was fulfilled or not [39,88].

Nevertheless, soon after the strong public media outcry and growing speculations over the Chinese mainstream dams emerged [25], the Chinese state representatives repeatedly advised the US government to stick to the facts and quote the EoE Study findings with caution [167,169]. However, because of the series of communication shortcomings of the LMWCIP, particularly in terms of the understudied water color phenomenon [174,175,176] and underdeveloped notification schemes over the upstream water operations [177,178], the Chinese officials were unable to pay more attention to the transboundary water issues until mid-2021 as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic [179,180]. Nevertheless, compared to the US depoliticization strategies supporting various public-science meetings and other initiatives engaging the non-state actors in the decision-making process [181,182,183], the Chinese state officials seem to put more faith in advancing the collaboration with regional partners and strengthening the joint research investigations, particularly with the MRC [184,185]. Therefore, despite both the US and Chinese officials expressing their willingness to facilitate closer regional water collaboration and enhance the joint research investigations based on the robust empirical facts, the accountable research dialogue remains highly fragmented and driven by tacit proclamations without clear solutions. While some observers may consider the perpetual rhetorical battles over the EoE Study conclusions and spreading political distrust towards the undesirable research narratives as foreplay for how to delineate the sphere of influence between LMWCIP and MDM, the shallow involvement from the downstream governments is probably caused by balancing the power in the region and keeping the distance from the potential retaliatory actions [71,91].

4.2.2. Research Inputs

As

Table 4. List of research inputs politicizing and depoliticizing the Chinese mainstream dams *.

US Researchers	Chinese Researchers	Other Researchers
EoE Study (4/20)	Tsinghua University Study (7/20)	MRC unofficial commentary (4/20)
SC commentary (4/20)	Lu Xing commentary (7/20)	MRC report on EoE Study (4/20)
SC researcher commentary (4/20)	Tsinghua University commentary (8/20)	AMPERES commentary (4/20)
EoE research commentary (4/20)	Zhong Yong commentary (10/20)	FCCT discussion on EoE Study (4/20)
SC researcher commentary (5/20)	Xingjun Yu commentary (12/20)	Aalto University commentary (4/20)
SC and EoE researcher commentary (5/20)	1st LMWCIP announcement (1/21)	CU Dialogue Forum 4 Mekong (7/21)
SC researcher commentary (6/20)	3rd Water Security Forum (4/21)	MRC report on Chinese dams (8/20)
SC-EoE researcher commentary (7/20)	2nd LMWCIP announcement (7/21)	CU seminar on the EoE Study (8/20)
SC researcher commentary (1/21)	3rd LMWCIP announcement (7/21)	China-Southeast Asia webinar (9/20)
1st MDM announcement (1/21		Damming the Mekong webinar (9/20)
SC researcher commentary (1/21)		CICP Mekong Conference (10/20)
1st MDM announcement (1/21)		China-India Politics webinar (11/20)
2nd MDM announcement (1/21)		CICP webinar on ASEAN (1/21)
3rd MDM announcement (2/21)		UNECE webinar on Data sharing (2/21)
EJN-EWC-SC grant for journalists (2/21)		Mekong Delta conference (3/21)
4th MDM announcement (3/21)		CICP US-China relations webinar (3/21)
5th MDM announcement (3/21)		EWC Dialogue (4/21)
6th MDM announcement (3/21)		SUMERNET grant for journalists (4/21)
7th MDM announcement (4/21)		CICP US-China webinar (5/21)
MDM announced biases in datasets (4/21)		CU-SEVANA commentary (5/21)
1st MDM informal online meeting (4/21)		1st ASEAN-MRC Dialogue (8/21)
8th MDM announcement (4/21)		CU-CDRI water diplomacy report (8/21)
9th MDM announcement (4/21)		CSIS US-Laos Partnership webinar (9/21)
SC and CTU commentary (5/21)
2nd MDM informal online meeting (5/21)
10th MDM announcement (5/21)
11th MDM announcement (5/21)
12th MDM announcement (5/21)
13th MDM announcement (5/21)
14th MDM announcement (5/21)
15th MDM announcement (5/21)
16th MDM announcement (5/21)
3rd MDM informal online meeting (6/21)
SC researcher webinar (6/21)
EoE Improvement report (6/21)
MDM announced a major update (7/21)
17th MDM announcement (7/21)
18th MDM announcement (7/21)
19th MDM announcement (7/21)
MDM virtual workshop (8/21)
20th MDM announcement (9/21)

* Abbreviations: Stimson Center (SC), Eyes on Earth (EoE), Mekong Dam Monitor (MDM), Environmental Journalist Network (EJN), East-West Center (EWC), CTU (Can Tho University), Lancang-Mekong Water Cooperation and Information Platform (LMWCIP), Mekong River Commission (MRC), Australia-Mekong Partnership for Environmental Resources & Energy Systems (AMPERES), Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT), Chulalongkorn University (CU), Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP), Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

shows, the depoliticization of the research dialogue over the Chinese mainstream dams was predominantly driven by international scientists and other research institutions [27,28,30,186,187]. Apart from the Eyes on Earth, the most significant public awareness about the adverse effects of upstream hydropower development on the river has been attracted by various US scientific commentaries. So far, most of the US research inputs have been shared through multiple interviews [188,189,190]. The rest of the US inputs were replicated through the MDM social media (i.e., Facebook and Twitter) and numerous science-public forums [191,192,193]. In addition, since no high-impact research article has been published to support the EoE Study conclusion [25], the only operationalization of the EoE Study findings can be found at the MDM. Compared to the LMWCIP, which provided three announcements related to the temporal water fluctuations as a result of the planned hydropower maintenance [194,195,196], the MDM submitted twenty alerts and issued dozens of comments through their official websites. Followed by the major update of the MDM in June 2021 dealing with the biases in datasets [172] and improving the MDM performance by promoting citizen science [197,198], the MDM proved to be a very progressive instrument in fostering comprehensive hydrological monitoring. This provides an essential step towards changing the US research mindset towards the Chinese upstream dams. However, because the MDM presents an exclusive research platform with no legal mandate and primarily utilizes the remote sensing methods and downstream civil society to fill the information gaps [199], the high-quality research inputs and willingness to address the existing shortcomings remain shallow [26]. Another challenge is present in the use of social media, where MDM Twitter and Facebook accounts tend to provide rapid reviews of the current situation and other notifications at the expense of high-quality research inputs. Such simplification of the MDM research content and using the non-scientific jargon then sometimes lead to overstatements and create various speculations beyond the actual data [26,27].

By reviewing the Chinese research feedback, we found that Chinese researchers rarely shared their scientific viewpoints on the Chinese mainstream dams through official or public media [200,201,202]. Nevertheless, one particular research study raised attention for indirectly refuting the EoE Study conclusions and highlighting the positive effects of the Chinese mainstream dams on the river [66]. Although there is still no research consensus over this water narrative, there can be found a vast number of research studies filling the gaps in upstream environmental cumulative impacts and other water-related challenges [88,203,204,205,206]. Surprisingly, despite the EoE Study opponents often marginalizing the Chinese researchers, the critical research viewpoints from the international community are being overlooked, too [26]. Perhaps the most important role in depoliticizing the Chinese mainstream dams is that played by the MRC, which is responsible for providing high-quality research assessments and other water-related notifications [207]. Moreover, unlike the research institutions operating within and outside of the basin to facilitate the accountable research dialogue, the MRC has experienced numerous political pressures and various retaliatory actions from multi-stakeholders for not accommodating a more critical attitude toward the hydropower development [90,208,209,210]. However, since several US policy-makers and other US researchers started using various research platforms as a political tool to justify the anti-dam narratives [162,165,185,211], the Lancang-Mekong water science dialogue has slowly become an arena of contradictory water narratives.

4.2.3. Media Inputs

The last analyzed group stimulating the debate about the Chinese mainstream dams can be found in terms of civil society and other individuals developing their ideas in public media. As is shown in

Table 5. List of civil society and other inputs discussing the Chinese mainstream dams *.

Source	Period	Content
Chinese media Global Times SCMP China Daily CGTN Xinhua Other Foreign media The Diplomat VoA News Reuters The Third Pole Other Downstream media Bangkok Post Benar News Vietnam Times Other	Politicization April 2020 August–September 2020 December 2020 January–March 2021 September 2021 Depoliticization June–July 2020 October–November 2020 April–August 2021	Chinese media Accuracy, biases and funding of the EoE Study Politicization of water science and Chinese dams Mutual trust and collective actions LMC and MUP geopolitics Tsinghua University Study MDM agenda, technical capacities and mandate Impact of the COVID-19 on conflict resolution LMC benefits for downstream countries Other Foreign media Irrefutability of the EoE Study findings Sustainability of the water flow and Chinese dams Mutual trust and collective actions LMC and MUP geopolitics Stimson Center commentary MDM agenda, technical capacities and mandate Impact of dams on water quality and quantity MDM benefits for downstream countries Other Downstream media Advancing adaptation strategies based on historical records Simplification and misinterpretation of water science Solutions for deteriorating the water quantity and quality Better and timely notification about sudden water changes Civil society engagement in the decision-making process Co-development knowledge and promoting citizen science Other

* Indicates general inclination and unique traits in each media discourse.

, we divided the inputs according to the source, date and shared content to better illustrate the general trends in the politicization of hydropower development. Whereas both Chinese and foreign media were very active in interpreting the positive and negative features of the hydropower development, the downstream media texts were predominantly driven by Thai and Vietnamese media. Surprisingly, unlike the EoE Study, which mainly resonated in the official and research channels, most of the public media quoted the Stimson Center commentary, which already developed the EoE Study findings beyond data and put the EoE Study conclusions into a broader political context [26,27,186]. This trend has also been followed by connecting hydropower development with non-water- and non-basin-related issues [71,90,91]. Perhaps the most significant attention was paid to justifying or refuting the EoE Study conclusions as well as demoting the LMWCIP-MDM performance. Popular topics included, among others, reflecting the unregulated hydropower development and highlighting numerous solutions inquiring into systemic political reforms and the mutual willingness of political representatives. However, similar to the limited policy-research inputs, the downstream media rarely brought new topics and more often commented on already written articles published by foreign media. On the other hand, the downstream public media were more determined to find feasible solutions for ensuring their water security regardless of the source of the hydro-meteorological changes and more often put the hydrological changes into the broader socio-cultural context. Surprisingly, despite the public resentment and socially constructed hope to significantly mitigate the hydro-meteorological changes, no mass protests, letters of concern or filled lawsuits on account of Chinese mainstream dams have followed the publication of the EoE Study.

By drawing on the time period of politicization and depoliticization of the Chinese mainstream dams, the highest number of media inputs arose right after the publication of the EoE Study in April 2020 [25] and before the establishment of the MUP in August-September 2020 [170], when the US policy-makers re-considered their involvement in Southeast Asia. Another milestone belongs to January–March 2021, when downstream countries faced prolonged severe droughts and experienced information shortage about the upstream water operations [174,175,176]. The decline of media inputs can be predominantly found during the wet seasons, when downstream countries enjoy relative water abundance. However, by comparing the media inputs with MDM Facebook and Twitter social media accounts, we found some extra content beyond the MDM official websites. Such additional content included raising speculations about the Lancang tributary dams and the potential impact of upstream dams on the flooding of migratory bird nests, as well as justifying the biases in existing datasets that do not affect the EoE Study conclusions [26]. Nevertheless, apart from “verifying” the MDM datasets according to several correspondents living in downstream countries and sharing the content that highlights the MDM positive performance [27], the most significant trait of the MDM social media content presents the over-use of the internet hashtags, simplified language and mixing the official content with the personal viewpoints of the administrators. While such change in communication may positively raise public awareness about the Lancang-Mekong hydrological changes and encourage more multi-stakeholders to provide their insight into current water challenges, the mismatch in the MDM content and lowering the communication standards often lead to the discussion without data, which subsequently downgrades the quality of MDM social media content.

5. Discussion

5.1. Power of Symbolism

To date, hydropower development has a very symbolic role in multiplying benefits and deepening water challenges amplified by various hydro-meteorological aspects. Because the majority of the multi-stakeholders call for improving the accuracy of the predictive hydrological models and better transparency of the hydrological data, there are certain aspects that should be furtherly elaborated. As we mentioned above, there is a huge perception asymmetry among multi-stakeholders. For policy-makers, the hydropower dams present a political tool facilitating their agenda and enlarging the pie of multifarious benefits among multi-stakeholders. When the actual benefits outweigh the negatives, the policy-makers are more prone to negotiate about sustainable hydropower development and re-consider the priorities in the public domain. While the tipping point for such behavioral change was historically triggered by the sudden hydro-meteorological changes [26,84,85], the long-term lack of hydrological data about upstream water operation and China’s limited engagement in the transboundary water governance contributed to mutual distrust and numerous communication biases. Within the last two decades, media attention was paid to the mainstream hydropower dams, particularly those in China, where most of these water projects are located. After a series of comprehensive hydrological studies studying the complex implications of the mainstream dams on the river [11,12,13], many observers identified upstream policy-makers and various business companies as a source of the problem [21,71]. Although the criticism of China’s water policy approach ranged from an unwillingness to become a full member of the MRC [37,142,212], late notifications and scarce consultations [87,99] to limited willingness to share more hydrological data [42], the main motivation of sharing hydrological data between upstream and downstream governments was driven by the principle of reciprocity [105] and China’s willingness to keep good neighbourhood relations [39,53,68]. Yet, despite the fact that China’s government started to share the upstream hydrological data from the LMWCIP in November 2020 [31], what incentives for China’s government are there for paying extra costs and providing more detailed hydrological data if these data seem not to be operationalized by the downstream governments or by the other multi-stakeholders?

5.2. Complaints over Solutions

Downstream countries are not powerless [37,213] and possess enough capacity to regulate the basin development [20,22,137,138,139], which means that the degree of shared hydrological data does not present a problem. The real problem presents insufficient engagement of the downstream multi-stakeholders into the transboundary joint management and a lack of a positive mindset ensuring sustainable hydropower development. After April 2020, when the EoE Study and Stimson Center commentary re-politicized the Chinese mainstream dams [24,173], the dialogue over the actual impact of hydropower dams moved from the “problem-solution” to the “problem-victim” narrative [26]. While the main motivation for the US scientists along with the Eyes on Earth was to fill the information gaps and better understand amplifying effects of Chinese mainstream dams on the river, developing the arguments through public media and other non-traditional research channels provided very shallow high-quality research output. In addition, since the MDM does not include the researchers from the riparian states, does not use Chinese upstream hydrological data or consult their datasets with the LMWCIP [199], joining the US bandwagon for replicating the US knowledge, and getting other benefits from transferring the responsibility for transboundary water governance to the US government can be troublesome. Nevertheless, despite the fact that MDM efforts have been mainly oriented to facilitating the public-science dialogue and improving the MDM datasets to compensate the limited downstream state official’s inputs, there is a lot of space for improvement in depoliticizing water science, particularly in terms of the LMWCIP. So far, most of China’s water notifications have been provided either the day after the sudden changes or 6 days rather than 14 days in advance, as was requested from the downstream countries and foreign donors [175,211]. Other potential progress can be identified in terms of synchronizing different methodologies and addressing the data inconsistencies [174,214] to speed up the early warning system for the downstream countries. Moreover, because providing more detailed hydrological data is not cheap, combining the satellite images with standard hydrological procedures may positively reduce the actual cost and stimulate further research acknowledging the cumulative environmental impacts, particularly in terms of climate change, tributary dams and agricultural modernization.

6. Conclusions

To conclude, whenever the hydropower dams are interpreted as good or bad, feasible solutions to overcome the existing challenges within the Lancang-Mekong Basin are a shared priority among all multi-stakeholders. Moreover, despite the fact that upstream mainstream dams are widely considered a renewable source of energy with negligible economic benefits and high socio-environmental costs for the downstream countries [16,17,21,71,91], abandoning or decommissioning hydropower dams is not a viable option. Instead, multi-stakeholders should deeply re-consider what they want and what they need before levelling their demands from upstream countries. Within more than two decades, Chinese mainstream dams have attracted significant media attention. Yet, apart from sharing misinformation on social media [137,138] and devaluating the Chinese actions beyond the water context [24,29], many multi-stakeholders can legitimize their interests and deny other viewpoints that do not fit their prior beliefs [26,27]. Although every multi-stakeholder has a right to their own opinion, refuting the “undesirable” water narratives without robust evidence and wide research consensus can unnecessarily prolong the conflict of ideas and cement the harmful stereotypes. Since the Eyes on Earth and the MDM have no authority or operational hydrological data upon which one could determine the actual impact of Chinese mainstream dams, further consultation with the LMWCIP and MRC will be required to synchronize the research outputs and coordinate the future development pathways for the sustainable hydropower sector. Moreover, by narrowing the research dialogue, ostracizing the undesirable research viewpoints and alienating water science through the public and social media, more systemic effort needs to be made by providing high-quality research inputs, regulating the overstatements on the official websites and improving the engagement of the downstream multi-stakeholders in the transboundary water management.