The Lost Landscape: Hydroelectric development and landscape spirits in Maccoih Municipality (Vietnam)

Hydropower Modernity Meets Landscape Spirits: A case study of hydropower development in Katu territories of upland Quang Nam, Vietnam. Nikolas rhem, Uppsala UniversitetThis paper examines two recent hydropower projects in areas populated by Katu people in upland Quang Nam, Central Vietnam. One, the A Vuong dam in Maccoih municipality was hailed in Vietnamese media as a flagship of Vietnamese development interventions. Although some international NGOs contributed development aid to the resettlement process accompanying the dam project, the project was completely Vietnamese-owned. Around the same time another hydropower project was initiated in a nearby locality the Song Bung 4 Plant. This time the Asian Development Bank entered wholesale as a co-financer of the project.This paper, based on conversations with local Katu people about the effects of the A Vuong project as well as a review of relevant development/evaluation reports (about both the A Vuong and the Song Bung 4), not only reveals that the projects had a number of unanticipated environmental and social-economic consequences for the local Katu (that went largely unnoticed by the involved international development actors) but also interesting facts about the cultural landscape that was lost in the process of the dam constructions. On the one hand, the paper explores the impact of the dam projects on the local (animist) cosmology and, on the other, it takes a close look at the modernisation ontology of the development actors themselves the Vietnamese State (A Vuong Plant) and the ADB (Song Bung 4 Plant). The paper provides a poignant example of how the subtle interconnection between animistic ontology and local landscapes is severed by developmentalist interventions such as the ones discussed here, resulting in environmental erosion with grave consequences for local livelihoods. In particular, the paper questions the logic by which development actors appear to turn a blind eye on the negative environmental effects of hydropower development while shifting much of the blame on indigenous shifting cultivation and hunting. Finally, the paper also looks at the Kinhization process the process of ethno-cultural conversion/mainstreaming which follows in the wake of the massive infrastructure development in Vietnams highlands.