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This article seeks to advance understanding of the changing interconnections between rivers, infrastructure, and power relations as well as how these are increasingly shaped by a globalizing China and climate change. To do so, it analyzes damming practices in Cambodia and their evolution under a post-neoliberal, concessionary governing mode that materializes in enclaves of corporate authority under Chinese state-owned enterprises. Drawing from the literature on the political life of Chinese overseas infrastructure projects, this article develops the idea of ambiguously entangled enclaves. The focus is on the four most recent large-scale dams in Cambodia and the kinds of dis/connections, altered hydrosocial relations, and power dynamics they generate. The article highlights patterns of dis/entanglement that illuminate the role of Chinese infrastructural engagement in shaping new political-ecological relations and socio-spatial formations in Cambodia and beyond. It also adds insights into the multidimensional geography of enclavism in the Mekong Region. (AEAS/GIGA)

This article seeks to advance understanding of the changing interconnections between rivers, infrastructure, and power relations as well as how these are increasingly shaped by a globalizing China and climate change. To do so, it analyzes damming practices in Cambodia and their evolution under a post-neoliberal, concessionary governing mode that materializes in enclaves of corporate authority under Chinese state-owned enterprises. Drawing from the literature on the political life of Chinese overseas infrastructure projects, this article develops the idea of ambiguously entangled enclaves. The focus is on the four most recent large-scale dams in Cambodia and the kinds of dis/connections, altered hydrosocial relations, and power dynamics they generate. The article highlights patterns of dis/entanglement that illuminate the role of Chinese infrastructural engagement in shaping new political-ecological relations and socio-spatial formations in Cambodia and beyond. It also adds insights into the multidimensional geography of enclavism in the Mekong Region.

This contribution looks at the interplay of different logics of governing the environment, resources and people in Cambodia that materialise in overlapping zones of exclusion, thereby co-producing new relations of resource control in a complex frontier constellation: a frontier for water, forest and carbon commodities and also for state control. Focusing on three Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) hydropower dams, the paper analyses a partly unintentional, but significantly consequential coalescence of distinct spaces of governing located in the Cardamom Mountains: a forest conservation zone, the CDM technological zone, an enclaved corporate hydropower zone and a semi-official timber logging zone. While the CDM element has exposed the projects internationally, it has obscured several problematic aspects and dynamics of resource politics connected to the dams that are revealed in this paper. These include the vulnerabilisation of local fisher communities, incarceral labour practices on the dams' construction sites and accelerated logging in the conservation zone. The paper also shows how the interaction of the studied zones takes place through their distinct mechanisms of exclusion with the effects of more centralised resource control and the bracketing of the associated dispossessions. ; Peer reviewed

By examining diverse water-related tension and conflict situations from the Tonle Sap area of Cambodia, the article seeks to contest the view that water-related conflicts are always about water scarcity. Tackling different dimensions of water-related conflicts, the three cases studied here all point to the importance of social, political, and historical aspects in water-related resource management. They also indicate that the water and resource conflicts in Tonle Sap are strongly related to problems with existing property and access rights. Challenges of access to and control over resources, rather than changes in the abundance of water and related resources, have lead to increasing tensions in the area. ; Peer reviewed

Water-related risks and vulnerabilities are driven by variety of stressors, including climate and land use change, as well as changes in socio-economic positions and political landscapes. Hence, water governance, which addresses risks and vulnerabilities, should target multiple stressors. We analyze the institutional perceptions of the drivers and strategies for managing water-related risks and vulnerabilities in three regionally important river basin areas located in Finland, Mexico, and Laos. Our analysis is based on data gathered through participatory workshops and complemented by qualitative content analysis of relevant policy documents. The identified drivers and proposed risk reduction strategies showed the multidimensionality and context-specificity of water-related risks and vulnerabilities across study areas. Most of the identified drivers were seen to increase risks, but some of the drivers were positive trends, and drivers also included also policy instruments that can both increase or decrease risks. Nevertheless, all perceived drivers were not addressed with suggested risk reduction strategies. In particular, most of the risk reduction strategies were incremental adjustments, although many of the drivers classified as most important were large-scale trends, such as climate change, land use changes and increase in foreign investments. We argue that there is a scale mismatch between the identified drivers and suggested strategies, which questions the opportunity to manage the drivers by single-scale incremental adjustments. Our study suggests that for more sustainable risk and vulnerability reduction, the root causes of water-related risks and vulnerabilities should be addressed through adaptive multi-scale governance that carefully considers the context-specificity and the multidimensionality of the associated drivers and stressors. ; Peer reviewed