What is the article about

?

About the World Bank interventions in its borrowing states.

What is the main argument of this article

?

This debate could be enhanced by focusing on new global regulatory regimes for the environment.

To what scientific debate this article tends to contribute

?
The effects of "globalization" on states and state power.

What keywords re-occur throughout this article

?
- globalization
- global regulatory regimes for the environment
- transnationalized environmental states
- resource-based populations
- the 'art of government' (Foucault)
- the art of eco-government
- new forms of capitalist expansion
- new modalities of power/knowledge
- eco-rational modernity

- science-production process (scientization)
- eco-zones
- eco-governance

- truth regimes on nature

What story is of particular importance in the author's view

?
The "story about new efforts to classify, colonize, and transnationalize territory in the name of "eco-governance".

Is this pattern of interventions somehow different from previous ones

?

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

What are the WB interventions and where do they take place

?
A plan to build more than a dozen hydroelectric dams on the Mekong river, within the territory of Laos.

What is new

?
New ideas and tools of conservation, preservation, and sustainability.

What do these new “green” practices influence

?
1/ the production of national and global truth regimes on nature
2/ the production of rights regimes to more effectively control environments, natural resources, and the populations dependent on them
3/ the production of new state authorities within national boundaries and in the world system

"Truth regime"
“the types of discourse [society] harbours and causes to function as true”

Are WB's practices somehow different from the ones suggested by the ecological modernization theorists

?
“environmental states in the Global South should be unified states, rational actors and should eventually graduate into eco-rational modernity”

vs

the state, state actors and state power are fragmented, stratified and unevenly transnationalized

There are parallels between imperial science in the colonial period and the neoliberal global environmentalism.

What was the role of science at the time when the British colonized India

?
- it facilitated the crafting of state power, population management and exploitation
- in other words #1: it helped to explore and conquest through translation
- in other words #2: it helped to foster the idea of modernity through state- and institution-building
- conclusion: the conquest was both territorial and epistemological

How does the past differ from the now

?
- in the past the remote communities were acknowledged that they exist
- nowadays they are targeted as resource-based populations and as such they are compelled to participate in the neoliberal process of eco-government

- unknowned people are being categorized as distinct and accountable populations (non-timber forest users, wetlands managers, sustainable forest laborers, trespassers, poachers, and slash-and-burn cultivators)

- called upon to awake from their “sleepy” state to become global market-oriented, scientifically based, and ecologically sustainable

How does the situation look on the ground (“Greater Mekong Subregion”)

?
- dozen of hydroelectric dams (6 countries)

– millions of mountain inhabitants to be relocated in six neighboring countries - $50 billion engineering project

– ADB says it is an environmental project (to stop forest destruction by “developing” the mountainous peoples)

- the vision of ADB's director, Noritada Morita (1996):

“We may need to reduce the population of people in mountainous areas and bring them to normal life (sic). They will have to settle in one place . . . but don’t call it resettlement. It is just migration.”

Consequences of the new regime (rules, standards and laws)

:
- aimed decentralization vs. achieved although not intended institutionalization of aid-based corruption/rent-seeking
- the land left fallow equals to “degraded” or “neglected” land? (claimed by state – utilized for development projects – owners compensated – cultivation circles of 8-20 years)
- half of Laos' domestic revenue came from foreign grants in 1993-4
- the disparity between public expenditures on health, education, public services AND expenditures on the energy, forestry, construction and transport sectors (84% in 1997)

- new environmental zoning classifications carve up territory and sovereignty through scientific distinctions of forest use
- “dams and tourism receive greater weight than forest dwellers’ rights to hunt, gather, and sleep in their forests.”

Foreign experts and local bureaucrats - a story of a GAP

- living/working standards: “dusty, hot, and slow-paced, while others are air-conditioned, computerized, and run on international clocks – typically European”
- salary: $20 versus $3,000–$5,000 per month

- treatment of Lao workers: often as second-class citizens by foreign consultants and staff, regarded more as translators than scientists
- almost all of the funds coming from Northern agencies funnel directly to Northern scientists, consultants, and engineering firms

Neo-colonial attitudes among the foreign consultants

:
- Northern conservationists work under the premise that the Lao people know nothing about conservation

- “Remember, these people on the Plateau are primitive and anything is better than what they have”

- “We want to learn the consultants’ trade, but we are pretty much left carrying their bags”