1) Impacts of Expanding Road Networks on Communities in the Annapurna
Conservation Area - ongoing
2) Discordant Landscapes and Purloined Mobility: Friction,
Gendered Fluidity, and Transient Livelihoods along the Trans Himalayan Highway-ongoing
3) Himalayan Mobilities: An Exploration of the Impact of
Expanding Rural Road Networks on Social and Ecological Systems in the Nepalese
Himalaya-ongoing
4) Impacts of Expanding Road Networks on Communities along the Kawakarpo
Kora, Meili Snow Mountain, Northwest Yunnan, China-ongoing
5) “A
Handshake Across the Himalayas”- Chinese Investment and Trans-Border
Infrastructure Development in Nepal -ongoing
Project descriptions/abstracts:
1) Impacts
of Expanding Road Networks on Communities in the Annapurna Conservation Area - ongoing
Contemporary
development studies recognize road networks as a key element in economic
development, socioeconomic well-being, and poverty alleviation. However, the
outcome of road construction projects has not always met the original goals of
the project, has contributed substantially to environmental degradation, and in
some cases has led to the loss of cultural traditions and marginalization of
indigenous peoples. The World Bank, one of the main financiers of road
construction projects, admits that there is a paucity of empirical evidence
about the amount and quality of the benefits, who receives them, and how they are
disperse, despite the numerous socioeconomic evaluations of road projects
already conducted. Environmental studies have shown few, if any; positive
environmental impacts of road construction projects. To date, there have been
very few studies on the sociocultural impacts of roads and no studies on how
all three spheres of impacts influence each other.
My research seeks to fill this gap by evaluating the impacts of the recently completed (2008) Kali Ghandaki Road, and the ongoing construction of the Marsyangdi Road, along the Annapurna Circuit Trail in the Annapurna Conservation Area of Nepal. I conducted 231 interviews in 45 villages along the road alignments. Employing a multiple case study framework derived from quantitative and qualitative data and methods, I explored the following questions: What impacts are the new roads along the Annapurna Circuit Trail having on local communities? How do socioeconomic, sociocultural, and environmental factors influence each other in road construction projects? What adaptive strategies are communities' using to cope with the changes the road is bringing, and how do those strategies evolve?
Given the complexity of the interaction of environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural spheres of road construction, I developed a Coupled Human and Natural Systems model of road impacts based on the analysis of Case Study 1. I then apply this model as a template to illuminate specific road impacts in each of the case studies.
My research seeks to fill this gap by evaluating the impacts of the recently completed (2008) Kali Ghandaki Road, and the ongoing construction of the Marsyangdi Road, along the Annapurna Circuit Trail in the Annapurna Conservation Area of Nepal. I conducted 231 interviews in 45 villages along the road alignments. Employing a multiple case study framework derived from quantitative and qualitative data and methods, I explored the following questions: What impacts are the new roads along the Annapurna Circuit Trail having on local communities? How do socioeconomic, sociocultural, and environmental factors influence each other in road construction projects? What adaptive strategies are communities' using to cope with the changes the road is bringing, and how do those strategies evolve?
Given the complexity of the interaction of environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural spheres of road construction, I developed a Coupled Human and Natural Systems model of road impacts based on the analysis of Case Study 1. I then apply this model as a template to illuminate specific road impacts in each of the case studies.
Ongoing
research continues to follow the development of these road systems in addition
to the expanding road networks further north into Upper Mustang and the Tibetan
border.
2) Discordant Landscapes and Purloined Mobility: Friction, Gendered
Fluidity, and Transient Livelihoods along the Trans Himalayan Highway-ongoing
Mediated by recent
events in Nepal including the 2015 earthquakes and the promulgation of the new
Nepali constitution (September 2015) this ongoing research embarks on a
trip along the recently (2012) Chinese financed and constructed Rasuwa Road from
Syaphrubesi to the Tibetan border of Rasuwagadhi north west of Kathmandu. Along
the way, it seeks to understand the complexity of this contested terrain at the
intersection of socially and culturally constructed tropes of gender and
mobility. In doing so, it hopes to shed some light on an area that is largely
ignored in the policy, planning, and execution of road projects. In general,
road impact studies have concentrated primarily on only two spheres of concern,
environmental and economic.
Only recently, institutions such as the World Bank have recognized that broader social impacts should also be studied. These broader social impacts are influenced by a number of different factors, one of the most important of which is the ability to access and use transport. Access and use of transport is mediated by sociocultural factors such as traditional gender roles. Gendered mobility is a field of study that investigates the ways in which mobilities and gender intersect and “....how mobilities enables/disables/modifies gendered practices”[1].
As we journey up the Rasuwa Road this research visits communities along the road viewed through the lens of gendered mobility. It engages in conversation with the diverse elements that interact to mediate both the motility and mobility of this recently expanded fluid space. The following overarching questions guide this research.
Only recently, institutions such as the World Bank have recognized that broader social impacts should also be studied. These broader social impacts are influenced by a number of different factors, one of the most important of which is the ability to access and use transport. Access and use of transport is mediated by sociocultural factors such as traditional gender roles. Gendered mobility is a field of study that investigates the ways in which mobilities and gender intersect and “....how mobilities enables/disables/modifies gendered practices”[1].
As we journey up the Rasuwa Road this research visits communities along the road viewed through the lens of gendered mobility. It engages in conversation with the diverse elements that interact to mediate both the motility and mobility of this recently expanded fluid space. The following overarching questions guide this research.
1) How do expanding road rural road networks influence
gendered mobility and gendered identity in the culturally diverse landscapes
along the Rasuwa Road?
2) How does gendered mobility influence gendered
livelihoods? 3) How do culturally normative tropes of gendered power relations
influence both gendered access and use of transport as well as gendered
livelihood options?
3) Himalayan Mobilities: An Exploration
of the Impact of Expanding Rural Road Networks on Social and Ecological Systems
in the Nepalese Himalaya – book SpringerBriefs (with James P Lassoie in
preparation, under contract), website, and ongoing research http://himalayanmobilities.blogspot.com/
.
As a strategically located developing country, the rapid
construction of roads across remote mountainous regions of Nepal is having
profound and far ranging impacts on the country’s socio-ecological systems. This research and the forthcoming book ("Himalayan Mobilities" Springlink in process) examines this complexity. We first summarize
and update information about the history, distribution, functions, and impacts of
road development, both globally and at Nepal’s national level. We then explore
the idea of mobility and the "Mobility Turn", that is the ways in which diverse
social science disciplines are using mobility as a lens to reinterpret former
notions of fixity and movement, both corporeal and virtual, in our daily lives.
Next the environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural
impacts of expanding rural networks in the Nepalese Himalaya are discussed
based on original research that examined the recently completed Kali Ghandaki
Highway (2007-2008) and the expanding construction of the Marsyangdi Highway in
the Annapurna Conservation Area of West Central Nepal. Lastly, we introduce an
integrated ecological, socioeconomic, and sociocultural study of the impacts of
expanding rural road networks conducted on communities along the most popular
trekking route in Nepal, the Annapurna Circuit Trail. Results show that roads
can have numerous impacts that extend far beyond the immediate area adjacent to
the road. These impacts can be both positive and negative and are
differentially distributed contingent on a number of factors including
villagers occupation, gender dynamics, proximity to the road alignment, the
pace of road construction, environmental factors, and local and national
politics.
Finally our research integrates these findings into the complex coupled social and ecological systems context following the earthquakes of 2015 and the political turmoil leading up to, during, and after the promulgation of the new Nepali constitution (September 2015).
These results will be helpful in planning future road projects in
Nepal and elsewhere in mountainous regions, as they point to the importance of
a more integrated approach to infrastructure development that includes a
comprehensive assessment of environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural
factors of socio-ecological systems and how they interact and influence each
other.
4) Impacts of Expanding Road
Networks on Communities along the Kawakarpo Kora, Meili Snow Mountain,
Northwest Yunnan, China-ongoing
This
ongoing research looks at the exponential road growth of the Western
Development or “Go West” Campaign (Chinese: 西部大开发; Pinyin Xībù Dàkāifā) in China and how it has impacted Tibetan
communities in Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and
Qinghai provinces. The first phase of this research focuses on the traditional
Tibetan kora (circumambulation of a sacred site) around Mt. Kawakarpo (one of
the ten most sacred peaks for Tibetan Buddhists) on the border of North West
Yunnan and TAR and the tourist areas in and adjacent to Shangri La County. New
road networks around this kora and in the area are having a profound impact on
the traditional Tibetan kora and how it is practiced and on traditional Tibetan
culture in general.
In Gansu the recently completed (2013) Gansu Highway and the massive new “Tibetan themed” development of areas such as Gannan has made access to these areas much easier and is both changing and shaping Tibetan identities and customs. Similarly expanding and newly constructed roads in Sichuan, TAR, and Qinghai are having modernizing and sinicization (Chinese: 汉化; pinyin: Hànhuà) influences on Tibetan populations. This trend in road expansion in China has no sign of slowing down and figures indicate that it will continue to increase.
“In 2015, industry [highway construction] revenue is expected to amount to $340.8 billion, up 9.2% from 2014. Over the past five years, revenue has been growing at an average annualized rate of 11.2%. The total length of road in China increased from 3.7 million kilometers in 2008 to 4.5 million kilometers in 2014. Meanwhile, the total length of highway in China rose from 60,300 kilometers to about 111,900 kilometers.”[2]
In Gansu the recently completed (2013) Gansu Highway and the massive new “Tibetan themed” development of areas such as Gannan has made access to these areas much easier and is both changing and shaping Tibetan identities and customs. Similarly expanding and newly constructed roads in Sichuan, TAR, and Qinghai are having modernizing and sinicization (Chinese: 汉化; pinyin: Hànhuà) influences on Tibetan populations. This trend in road expansion in China has no sign of slowing down and figures indicate that it will continue to increase.
“In 2015, industry [highway construction] revenue is expected to amount to $340.8 billion, up 9.2% from 2014. Over the past five years, revenue has been growing at an average annualized rate of 11.2%. The total length of road in China increased from 3.7 million kilometers in 2008 to 4.5 million kilometers in 2014. Meanwhile, the total length of highway in China rose from 60,300 kilometers to about 111,900 kilometers.”[2]
As these roads get closer to the Nepalese border, for
example the recently completed road-connecting Kyirong (a.k.a. Gyirong, Gyirong
County) TAR to the Nepalese border at Rasuwagadhi combined with the plans to
expand the Chines rail system from Shigatse to Kyirong by 2020, we seek to
learn from the changes happening in Tibetan areas of China and speculate what changes
may be coming for Nepal as described in the research project below “A Handshake
Across the Himalayas”.
5) “A Handshake Across the Himalayas”- Chinese
Investment and Trans-Border Infrastructure Development in Nepal
This
ongoing collaborative research with colleagues Galen Murton (U.C.
Boulder-Geography) and Austin Lord (Cornell University-Anthropology) looks at
the increasing aid in the form of a “gift of development”[3]
from China to Nepal for infrastructure (primarily for roads and hydro power)
and its implications for state formation and changing demographics, livelihood
options, and identity formation in Tibetan borderland regions of Nepal. It
considers contemporary patterns of Chinese investment in Nepalese
infrastructure and the ways in which Chinese development projects shape
political and economic climates across Nepal. Particularly in the wake of
political volatility and natural disaster, Chinese interventions support the
material and imaginative projects of a Nepalese state seeking coherence,
security, and economic growth. Bringing ethnographic methods to bear on
political geographic analysis, this paper examines intersections of Chinese
infrastructure development and investment in Nepal’s northern border district
of Rasuwa. Development interventions in Rasuwa are emblematic of larger
patterns of Chinese engagement with Nepal and underscore the spatial
reorientation of borderland territories implicated in new formations of
political economy. Long perceived as peripheral to the state center, Rasuwa is
rapidly becoming central to Sino-Nepal relations in the context of what we
identify as an emerging “power corridor:” the site for massive new flows of
trans-Himalayan commerce, a leading edge of the booming frontier for hydropower
development, and a theater for Chinese humanitarian relief following the Nepal
earthquakes of 2015. By examining the relationship between transnational and
local scales, we present the uneven aspirations, concerns, and tensions that
characterize the lives of Nepalis who are being implicated in the array of
Sino-Nepal projects and partnerships that constitute an increasingly firm
“handshake over the Himalayas.”
In this way this project seeks to synthesize data from our ongoing research on tourism, mobility, and infrastructure in
Tibetan border areas of both China and Nepal.
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