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Abstract:
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"This paper examines conflicts over the aquatic commons of the Mekong during the past four decades of 'official' water resource development strategies as coordinated under the eyes of basin-scale intergovernmental institutions. I argue that the UN-organized Mekong Committee and its most recent incarnation, the Mekong River Commission, have since inception in the late 1950s sought to reconfigure the aquatic resources of the basin to promote the needs of capital accumulation in a way that has led to the marked neglect of the livelihood benefits such resources confer. These efforts have in turn undermined the myriad common-pool resource systems of the basin. To clarify the conflicts between primitive accumulation and capital accumulation in the Mekong basin, I trace the evolution of the discourse and practice of 'fisheries thinking' in the official Mekong institutions, and point out the current status of debates over fisheries in the context of rapid economic development. Part of the complexity of 'the commons' in the Mekong is that while the basin itself is considered a common-pool resource to be shared by riparian states, the basin is also comprised of numerous, smaller-scale CPR systems that have become the focus of struggle among the state, local communities and other actors."
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