Making Governance "Good": The Production of Scale in the Environmental Impact Assessment and Governance of the Salween River

Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are generally considered an important component of formal decision-making processes about development, serving to ensure that a project′s environmental impacts are considered in decisions about whether and how it will proceed. Scale is an important part of the narrative built into the assessment. Building on a rich literature at the intersection of human geography and political ecology, I focus on the way that scale is remade through the environmental impact assessment process for the Hatgyi hydroelectric dam proposed on the Salween River. Proposed near the stretch of the river that makes up the Thai-Burma border, the scales of governance for this cross-border project challenge assumed definitions of ′local′ impacts for ′national′ decision-making. By illustrating how scale-making is accomplished through producing and mobilising ecological knowledge, I illustrate how the scale of the local and the nation are at stake in these projects