Mira Käkönen - How do dams impact climate change?

EXALT Podcast

Mira Käkönen is currently a post-doctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. She is an environmental social scientist with a focus in political ecology and water infrastructures through the lens of infrastructural politics and the intersection of water and climate. Her work focuses on the Mekong region and the impact of hydropower development. This exciting conversation was a deep dive into the history of water infrastructures and the impact of these development schemes. We talked about the concept of resource making and how river waters are developed and objectified to be turned from naturally flowing rivers into resources that can be “tamed”, commodified, and extracted. We delved into the logic of hydroelectricity and the violent reductions that accompany ordering riverine resources. Hydropower can itself be extractivism and it serves to support other extractivisms, like mining and forestry. Mira highlights some of the false promises of renewable energy when one considers the large scale landscapes changes wrought by the introduction of hydropower dams, their accompanying infrastructures, and knock-on effects.

Readings mentioned: Mira’s Dissertation: Fixing the fluid: Making resources and ordering hydrosocial relations in the Mekong Region

Christopher Sneddon: Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation

Scholars Mentioned: Carl Middleton, Keith Barney, Ian Baird, Sango Mahanty, Sarah Milne

Organizations Mentioned: International Rivers, Save the Mekong Coalition

If you are interested in learning more about Mira’s research, please check out her University of Helsinki research profile.