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Title Reshaped rivers, ruins, and Renaissance: the politics of hydro-developmentalism in the case of Tana-Beles, Ethiopia
Full text https://hdl.handle.net/1842/38492; http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/1756
Date 2021
Author(s) Fedeler, Kristin
Contributor(s) Bowman, Andrew; Donovan, Kevin; other
Abstract Since the early 2000s, the Ethiopian government engaged heavily in the construction and expansion of large hydraulic infrastructures. This thesis explores the modern political history of one of Ethiopia's most controversial, yet scarcely analysed, schemes: Tana-Beles. Today, Tana-Beles refers to an infrastructure which transfers water from Lake Tana through a pressure tunnel to the Beles Valley; it generates hydro-electricity in an underground power station and avails water for large-scale irrigation. It materialised in 2010, but its history dates back to the early 20th century. In contrast to presentist scholarship on contemporary hydro-infrastructural projects, this thesis adopts a long-term perspective, starting in imperial Ethiopia. By scrutinising 'Tana-Beles' as a colonial idea, a ruined project, a material infrastructure, and as a part of an evolving institutional architecture for water governance, I show that the story is neither linear, nor one-dimensional. Myriad types of material and figurative 'ruins' emerge in the context of Tana-Beles. They constitute a contrast to the more recent 'renaissance' discourse promoted by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in combination with its large infrastructural projects, which are not as novel as they seem. Drawing on area studies literature and scholarly debates about the relationship between 'water and the (infra-)structure of political rule' (Bichsel, 2016; Obertreis et al., 2016), the thesis argues that the different interventions planned and implemented under the label of 'Tana-Beles' did not serve technical, economic, or humanitarian purposes alone. Through the notion of hydro-developmentalism, I demonstrate that they were also political undertakings to support the consolidation of central state power. In this thesis, I conceptualise hydro-developmentalism as both the ideology and practice of implementing large-scale water engineering and governance projects of the state. At the same time, a diverse assemblage of actors and interests contributes to the planning and implementation of these. Successive Ethiopian governments and foreign project partners converged around tactics to de-politicise their hydro-developmentalist visions of Tana-Beles, among others, by invoking urgency, or 'state[s] of exception' (Fantini & Puddu, 2016), in light of actual or projected emergencies, by constructing seemingly 'organic' intervention spaces, and by the purposeful shifting of water governance 'arenas' (Flinders & Buller, 2006). I found that the involvement of external bureaucracies and foreign companies was not only essential for the launch of the projects relating to Tana-Beles. It also served to reinforce the hierarchical relationship between the state and its subjects. However, hydro-developmentalism is equally fragile. Both internal and external forces contest it, I argue with reference to Tana-Beles, because of its political underpinnings. The thesis builds on extended fieldwork in Ethiopia, which incorporated archival research, site visits and in-depth interviews, among others, with officials, experts, and individuals involved in the various Tana-Beles projects. Despite the EPRDF government's official commitment to the concept of 'integrated' water resources management, my thesis reveals that the historical politics of vertical space-making for hydro-developmentalist aspirations continues to prevail in the 21st century. I conclude that the material infrastructure which connects Tana and Beles today reflects, on the one hand, the long-term persistence of hydro-developmentalism as a strategy in imperial, communist, and federalist Ethiopia. On the other hand, the different types of 'ruins' associated with Tana-Beles do not only underscore its continuous contestation. They also highlight the discrepancy between promissory assurances to vulnerable populations and their unfulfilled delivery in many areas which are affected by hydro-developmentalist projects. Yet, the most significant continuity I observe is the ability of successive Ethiopian regimes, with the assistance of foreign project partners, to occlude 'ruins' of the past and present, and to revive hydro-developmentalism within different development paradigms.
Subject(s) water management infrastructures; Tana-Beles; Blue Nile Basin; Ethiopian government; Derg government; hydro-developmentalism
Language en
Publisher The University of Edinburgh
Type of publication Thesis or Dissertation; Doctoral; PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Format application/pdf
Rights 2022-12-06
Repository Edinburgh - University of Edinburgh
Added to C-A: 2022-01-31;09:41:10