ABSTRACT
While civil society actively challenges hydropower development in the Mekong River Basin, the role of law in these struggles has seldom been examined, or made visible as an instrument or locus of contestation. In part this is because of common assumptions in the region about the limited utility of law as a tool of resistance. First, there is a view (expressed here by a donor representative in Cambodia) that hydropower is ‘not governed by law’ at all, but determined by the political economy of ‘who has the most power and resources’, in a region where governments are ‘completely committed to physical development’ and the ‘transformation of the landscape’ (Interview 2, 2011).
