ABSTRACT
The Nam Songkhram Basin in northeast Thailand in many ways represents a classic case study in failed developmentalism. A keenly contested ecological and political land and waterscape that is undergoing rapid change, the Nam Songkhram Basin brings out the contradictions implicit in human–nature tensions that have been an influential feature in recent development discourse and practices throughout the wider Mekong region (see Sneddon and Fox, 2008). Similar to other parts of Thailand, state agencies portray the Nam Songkhram Basin as both a flood disaster zone and a drought zone necessitating state-managed intervention and infrastructure development for intensifying agricultural productivity. Not surprisingly, the Nam Songkhram River Basin has been the subject of a number of large-scale water resources management projects over the last half century. Yet only a few of these large schemes have realized full implementation, while many other smaller stand-alone irrigation projects and heavily state-subsidized agribusiness ventures have been subsequently abandoned. Some of these abandoned projects rise out of, or indelibly mark, the Songkhram land–waterscape as vivid reminders of the consequences of narrow sectoral and non-participatory governance.
