The Asian Development Bank and the
production of poverty: Neoliberalism,
technocratic modernization and land
dispossession in the Greater
Mekong Subregion
Kearrin Sims
The Institute for Culture and Society, The University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia
Correspondence: Kearrin Sims (email: k.sims@uws.edu.au)
In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty remains widespread. This article provides a critical analysis of the Asian Development Bank and its approach to development and poverty alleviation within the Greater Mekong Subregion. It sug-gests that the institution’s technocratic neoliberal development ideology provides a discursive legitimation to processes of displacement and dispossession that has seen the production of new forms of poverty. To make this argument, the article draws on an ethnographic study of the local-scale implications of forced resettlement at the Luang Prabang Airport. It conducts an analysis of how the Asian Development Bank defines and measures poverty, and critiques the institution’s resettlement guidelines for the airport project.
Keywords: Asian Development Bank, development, displacement, Greater Mekong Subregion, Laos, neoliberalism
Introduction
The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is an economic connectivity programme that was formulated in 1992 following an Asian Development Bank (ADB) initiated meeting of the now GMS member-states of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. It is a region that incorporates three of Southeast Asia’s least developed countries and approximately 310 million people whose livelihoods are dependent on subsistence or semi-subsistence agriculture (AusAID, 2007: 4). Initially beginning as a programme targeting the development of transnational infrastructures, the GMS framework has since been expanded to include 10 working sectors and 11 flagship programmes that focus on agriculture, energy, the environment, human resource devel-opment, investment, telecommunications, tourism, trade and transportation (ADB, 2012a). Specific projects that have been implemented to facilitate regional flows include new bridges across the Mekong River, transnational highways and ‘economic corridors’, telecommunication networks, trade agreements and upgrades to multiple airports. In addition, there are ongoing plans to develop a regional railway system (ADB, 2010; 2011; 2012a).
At the first GMS summit in 2002, the region’s member-states declared that the principal objective of the GMS programme was to ‘lift people from poverty and doi:10.1111/sjtg.12093
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promote sustainable development for all’ (ADB, 2007: 5). Since then, this statement has been frequently reiterated in the policy documents of the ADB and many of the region’s other bilateral aid donors. Yet despite more than USD 14 billion being spent on two decades of regional integration programmes, poverty remains widespread (ADB, 2011). According to the latest available figures, the annual GDP per capita estimates of every GMS country are below USD 10 000, and life expectancy is less than 74 years (Central Intelligence Agency, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; 2014d; 2014e; 2014f). The region’s Human Development Index rankings are also amongst the lowest in the world, with Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar all considered least developed coun-tries (United Nations Development Programme, 2013). Although enhanced foreign direct investment (FDI), the privatization of public services and upgrades to transna-tional infrastructures have seen new opportunities for economic growth, they have also produced widespread environmental degradation, undermined the livelihoods and well-being of GMS residents, and seen the emergence of new forms of poverty and socio-economic inequality (Barney, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Baird, 2010; 2011; Guttal, 2011; Howe & Sims, 2011; Andriesse, 2011;Southeast Asia Globe Magazine, 2013).
This article seeks to contribute to the growing academic analysis around the poverty-inducing effects of subregional integration within the GMS. By drawing on critiques of the depoliticizing and technocratic nature of development discourse (Ferguson, 1990; Mitchell, 2002; Goldman, 2005; Li, 2007), the article contends that in many instances the ADB’s poverty alleviation objectives are undermined by its neoliberal development ideology. In particular, the article makes use of Hall et al.’s (2011: 196) suggestion that visions of development and modernity have the potential to become a discursive legitimation for the acquisition of land in order to highlight how ADB development discourse has encouraged ‘development-induced’ displace-ment and accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005). By neoliberal ideology, I refer to the favouring of an ‘economic growth first’ approach that presents economic markets as naturally efficient and impartial, and promotes trade liberalization, deregu-lation and the privatization of public goods and natural resources (Goldman, 2005: 8). By technocratic development, I refer to an approach that claims ‘the expertise of modern engineering, technology, and social science’ will bring sustained socio-economic progress through the construction of modern infrastructure and the economization of natural environments (Mitchell, 2002: 15). This is a top-down approach to development planning that depoliticizes and erases local particularity (Ferguson, 2005: 378).
In order to move beyond ADB discourses of regional and national development and begin to understand the local-scale implications of forced displacement on GMS residents, it is essential to communicate with uprooted communities. This paper com-bines a discursive critique of key ADB documents with the findings of 10 months’ ethnographic research1at the resettlement site of 424 households that were displaced
Asian Development Bank Development Discourse in the GMS
Regional connectivity within the GMS is instituted by a multiplicity of actors, institu-tions and inter-state agreements. Collaborative partnerships between sub-regional tourism networks such as the Cambodia-Laos-Thailand ‘Emerald Triangle’ and the China-Laos-Myanmar-Thailand ‘Golden Quadrangle’ have been developed, an Envi-ronment Operations Centre has been established to address transnational environmen-tal concerns, and a GMS Business Forum has been initiated to facilitate regional trade and investment (Oxfam Australia, 2008; ADB, 2009; 2012b). In addition to member-state agreements, numerous other development partners have also contributed to regional integration through aid contributions and technical assistance. Bilateral aid funding has been wide-ranging, including contributions from Japan, Australia, Sweden, France, New Zealand and South Korea, while multilateral partners include the Inter-national Labour Organization, the European Commission, the United Nations Develop-ment Programme, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank (ADB, 2012a). By far the most preeminent supporter of GMS regionalism, however, is the ADB.
The ADB is an international financial institution (IFI) that targets development and poverty alleviation. As a development bank, ADB’s primary role is to provide loans and other forms of financing to poverty-alleviating projects in developing countries (Oxfam Australia, 2008). One of its foremost strategies for poverty alleviation is increased economic regionalism. As ADB has repeatedly stated throughout its publications, regional cooperation and integration are considered to be ‘critical for Asia’s march towards prosperity’ (ADB, 2011: 6) and a process that ‘often help[s] the poor the most’ (ADB, 2009: 7). This assumed connection between poverty alleviation and economic regionalism is nowhere more evident than in the ADB publications on the GMS.
The ADB states that it ‘initiated and built the GMS programme to achieve a well-integrated and prosperous Mekong Subregion—free of poverty and committed to pro-tecting the environment’ (ADB, 2008b: 5). A self-described catalyst, advisor and financier of the GMS, the ADB has played an instrumental role in the region’s growing interconnectivity. It has provided more than USD 5.4 billion in loans, grants and technical assistance, facilitated subregional dialogue between member-states and acted as a secretariat and coordinator for the programme (ADB, 2012a). In addition, the ADB also serves as a powerful knowledge producer to encourage technocratic neoliberal development within the GMS. As Glassman (2010: 62) has recognized, the ADB is the most important source of discursive legitimation for GMS connectivity programmes, ‘naming and defining the GMS while producing a literature that legitimizes and ratio-nalizes GMS projects’.
investment that ‘gives poor people and underdeveloped areas better access to markets and economic opportunities’ (ADB, 2009: 82).
In describing poverty as a product of isolation and remoteness, the ADB seeks to de-politicize and ‘render technical’ processes of development so that it may provide technocratic solutions for development (Li, 2007). Poor communities in GMS countries are not characterized as such because of complex social, cultural and political relation-ships; rather their impoverishment stems from, according to the ADB, being in small, landlocked countries such as Laos that are not ‘connected to economic centers and wider regional and global markets’ (ADB, 2009: 23). Frequently lacking from such descriptions is the acknowledgement of the poverty-inducing characteristics of eco-nomic regionalism and the persistent social and cultural determinants of poverty that are unlikely to be ameliorated through technocratic modernization (Mitchell, 2002; Goldman, 2005; Li, 2007). Sweeping claims by the ADB that ‘life in the border communities has changed for the better’ (ADB, 2008b: 47), for example, contrast with the findings of extensive ethnographic research by Sturgeonet al. (2013: 53) in the ‘Golden Triangle’ border regions of Thailand, China and Laos, which found that the most minority communities are experiencing ‘increasing marginalization under deep-ening regional capitalism’. Likewise, ADB statements that it supports ‘world-class, environmentally-friendly infrastructure networks’ (ADB, 2009: 36) are also contra-vened by the numerous instances where new infrastructures resulted in illegal logging, polluting mining operations and environmentally destructive monoculture plantations such as rubber. This technocratic neoliberal reading of development by the ADB is also reflected in its expenditure.
Although the GMS programme has funded a wide range of development issues, it has primarily been a programme for financing transportation, energy and telecommu-nications infrastructures to promote trade flows and investment opportunities (Oxfam Australia, 2007). From 1990 to 2012, the ADB’s combined expenditures on transport and electricity within the GMS accounted for 96.2 per cent of its total investment, while in Laos the institution’s 2009 cumulative spending on health and social services amounted to less than 7 per cent of what it spent on transport infrastructure and ICT (information and communications technology) development (ADB, 2011; 2012a). As ADB openly acknowledges, ‘the transport sector has been at the forefront of the GMS program’ (ADB, 2008b: i).
infrastructure and economic productivity, it not only overlooks complex socio-cultural causes of poverty, but also becomes an indirect means to delegitimize the complaints of those who have experienced new forms of impoverishment as a result of increased regional connectivity. Of particular concern to this article, ADB discourses of develop-ment have also legitimized acts of displacedevelop-ment and dispossession as pro-poor strategies for development.
Regionalism, dispossession and the creation of poverty in Laos
Laos is a small, ‘land-locked’ and ‘least developed’ country that has placed regional integration at the core of its framework for national development. Located at the geographic centre of the Mekong region, it shares borders with all other GMS states and is of principal importance to regional infrastructure and connectivity programmes. Two of the region’s primary ‘economic corridors’ pass through the country, and so too will the planned China to Singapore railway system, if completed (ADB, 2010). Laos is an important source of natural resources for other GMS states and is envisioned to become a regional hub for hydropower electricity (Creak, 2011). However, while regionalism has been a central component of both the Government of Laos (GoL) and ADB devel-opment strategies, many academic studies detail the socially, culturally and environ-mentally destructive ramifications of technocratic neoliberal regionalism. In particular, greater regionalism in Laos has seen habitat loss, species eradication, pollution, soil erosion, rising socio-economic inequality, loss of food sources and other natural resources, undermining of local economies, increased rates of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDs, insufficient compensation payments for the displaced, and threats to the cultural value systems of resettled ethnic minority communities (Rabé et al., 2007; Barney, 2009; Glassman, 2010; Middleton, 2009; Rigg, 2009; Sofield, 2009; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Baird, 2011; Guttal, 2011; Kemp, 2011; Lund, 2011; Sturgeon et al., 2013). It has also led to a proliferation of land acquisitions, ‘development-induced’ displacements and processes of accumulation by dispossession (Ngaosrivathana & Rock, 2007; Gunn, 2008; Cohen, 2009; Baird, 2010; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Hall et al., 2011; Lyttleton & Nyiri, 2011;Southeast Asia Globe Magazine, 2013).
As growing FDI continues to pour into Laos, access to land is becoming increasingly competitive. By 2010 around 3500 000 ha, or more than 25 per cent of the country’s total land area, had already been allocated to foreign investors in the form of land concessions (Dwyer, 2011: 311). Hydropower projects, mining, legal and illegal logging, agribusiness plantations, hotels, shopping centres, casinos and golf courses have all increased alongside enhanced regionalism and have frequently involved both the appropriation of communal land and the violent suppression of public opposition to these processes of ‘development’. In many instances the impact of these new invest-ments on both displaced communities and the natural environment has been substan-tial. Indeed, according to the National Land Management Authority of Laos, of more than 2000 land concessions in the country, over 50 per cent have resulted in ‘detri-mental effects’ to the environment and local residents (Vientiane Times, 2011).
as ‘frontier capitalism’ and by Andriesse (2011: 4) as a ‘state coordinated frontier economy’, the ‘opening up’ of Laos has been driven by an economic model that privileges elites’ and foreign investors’ ability to accumulate wealth ‘at the expense of small firms, villagers, and the natural environment’. As Baird (2010: 3) succinctly states, ‘foreign investors have been acquiring land with rich soils for low state rents, often without having to appropriately compensate local people, let alone ensure that they significantly benefit from the investments.’
Yet while considerable attention has been given to the socio-economic impacts of displacement and dispossession, far less attention has been given to the ADB’s role as a powerful force of discursive legitimation to such practices. Rapid infrastructure devel-opment, privatization and the encouragement of economies of scale have been labelled by the ADB as crucial to national economic growth, as a force for ‘unlocking’ the regions ‘untapped’ natural resources and as a tool for poverty alleviation on a local scale (Barney, 2009; ADB, 2011; 2012a). While the ADB states in its resettlement guidelines that involuntary resettlement should be avoided ‘wherever possible’ (ADB, 2012b: 2), such displacement is an inherent feature of the broader technocratic neoliberal model for development that it promotes within the GMS. This is a critical issue that has yet to be adequately explored. In the following section I look at the how the displacement that resulted from the upgrading and expansion of the Luang Prabang airport was legiti-mized through ADB discourses of development.
Legitimizing the Luang Prabang Airport upgrade
Luang Prabang is Laos’s key northern node for increased regional connectivity and one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a city that is experiencing rapid investments in new hotels, restaurants, market-places and other visitor services. However, it is also a city that is more than a day’s road journey from other GMS hubs (including other provincial capitals in Laos) and that is consequently dependent on its airport for the majority of tourism and other financial flows. With incoming passenger numbers to Laos rising at an average annual rate of 20 per cent over the past two decades (Tourism Development Department, 2012), the GoL has deemed it necessary to upgrade and expand the existing airport facilities.
In technical terms, the objective of the airport upgrade is to improve the runway to an ‘International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Code 4C Category I precision approach instrument runway’ and to conduct other necessary infrastructure modifica-tions to support the operation of B737 and A320 aircrafts (ADB, 2008a). The capability to accommodate a larger aircraft will increase the airport’s accessibility to new destina-tions and provide the means to conduct direct flights to regional airport hubs such as Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Beijing. It is expected that an increase of 125 per cent of new foreign visitors will arrive within the first three years of the project’s completion, and that total passenger numbers will rise by almost 400 per cent over the next 20 years (ADB, 2008a).
economic and financial analyses of the outcome of the airport upgrade as well as an environmental, social and poverty impact analysis to ‘recommend interventions that could maximize poverty reduction’ (ADB, 2006: 14; 2008: 4). The ADB stated that the upgrading of the airport is expected to ‘contribute to economic growth’, enhance employment opportunities, promote trade, encourage ‘livelihood diversification’, enable information exchange and stimulate tourism. It also suggested that the airport will not only have a ‘spin-off effect’ for the local economy, but also stimulate economic growth for nearby provinces and provide new economic opportunities across the GMS, as Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese (amongst others) airlines and tourism operators will benefit from more streamlined regional connections (ADB, 2008a: 9; 21). In addition, the TAR stated that the airport upgrade would have ‘a major impact on incomes and the households of poor and low income/marginal households in the project area’, providing them ‘with a means to escape poverty’ (ADB, 2008a: 20; 21).
Praising the poverty-alleviating potential of the airport upgrade, the ADB also noted in the TAR that the new airport site is more than twice as large as the former airport and would require the relocation of 424 households. Brick factories, educational institu-tions, religious sites, private homes, businesses, agricultural plots and fruit bearing trees were all to be destroyed in the relocation process, and estimated costs for resettlement compensation and environmental mitigation were approximately USD 14.5 million (ADB, 2008a). Recognizing that this displacement has the potential to undermine local livelihoods, the ADB developed a comprehensive land acquisition and resettlement action plan that provided detailed guidelines for the implementation of the resettle-ment. Poverty-alleviating measures listed in the resettlement plan included vocational training for resettled women, provision of temporary housing until new homes had been completed, compensation for moving costs and for the loss of fixed assets such as fruit trees, public transportation and the provision of staple foods and basic medical treatment (ADB, 2008a). Having outlined this plan, the ADB concluded that the resettlement impact was ‘expected to be minor’, and that ‘Lao residents affected by the project will be fully resettled and compensated’ (ADB, 2006: 9; 2008: 10).
It is important to note, however, that the ADB’s statement that the resettlement impact would be minor, disregarded a few factors: the negotiated compensation funding provided by China-Exim bank was more than USD 10 million less than the expected resettlement costs; there ‘appears to be little knowledge and indeed interest’ by the GoL in applying guidelines for resettlement; once the ADB’s involvement with the project ended, standard public disclosure procedures will likely not be followed; and ‘the loss of paddy lands, gardens and fruit/food bearing trees will be particularly difficult for relo-cated families as they will have to prepare the soils and replant trees lost, many taking years to bear a reasonable harvest’ (ADB, 2008a: AF9; AF46; AF39; A8-5).
The resettlement process
nongov-ernmental organizations in the country. All interviews were conducted with a translator that was familiar with the displaced community.
To conduct the resettlement of affected families, land was given out on a lottery-based system, whereby villagers would draw the plot number of their allocated land from a plastic container. The majority of villagers were relocated before they had the opportunity to build new homes, and in the initial months of the resettlement the construction company undertaking the airport upgrade provided canvas tents for the displaced to live in. Despite the ADB resettlement plan recognizing that displaced families were only willing to relocate once road, water and electrical services were in place, it was not until two months after the resettlement that these services were supplied. Connection fees for water and electricity were at the villagers’ own expense, and attempts by the displaced to resist resettlement until these services had been provided were met with threats of imprisonment.
Most relocated residents were allocated a 10×18 m2plot of land, irrespective of how
much property they owned in their previous village. For every informant that I commu-nicated with, their new plots of land were substantially smaller than their former landholdings, and their compensation payments were insufficient to rebuild their former homes. To provide just one example, Mr Tshua2and his family received 18 900 000 kip
(USD 23823) in compensation, but estimated that the total cost to complete his new (still
incomplete) home to the same standard as his former house would be around 70 million kip (USD 8780), or more than three times the compensation. Inadequate compensation, the loss of income that many people had experienced during the relocation process and a flood that had occurred in the resettlement site while residents were still rebuilding new homes had resulted in widespread food shortages. With so many families lacking adequate land and compensation to build new homes, overcrowding of housing was common, as families and friends combined resources to make up for the lack of government provisions. Indeed, one year after the resettlement had commenced, 51 families were still living illegally on land that they had not been allocated while they waited for suitable land for building and agriculture. Those who owned vacant land in the former village site did not receive any compensation, be it monetary or land.
At the more vulnerable end of the resettlement process, I spoke with four families (although there were more in the same situation) who were still living in tents and were without access to piped water or electricity for more than a year after being relocated. To provide property to those who had previously shared land with their family members, former residents without land titles were also given their own plot of land. However, the land allocated to these families was on steep, rocky terrain that was unsuitable for construction, and consequently, the majority of these villagers were both unable and unwilling to relocate to this land. As two informants stated when asked when they would relocate to this land:
I do not want to move to this land. Nobody has moved there yet because it is not good land . . . it is not good for farming because the soil is dry and hard. There is no water there and it will be hard to carry water [to that place] (elderly woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 17 October 2011).
We will not move there until the government says we will kill you if you do not move (33-year-old woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 17 October 2011)! Dark and showered in the dust of passing motor vehicles, the tents these families lived in were only 5 m2. Living in such a small space had left these residents without room to
Lacking in basic public services, three of these families paid expensive fees to purchase water from their neighbours while the fourth family, who could not afford to do this, dug a small well on nearby vacant land. Aside from being highly visible to passers-by, people frequently explained the discomfort of living in a tent for such a long period of time:
Just this morning, it was raining and water was coming in so we could not sleep (35-year-old father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 15 September 2011).
We live the same [way] as the chicken; when it is hot we are hot and when it is cold we are cold. When it rains, we get wet (elderly woman, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 17 October 2011).
Living in a tent also limited people’s ability to visit friends, travel for everyday reasons such as shopping, or to seek medical treatment. As one informant explained:
I am angry because my wife and I cannot go anywhere. We have no door and we cannot lock our tent. If I leave, my wife must stay here, and if she leaves, I must stay here. Otherwise people can come and steal from us and I am worried people will take our rice (35-year-old father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 24 September 2011).
The man’s limited mobility also affected his family income. He continued:
It is also a problem because we [he and his wife] used to work together and could earn 50 000 kip (USD 6.35) per day. Now only I can work. I do not own a motorbike so before if I have a job far away my wife will come with me and we can stay at that place [the worksite] for several days. Now I cannot do this so I have to travel a lot and it is expensive (35-year-old father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 24 September 2011).
Furthermore, living in a tent also had important cultural implications. All the residents I interviewed who were living in tents were from the Hmong ethnic minority group, and their cultural values and belief systems had been threatened by the reloca-tion process. Tradireloca-tional Hmong households are built with both a front and a rear entrance, with the latter being for spirits to enter and leave the home. When a spiritual ceremony is undertaken, the rear entrance of the home must be opened. Of the four Hmong families I interviewed that were living in tents, three stated that they were ‘very worried’ about not being able to provide an entrance for spirits into their home. As one informant explained:
One of my biggest worries now is if someone dies or gets sick. I cannot afford to take them to the hospital, but I also cannot call the Shaman because I have no house to bring them to. The tent has no windows and no back door (35-year-old father of three, pers. comm., Ban Pou Lek, Luang Prabang, 8 October 2011).
Resettlement guidelines are not resettlement practices
As the above examples highlight, the airport resettlement programme has had a detri-mental impact on the well-being of many local residents. Many of the resettlement guidelines provided by the ADB were not met. Families were not provided compensa-tion for fruit trees or other lost assets. ‘Temporary housing’ consisted of tents that were still being used by a number of displaced families more than a year after being relocated and that provided little comfort in Luang Prabang’s hot, wet climate. Land provisions were smaller than the ‘basic precondition of 400 m2per household’ outlined in the ADB
the resettlement felt that the compensation was not sufficient to rebuild their former homes or to repurchase lost assets and belongings. The ADB recommendations that the displaced community be provided with the means to lodge disputes about insufficient compensation or other forms of unfair treatment during the relocation process were also ignored by the GoL. Finally, recommended vocational training and food provisions were not provided for the displaced, despite villagers sending a signed petition to the gov-ernment requesting food aid.
Poor implementation of the resettlement process has limited people’s ability to work, send their children to school, or conduct their everyday lives at a basic level of human comfort. It has pushed people further into poverty and made it difficult for them to better their own futures. Although the upgrading of Luang Prabang airport has placed this community immediately beside expanding regional connectivity networks, many people continue to face social, cultural and economic disadvantages that prevent them from directly benefitting from the increased regional flows that the project will bring. Pre-existing inequalities have informed the manner in which the resettlement was conducted and have also been accompanied by new forms of marginalization and disadvantage that have resulted in the emergence of new livelihood constraints.
Of course, the ADB cannot be held accountable for the implementation of a resettle-ment programme that was coordinated by the provincial governresettle-ment. Indeed, if the ADB resettlement guidelines had been adhered to at Luang Prabang airport site, it is likely that the poverty-inducing impact of the resettlement would have been much less. However, it must be also be recognized that the ADB argued in favour of the project irrespective of its own role in coordinating both airport construction and the resettle-ment of displaced residents. What the airport expansion makes clear is that even when the ADB recognizes that its resettlement guidelines are unlikely to be adhered to, it continues to provide an important discursive and ideological legitimation to displace-ment and dispossession by private actors and GMS states by suggesting that such practices will lead to development and poverty alleviation.
This is not to suggest that the ADB resettlement guidelines are without merit, or that they should be abandoned; however, it is certainly important to recognize that the ADB resettlement guidelines have not had their intended impact. Indeed, given that the ADB has long stressed the need for greater private sector investment in GMS infrastructures, the airport represents a more successful achievement of the institution’s development outlook than if it had provided the funding for the airport upgrade.
Conclusion
The promotion of infrastructure-led economic regionalism is a priority objective of the ADB that has been legitimized through discourses of development. In its extensive publication list on the GMS, the ADB has repeatedly asserted that enhanced region-alism, privatization and infrastructure development are essential to the prosperity and well-being of the impoverished. This paper has countered that regionalism in the GMS is in fact driven by a technocratic neoliberal development ideology that prioritizes economic growth as its foremost objective. This model for development has privileged the expansion of transnational infrastructures and trade networks that most benefits wealthy elites, and has seen an alarming amount of forced resettlement and displacement.
high rates of corruption and politically authoritarian governments, the growing demand for land and other resources has seen a growth in practices of accumulation by dispos-session. The global land grab has come to the region, and as numerous academic studies have shown, has resulted in new forms of poverty, marginalization and disadvantage (Vandergeest, 2003; McElwee, 2006; Kenney-Lazar, 2010; Dwyer, 2011; Shatkin, 2011; Hall et al., 2011; Baird, 2011; 2014). The expansion of such practices has also raised concerns amongst the international aid sector and led multilateral development insti-tutions such as the ADB to develop comprehensive resettlement guidelines for the management of forced displacement.
This paper suggests, however, that the ADB’s technocratic neoliberal development model represents a powerful discursive legitimation for forced resettlement and accu-mulation by dispossession. As Goldman (2005: 8) and Harvey (2005: 19) both note, IFIs such as the ADB are at the centre of the dissemination and implementation of a ‘free market fundamentalism’ and ‘neoliberal orthodoxy’ that is driven into the developing world in the form of ‘aggressive interventions’, often producing new forms of poverty and disadvantage. Transnational infrastructure projects such as the Luang Prabang airport do not have poverty alleviation as their principal objective. The project will not enhance the mobility of the majority of GMS residents who lack the necessary financial capital to engage with this tourism-oriented form of transport infrastructure, while the ‘trickle-down’ effect of economic growth that the ADB claimed its projects will promote has been accompanied by forced displacement, insufficient financial compensation for lost assets, rising living expenses and the loss of arable land to urban expansion. These ‘exclusory effects’ of capitalist development have often gone unacknowledged by the ADB and other development experts of a ‘neo-liberal persuasion’ who have given insufficient attention to the various ways in which ‘poverty is co-produced with wealth’ (Hallet al., 2011: 11).
This is not to suggest that the ADB is solely responsible for processes of accumulation by dispossession and displacement within the GMS. As both the ethnographic data provided in this article and numerous other academic inquiries have made clear, the governments of the Mekong region do not always show an interest in upholding ADB resettlement guidelines or providing adequate compensation for the displaced. State and private sector activities have undoubtedly been the leading cause of forced resettlement within the region. However, the resettlement for the Luang Prabang airport shows that the ADB’s detailed site-specific resettlement plans are not always implemented and are of little value to the displaced and dispossessed. Rather than serving to assist the impoverished, the ADB’s resettlement guidelines have become a tool for providing a discursive legitimation to processes of accumulation by dispossession. They have become a means for Mekong governments and private operators to reframe land grabs as processes of poverty alleviation. This is true not only for projects that the ADB provides TARs for, but also for the numerous infrastructure projects and private-sector investments that are legitimized through the ADB’s repeated push for technocratic neoliberal regionalism.
and the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle. The ADB has stated on a number of occasions that the GMS programme represents one of the most successful models of subregionalism in Asia and should be used a template for subregional con-nectivity programmes across the region. Consequently, an understanding of the insti-tution’s approach to regionalism within the GMS and the implications of this approach on the livelihoods of GMS residents provide a useful analytical tool for scholars who are concerned with emerging patterns of regionalism across East, South and Southeast Asia (Sparkeet al., 2004; Yahya, 2005; Batra, 2010; Dent & Richter, 2011).
This article suggests that the GMS is a highly problematic model for poverty-alleviation that should not be applied as a template to be replicated elsewhere. As I have previously argued (Howe & Sims, 2011), within the GMS there is a need for a more holistic approach to development that better attends to the most vulnerable communi-ties and provides a greater voice to the displaced and dispossessed. Without these changes, it is unlikely that the ADB’s frequently stated goals of sustainable development and poverty alleviation will ever be achieved.
Endnotes
1 Ethnographic fieldwork in Laos was conducted from May 2011 to March 2012. 2 To protect the anonymity of respondents all names provided are pseudonyms. 3 All conversions are based on a rate of 7935.53 kip to USD 1.
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