Short abstract:

This innovative paper panel,convened by the FutureDAMS consortium,will bring together biophysical and social scientific research to analyse the global phenomenon of hydro-infrastructure expansion and examine how it can be made more environmentally, socially and economically just and sustainable.

Long abstract:

Large scale hydro-projects were the cornerstone of international development in the early post-war decades and epitomized high modernist national development campaigns in the global 'north' and 'south', driven by the Bretton Woods regime. With 'new' sources of finance, actors and drivers, large-scale infrastructure projects have returned in the 21st century; more than 3700 large dams are under construction or being planned in the developing world. This panel, convened by the GCRF FutureD.A.M.S. consortium (www.futuredams.org), offers a forum to bring together biophysical and social scientific research to open up development thinking around the global resurgence in hydro-infrastructure expansion and discuss ways to achieve more just and sustainable practices. In particular, we welcome contributions which explore:

- The food-energy-water nexus linked to megaprojects (i.e. their impact on patterns of cross-national migration, ecology, hydrology, agrarian studies)

- Innovative integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches to mega-system analysis (integrated assessment, development engineering, social scientific and biophysical approaches)

- Socio-environmental ex-ante and ex-post impacts (ecology; hydrological and climate science; resettlement; benefit sharing)

- Increasing cross-national flows in finance, machinery, technology, goods and people, which have enabled the transnational hydro-energy boom

- How decisions about water management interventions are taken (politics of mega-projects; populist dimensions; spaces for political action and counter-movement; role of authoritarian and modernist ideologies)

Spanning 3 paper panel sessions, it is envisaged that panel papers may form a special issue in outlets such as World Development or Development & Change from the proceedings.