Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the 'afterlives' of Sri Lanka's Mahaweli Development Project (1963-2010), showing how mega water infrastructure continues to shape water governance, climate politics and socio-ecological relations long after construction, with implications for understanding dam projects globally.

Presentation long abstract

For centuries, rivers have been dammed, diverted and engineered in the name of progress, transforming riverine landscapes and societies. Since the mid-twentieth century, mega irrigation and hydropower projects have been central to these transformations, justified by promises of economic growth, modernisation and nation-building. Such projects have reconfigured entire river basins and reshaped the livelihoods of millions, attracting widespread criticism for their social, ecological and economic costs. Far less attention, however, has been paid to their afterlives – not simply as the persistence of infrastructure over time, but as evolving political, epistemic, and socio-ecological processes through which their legacies acquire and produce new meanings, functions and forms of power. Drawing on insights from critical development studies, hydrosocial literature and work on infrastructure politics, the paper addresses this concern through an investigation into the afterlives of Sri Lanka’s Mahaweli Development Project (1963-2010), one of the world’s most ambitious postcolonial hydraulic infrastructure projects. Based on qualitative research conducted between 2017-2023, the study reveals how the MDP’s afterlives have evolved beyond a ‘water project’ into a government institution responsible for the country’s climate change policies. Additionally, the paper demonstrates how the MDP has produced an evolving series of socio-ecological issues that are difficult to detect, as they manifest intergenerationally. The paper concludes by outlining a conceptual framework for a future research agenda on studying the afterlives of hydraulic infrastructure projects at a time where a new wave of large dams is being constructed globally in response to climate change.