ID: 1820
Presenting Author: Atsushi Hamamoto
Session: 552 - Accelerating with Integrity: Strengthening Social Impact Assessment in the face of urgency and misinformation
Status: pending
This presentation examines protracted timelines in Japan’s dam development and explores ways to improve temporal management and coordination in infrastructure governance.
In many projects, increasing urgency and time pressure challenge governments and communities to uphold integrity and public trust. While discussions of project delays often focus on economic costs and reduced returns, less attention has been paid to the prolonged uncertainty and suffering experienced by affected residents. This presentation examines how institutional and governance structures contribute to such protracted conditions, shaping the temporal course of development. Japan’s dam development provides a revealing case. Projects such as the Kawabegawa and Ishiki Dams have extended over decades, leaving affected residents in limbo while negotiations, periodic project reevaluations, and administrative coordination continue. Historical shifts in project objectives and implementing agencies and fragmented authority have blurred accountability. Japan’s compensation and resettlement system—based on voluntary negotiation and broad consent—protects rights and fairness but also prolongs the process. These institutional arrangements sustain a protracted governance process that entangles multiple dimensions of governance. The presentation explores how frameworks could be redesigned for compensation planning and livelihood restoration to proceed in parallel with feasibility and coordination processes. It also links to debates on incorporating temporal scale and cumulative impacts into assessment frameworks. The aim is to improve temporal management in project governance, preventing the pursuit of procedural fairness from leading to prolonged uncertainty or social fatigue.
HAMAMOTO Atsushi has examined dam projects in Japan and China, analysing long-term social impacts including displacement, resettlement, and governance in development planning.