Political Economy of Resource Economics: Unlocking the Policy Debate on Accelerated Hydropower Future in Bhutan

Abstract

Bhutan is endowed with abundant hydropower potential and harnessing it has assumed national strategic importance as it is the backbone of Bhutan’s economy. Given the importance of hydropower, the Sustainable Hydropower Development Policy was adopted in 2008 to accelerate hydropower development and achieve economic self reliance. However, the acceleration generated a lot of controversy undermining the confidence of the Bhutanese people from all fronts, such as anticipated lower returns to investment, unstable future markets, threats from climate change, cost overrun, and delayed completion of projects. These are the emerging policy discourses among the Bhutanese bureaucrats, politicians, policy analysts, researchers, and independent thinkers concerning the hydropower future. However, a lot of what is discussed and published often comes in the form of general commentaries, media interviews, conference presentations, and official policy documents. A limited number of research papers either publish or unpublished comes from the graduate students’ thesis which are based on data and documents available in the public domain. Correspondingly, this paper engages in implementing this significant agenda with scientific enquiry on Bhutan’s investment in hydropower projects and its sustainability. Employing transdisciplinary research methodology, this paper debates why Bhutan needs to continue investing in accelerated hydropower development.