Strategic environmental ignorance: Antipolitical knowledge gaps from drought measurement to adaptation in Cambodia

Abstract

In shaping environmental policy, knowledge is power. Yet the opposite is also true. Control over the absence of knowledge facilitates certain policy outcomes being deflected, obscured, or magnified in a way that furthers political, personal, or institutional ends. Applying previous work on ignorance studies and agnotology to the development of Cambodian drought policy, the paper demonstrates how data gaps, restrictions on data sharing, and obstacles to data dissemination serve institutional interests and shape policy development. It proceeds in three parts, each reflecting one aspect of drought sensing in Cambodia and more broadly: hydrological, meteorological, and agricultural. First, how data on the Mekong River is shaped by regional geopolitics. Second, how national rainfall and flood data reflect the political geography of sub-national government administration. Third, how this multi-scalar landscape of political and institutional interests links data generation, data dissemination and adaptation policy, closing certain adaptation pathways, whilst opening others.