Diana Suhardiman
Biographic Data
| ID | 3707705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Diana Suhardiman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Diana |
| FAMILY NAME | Suhardiman |
| SIGNATURE | SUHARDIMAN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Water Management Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0123-1903 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 382 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Dispossession by archive: Contemporary land grabbing through colonial land deeds in Indonesia
River co-learning arenas: Principles and Practices for Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-Creation and Multi-Scalar (Inter)action
This paper develops the methodological concept of river co-learning arenas (RCAs) and explores their potential to strengthen innovative grassroots river initiatives, enliven river commons, regenerate river ecologies, and foster greater socio-ecological justice. The integrity of river systems has been threatened in profound ways over the last century. Pollution, damming, canalisation, and water grabbing are some examples of pressures threatening t…
Firebreaks as indigenous knowledge system and cultural practice: An Emerging Counternarrative in Forest Fire Governance
Burning is a key approach to forest fires governance. • Effective firebreaks application is rooted in cultural relations with fires. • Kaw way of governing is key for tackling global forest fires governance. This paper studies Karen Indigenous approaches in forest fire governance, contextualized in rotational farming practices and embedded in Karen communities’ cultural norms, values, and life philosophy. It presents the Kaw way of governing as K…
A Karen indigenous approach to food sovereignty: Tracing processes of institutional emergence
The temporally cumulative effects of hydropower development in northern Laos: Insights from the Nam Ou Basin
Expanding tenure horizons in food policy research
Bakelam: Sea nomads' knowledge systems and potential building block for living with change
This paper looks at one of the sea nomads groups, namely Orang Suku Laut (OSL), focusing on their knowledge systems, cultural values, and agency, manifested in the Bakelam nomadic tradition. It highlights how Bakelam serves as both a cultural continuum and space for knowledge (re)production for OSL's livelihood (re)making. Taking the Lingga Archipelago in Riau Islands Province, Indonesia, as a case study, the paper centrally puts Bakelam as key f…
Inter-village land conflicts in Laos’ upland frontiers: From state territorialization to powers of exclusion
State territorialization, how the state exercises its power to impose its predefined conception of development and modernity in the context of land governance, is a widespread phenomenon in the Global South. In Laos, state territorialization strategies form an integral part of the state’s regimes of dispossession. This is most apparent from the state’s ability to impose, design, and implement national policies and programs in line with the state’…
Silent transitions: Commercialization and changing customary land tenure systems in upland Laos
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering 'unruly waters and humans' have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions …
The spatial politics of land policy reform in Myanmar and Laos
Land policy reform has dominated the development agenda across the Global South over the past two decades. In contrast with earlier distributive land reforms, contemporary policies reflect an amalgamation of neoliberal, state territorial, and social justice agendas. This paper demonstrates how land policy changes reflect the spatially extensive and multi-scalar politics of land contestation and control, employing the cases of Myanmar and Laos. My…
A sustainable livelihoods framework for the 21st century
This paper proposes a reformulation of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) fit for the 21st century. The article explores the rise and usage of the original SLF, highlighting how its popularity among development practitioners emerged both from its practical focus, and its depoliticization of wider shifts in the development landscape at the time. Distilling the various critiques that have emerged around the use of the SLF and sustainable l…
Institutional bricolage (re)shaping the different manifestations of state-citizens relations in Mekong hydropower planning
Selective border permeability: Governing complex environmental issues through and beyond Covid-19
COVID-19 has changed the permeability of borders in transboundary environmental governance regimes. While borders have always been selectively permeable, the pandemic has reconfigured the nature of cross-border flows of people, natural resources, finances and technologies. This has altered the availability of spaces for enacting sustainability initiatives within and between countries. In Southeast Asia, national governments and businesses seeking…
Multistakeholder platforms for natural resource governance: Lessons From Eight Landscape-Level Cases
Multistakeholder platforms (MSPs) are the subject of increasing attention and investment in the domain of collaborative natural resource governance, yet evidence-based guidance is slim on policy and investment priorities to leverage the MSP approach. We provide a comparative analysis of eight landscape-level MSPs spanning seven countries (Peru, Brazil, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and a cross-border case from Kenya and Somalia), representing a dive…
(Un)making the upland: Resettlement, rubber and land use planning in Namai village, Laos
This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights - in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts - into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom to lay claim to land which has recently been zoned for upland rice cultivation (and conservation) as part of a state-led land use planning initiative. We …
Putting power and politics central in Nepal’s water governance
Aspirations undone: Hydropower and the (re) shaping of livelihood pathways in Northern Laos
Scalar politics, power struggles and institutional emergence in Daw Lar Lake, Myanmar
Institutional bricolage and the (Re)shaping of communal land tenure arrangements: Two contrasting cases in upland and lowland Northeastern Laos
Farmer’s agency and institutional bricolage in land use plan implementation in upland Laos
(Re)constructing state power and livelihoods through the Laos-China Railway project
On the Coattails of globalization: Migration, migrants and Covid-19 in Asia
Positioning migrants as quintessential globalisation subjects, this paper reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the ambivalent positioning of migration as a pathway for human development. Drawing on interviews with international and domestic labour migrants from Bangladesh, India, Laos and Myanmar working in Laos, Myanmar, China, Singapore and Thailand, the paper explores the vulnerabilities, challenges and opportunities that have come wi…
The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar's land governance
Following the National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the 2015 national election, Myanmar embarked on a series of legal and political transitions. This paper highlights parallel processes alongside such transitions. Linking land governance with the ongoing peace processes, and taking Karen state as a case study, it brings to light how both processes are in fact closely interlinked. Building on legal pluralism research, we argue that …
The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power
Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non‐state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi‐scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision‐making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmen…
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering 'unruly waters and humans' have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions …
A sustainable livelihoods framework for the 21st century
This paper proposes a reformulation of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) fit for the 21st century. The article explores the rise and usage of the original SLF, highlighting how its popularity among development practitioners emerged both from its practical focus, and its depoliticization of wider shifts in the development landscape at the time. Distilling the various critiques that have emerged around the use of the SLF and sustainable l…
State Spaces of Resistance: Industrial Tree Plantations and the Struggle for Land in Laos
Land grabbing has transformed rural environments across the global South, generating resistance or political reactions “from below”. In authoritarian countries like Laos, where resource investments are coercively developed and insulated from political dissent, resistance appears absent at first glance. Yet, it is occurring under the radar, largely outside transnational activist networks. In this article, we examine how resistance can protect acce…
Revealing the hidden effects of land grabbing through better understanding of farmers’ strategies in dealing with land loss
The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar's land governance
Following the National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the 2015 national election, Myanmar embarked on a series of legal and political transitions. This paper highlights parallel processes alongside such transitions. Linking land governance with the ongoing peace processes, and taking Karen state as a case study, it brings to light how both processes are in fact closely interlinked. Building on legal pluralism research, we argue that …
Scalar Disconnect: The Logic of Transboundary Water Governance in the Mekong
This article provides an institutional analysis of the Mekong River Commission and brings to light the institutional dissonances between regional and national decision-making landscapes in the Lower Mekong Basin. The current scalar disconnect between regional and national decision-making processes reflects how international donors and member country representatives obscure potential conflict/tension in transboundary water governance in the Mekong…
When local power meets hydropower: Reconceptualizing resettlement along the Nam Gnouang River in Laos
The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar
State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform pro…
On the Coattails of globalization: Migration, migrants and Covid-19 in Asia
Positioning migrants as quintessential globalisation subjects, this paper reveals how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the ambivalent positioning of migration as a pathway for human development. Drawing on interviews with international and domestic labour migrants from Bangladesh, India, Laos and Myanmar working in Laos, Myanmar, China, Singapore and Thailand, the paper explores the vulnerabilities, challenges and opportunities that have come wi…
(Re)constructing state power and livelihoods through the Laos-China Railway project
Is There an Alternative for Irrigation Reform
Linking land tenure security with food security: Unpacking farm households’ perceptions and strategies in the rural uplands of Laos
The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power
Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non‐state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi‐scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision‐making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmen…
Putting violent armed conflict in the center of the Salween hydropower debates
Regional economic integration has become the dominant development pathway promoted, endorsed, and followed by many developing country governments in South East Asia and globally. Focusing on hydropower development, this article shows how forces of globalization manifested in the Myanmar government’s strategies to promote economic growth are shaping the Salween River basin’s development trajectory. Contesting the general belief that economic devel…
(Un)making the upland: Resettlement, rubber and land use planning in Namai village, Laos
This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights - in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts - into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom to lay claim to land which has recently been zoned for upland rice cultivation (and conservation) as part of a state-led land use planning initiative. We …
The territorial politics of land use planning in Laos
Legal Plurality: An Analysis of Power Interplay in Mekong Hydropower
The changing notion of state territoriality highlights overlapping power structures at international, national, and local scales and reveals how states can be “differently” powerful. This article analyzes how the interplay of these power structures shapes the dynamics of natural resource management in one of the world's fastest changing transboundary basins, the Mekong. Taking the Lao People's Democratic Republic as a case study, we highlight the…
Laos' hydropower development and cross‐border power trade in the Lower Mekong Basin: A discourse analysis
Increasing demands for energy to boost the Mekong economies have attracted the keen interest of riparian countries for hydropower development. This is evidenced by extensive investment in hydropower projects across the region over the last few decades. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, including officials from Ministry of Energy and Mines, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, private sect…
The politics of river basin planning and state transformation processes in Nepal
The spatial politics of land policy reform in Myanmar and Laos
Land policy reform has dominated the development agenda across the Global South over the past two decades. In contrast with earlier distributive land reforms, contemporary policies reflect an amalgamation of neoliberal, state territorial, and social justice agendas. This paper demonstrates how land policy changes reflect the spatially extensive and multi-scalar politics of land contestation and control, employing the cases of Myanmar and Laos. My…
Institutional bricolage (re)shaping the different manifestations of state-citizens relations in Mekong hydropower planning
Selective border permeability: Governing complex environmental issues through and beyond Covid-19
COVID-19 has changed the permeability of borders in transboundary environmental governance regimes. While borders have always been selectively permeable, the pandemic has reconfigured the nature of cross-border flows of people, natural resources, finances and technologies. This has altered the availability of spaces for enacting sustainability initiatives within and between countries. In Southeast Asia, national governments and businesses seeking…
A Karen indigenous approach to food sovereignty: Tracing processes of institutional emergence
Aspirations undone: Hydropower and the (re) shaping of livelihood pathways in Northern Laos
Scalar politics, power struggles and institutional emergence in Daw Lar Lake, Myanmar
Scalar Disconnect: The Logic of Transboundary Water Governance in the Mekong
This article provides an institutional analysis of the Mekong River Commission and brings to light the institutional dissonances between regional and national decision-making landscapes in the Lower Mekong Basin. The current scalar disconnect between regional and national decision-making processes reflects how international donors and member country representatives obscure potential conflict/tension in transboundary water governance in the Mekong…
Correlations, Causes and the Logic of Obscuration: Donor Shaping of Dominant Narratives in Indonesia's Irrigation Development
This article analyses policy trends in Indonesian irrigation, particularly during the last five decades, from the perspective of dominant narratives, as authored, suggested and pushed by international donors. It argues that international donors' adherence to ‘deferred maintenance’ as the core element of irrigation policy problem framing does not match with farmers' and the irrigation agency staff perceptions and practices. The logic of obscuratio…
Is There an Alternative for Irrigation Reform
Legal Plurality: An Analysis of Power Interplay in Mekong Hydropower
The changing notion of state territoriality highlights overlapping power structures at international, national, and local scales and reveals how states can be “differently” powerful. This article analyzes how the interplay of these power structures shapes the dynamics of natural resource management in one of the world's fastest changing transboundary basins, the Mekong. Taking the Lao People's Democratic Republic as a case study, we highlight the…
Do hydrologic rigor and technological advance tell us more or less about transboundary water management
Farmers’ strategies as building block for rethinking sustainable intensification
Revealing the hidden effects of land grabbing through better understanding of farmers’ strategies in dealing with land loss
Irrigation Management Transfer and the Shaping of Irrigation Realities in Indonesia: From Means to Empower Farmers to a Tool to Transfer Rent Seeking
Canal irrigation and the way it has been managed continue to be at the central stage of irrigation development debates. This article looks at Irrigation Management Transfer policy processes in the seven interconnected irrigation systems in Kulon Progo district, Yogyakarta province, Indonesia. It focuses on the government’s attempt to transfer funds for irrigation system operation and maintenance, so-called “stimulant funds,” from the irrigation a…
When local power meets hydropower: Reconceptualizing resettlement along the Nam Gnouang River in Laos
Water Governance and Collective Action: Multi-Scale Challenges
Putting violent armed conflict in the center of the Salween hydropower debates
Regional economic integration has become the dominant development pathway promoted, endorsed, and followed by many developing country governments in South East Asia and globally. Focusing on hydropower development, this article shows how forces of globalization manifested in the Myanmar government’s strategies to promote economic growth are shaping the Salween River basin’s development trajectory. Contesting the general belief that economic devel…
Linking Irrigation Development with the Wider Agrarian Context: Everyday Class Politics in Water Distribution Practices in Rural Java
Poor performance of government managed irrigation systems persists globally despite numerous policies over the last four decades to address the problem. I argue that policy efforts to improve irrigation performance in developing countries fail in part because they are often formulated in isolation from the existing agrarian reality. This article uses the example of Indonesia to show the link between irrigation outcomes and the wider agrarian cont…
State Spaces of Resistance: Industrial Tree Plantations and the Struggle for Land in Laos
Land grabbing has transformed rural environments across the global South, generating resistance or political reactions “from below”. In authoritarian countries like Laos, where resource investments are coercively developed and insulated from political dissent, resistance appears absent at first glance. Yet, it is occurring under the radar, largely outside transnational activist networks. In this article, we examine how resistance can protect acce…
The politics of river basin planning and state transformation processes in Nepal
Spatial politics and local alliances shaping Nepal hydropower
The territorial politics of land use planning in Laos
The contested terrain of land governance reform in Myanmar
State control of land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion has driven the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing land governance reforms as key terrains for contesting such abuses of power. Employing a relational land governance approach, we view reform pro…
The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power
Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non‐state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi‐scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision‐making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmen…
Laos' hydropower development and cross‐border power trade in the Lower Mekong Basin: A discourse analysis
Increasing demands for energy to boost the Mekong economies have attracted the keen interest of riparian countries for hydropower development. This is evidenced by extensive investment in hydropower projects across the region over the last few decades. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, including officials from Ministry of Energy and Mines, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, private sect…
Linking land tenure security with food security: Unpacking farm households’ perceptions and strategies in the rural uplands of Laos
Putting power and politics central in Nepal’s water governance
Aspirations undone: Hydropower and the (re) shaping of livelihood pathways in Northern Laos
Scalar politics, power struggles and institutional emergence in Daw Lar Lake, Myanmar
Institutional bricolage and the (Re)shaping of communal land tenure arrangements: Two contrasting cases in upland and lowland Northeastern Laos
Farmer’s agency and institutional bricolage in land use plan implementation in upland Laos
Political science (37 works) · Geography (31 works) · Economics (28 works) · Politics (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (19 works) · Business (18 works) · Law (18 works) · Cambodian History and Society (17 works) · Sociology (17 works)