Postgraduate Qualifications

2001    MSc Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (Agroecology) from Imperial College at Wye, Kent, United Kingdom

2013    PhD (Development Studies) from School of International Development (DEV), University of East Anglia, United Kingdom

Biography

David has a background in fish farming and fisheries management in the UK. He worked for many years in Thailand and Laos for a number of different organisations and institutions, both state and non-state, in the fields of small-scale aquaculture, rural development, natural resources and wetlands conservation. He worked for several years as a fishery instructor with Voluntary Services Overseas at a Thai agricultural college and later as an aquaculture extension specialist in northern Laos, with a United Nations Development Programme project. More recently, he was was an advisor to the Thailand demonstration site of a four nation Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme (MWBP), which grounded many innovative approaches to wetlands conservation at a single large floodplain site in Northeast Thailand. He returned to UK in 2007 to begin a PhD at the University of East Anglia the following year, with the title of his thesis, “Irrigationalism: The Politics and Ideology of Irrigation Development in the Nam Songkhram Basin, Northeast Thailand”. Since graduation David has conducted a 12 month research fellowship with the Mekong Programme on Water, Environment and Resilience (M-POWER) in 2013 and has co-edited a collected volume of chapters by a range of regional scholars, including past M-POWER fellows, that examines various topical water governance issues in the Mekong region. It was published by the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) in late 2016 (http://gbgerakbudaya.com/home/product/water-governance-dynamics-in-the-mekong-region/). In the autumn term of 2016, he was the Luce Visiting Scholar in Environmental and Urban Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut in the USA. He is an associate with Water Witness International and presently looking for appropriate positions as a post-doctoral researcher or university lecturer.

Research Interests

My current research interests span issues around the socio-political drivers of water resources development, in particular irrigation, in the wider Mekong region. Using critical political ecology approaches, I attempt to investigate both contemporary and historical narratives used by social actors to justify their positions around irrigation development and relate these to wider social power relations and ongoing socio-ecological transformation. My work is multi-disciplinary and strongly grounded within local arenas of water-related contestation. I am also interested in researching more structural questions about the formation and development of societies in the Lower Mekong Basin, using the historical materialist framework of Wittfogel’s controversial hydraulic society hypothesis, but viewed from a critical perspective. This approach takes stock of the relative role and importance of the hydraulic bureaucracy and allied institutions in determining the development paradigm in nations such as Thailand and Cambodia, but updates some of Wittfogel’s concepts to the modern era.

Selected Publications

Edited book

Blake, D.J.H. and Robins, L. (eds) 2016. Water Governance Dynamics in the Mekong Region. M-POWER Volume 5 book series on Water Governance in the Mekong Region. Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

Book chapters

Blake, D.J.H., Friend, R. and Promphakping, B. 2009. The Nam Songkhram River Basin landscape transformations and new approaches to wetlands management. In Molle, F., Foran, T. and Käkönen, M. (eds), Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region: Hydropower, Livelihoods and Governance. London: Earthscan. pp. 173-202

Molle, F., Floch, P., Promphaking, B. and Blake, D.J.H. 2009. "Greening Isaan": Politics, Ideology, and Irrigation Development in Northeast Thailand. In: Molle, F., Foran, T. and Käkönen, M. (eds), Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region: Hydropower, Livelihoods and Governance. London: Earthscan. pp. 253-282

Vidal, A., van Koppen, B., and Blake, D.J.H. 2010. The green to blue water continuum: an approach to improving agricultural systems’ resilience to water scarcity. In: Lundqvist, J. (ed) On the Waterfront: Selections from the World Water Week in Stockholm. Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), Stockholm.

Floch, P. and Blake, D. 2011. Water Transfer Planning in Northeast Thailand: Rhetoric and Practice. In: Lazarus, K., Badenoch, N., Dao, N., and Resurreccion, B.P. (eds), Water Rights and Social Justice in the Mekong Region. London: Earthscan. pp.19-38

Lazarus, K., Blake, D.J.H., Dore, J., Sukraroek, W., and Hall, D.S. 2012. Negotiating Flows in the Mekong. In: Ojendal, J., Hansson, S., and Hellberg, S. (Eds) Politics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed: The Case of the Lower Mekong Basin.  Springer, London. 

Blake, D.J.H. 2016. Iron Triangles, Rectangles or Golden Pentagons? Understanding Power Relations in Irrigation Development Paradigms of Northeast Thailand and Northern Cambodia. In : Blake, D.J.H. and Robins, L. (eds) 2016. Water Governance Dynamics in the Mekong Region. Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

Blake, D.J.H. 2017. Water flows uphill to power: Hydraulic development discourse in Thailand and power relations surrounding kingship and statemaking. In: Baghel, R., Stepan, L. and Hill. J.K.W. (eds) Water, Knowledge and the Environment in Asia: Epistemologies, Practices and Locales. Abingdon: Earthscan from Routledge.

Journal papers

Friend R.M. and Blake D.J.H. 2009. “Negotiating trade-offs in water resources development in the Mekong Basin – implications for fisheries and fishery-based livelihoods.” Water Policy 11 Supplement 1. (2009) 13-30

Blake, D.J.H. and Promphakping, B. 2014. Water resources development, wetlands-based livelihoods and notions of wellbeing: perspectives from Northeast Thailand. Journal of Lao Studies. 5(1):1-28

Blake D.J.H. 2015. King Bhumibol: The Symbolic “Father of Water Resources Management” and Hydraulic Development Discourses in Thailand. Asian Studies Review. 39:4, 649-668, DOI: 10.1080/10357823.2015.1086972