Environmental Discourse On The Nujiang Case: Many Voices And Cultural Struggle The Search For The Missing Voices

The plan to build 13 hydropower dams on the Nujiang River in Yunnan Province has provoked an extensive public debate in the mass media since it was approved in August 2003. This paper on the one hand points out the fact that the existing loud voices articulating in the media debate are a set of diversified, dynamic and contesting cultural ways of speaking about the Nujiang environmental issues, on the other hand, it highlights the need that to the existing ones out there the indigenous voices which have been silenced, ignored or even repressed in this public debate should be recognized apart from the loud voices.From a cultural perspective, this research enters into the voices from the Nujiang local community, and attempts to search for their cultural ways of understanding the environment, in particular, their feelings, thoughts, interpretations, knowledge, values and so on towards their social and natural environment, and bring these recovered missing voices and those loud voices together in a trans-cultural dialogue.The analysis of the environmental discourse on the Nujiang case from the perspective of many voices and cultural struggle shows: one loud voice-coalition that supports the Nujiang hydropower project is framed in the media around the discourse of Fanjingwei and another loud voice-coalition that opposes the project is framed around the discourse of Jingwei, whereas the local voices which are missing in the public debate are framed around the discourse of Yuanshi. The environmental discourse on the Nujiang case features enabling and constraining: the concept of many voices and cultural struggle in this order of environmental discourse, on the one hand, points to the productivity of the loud voices around the discourses of Fanjingwei and Jingwei, and on the other hand to the limitation of the voices around the local discourse of Yuanshi.