Reversing the Odds: Dam Construction and Indigenous Peoples in the 21st-Century Americas
Speaker: Dr. Takahiro Miyachi
Department of Cultural Anthropology | University of Tokyo
Abstract:
Free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) is an Indigenous right recognized in international norms, yet it is often implemented without good-faith interpretation and reduced to a procedural formality. This talk asks why and how this implementation gap emerges, why it is especially acute in high-stakes hard cases, and whether there are pathways out of repeated deadlock. Drawing on a comparative dataset of large dam projects across North and South America in the twenty-first century, including both built and cancelled projects, I combine quantitative indicators of contention with qualitative evidence from policy documents, legal disputes, media coverage, and stakeholder accounts. I then take a closer look at the internal politics of development policymaking in Bolivia, drawing on my own observations and interactions with policymakers, to illustrate how decisions around consent are negotiated, delayed, narrowed, or overridden in practice.
About Dr. Takahiro Miyachi
I am a Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UBC from August 2025 to September 2026.
My academic background is in comparative politics with a regional focus on Latin America, in which I earned my BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Tokyo. Throughout my career, I have studied the political participation of social organizations and its consequences in Latin American countries, particularly in the Andean region. My BA and MA research examined the diverse political actions of labor organizations during the democratization processes in Bolivia and Ecuador in the latter half of the 20th century. My PhD thesis extended this analysis to Indigenous organizations, which succeeded labor unions as the leading actors in social movements in both countries. During my doctoral and postdoctoral research, I was a visiting scholar at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA, 2006-08) and at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) Ecuador (2009-10).
Since 2010, I have held tenured positions at Doshisha University (2010-14), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2014-17), and the University of Tokyo (2017-present), where I teach Spanish, social science methodology, and Latin American politics. I have also served as a visiting lecturer at several institutions, including UMSA and the United Nations University for Peace.
My current research focuses on the comparative (non-)implementation of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) in Indigenous territories, with particular attention to how the material characteristics of infrastructure projects influence the behavior of different stakeholders. While Latin America remains my primary regional focus, I have expanded my research to include cases from the United States, Canada, and Japan. Since 2024, I have participated in an interdisciplinary research project on FPIC worldwide, supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese Ministry of Education. As part of this effort, I am currently working with colleagues to publish the first edited volume on FPIC in Japanese.
Photo Credit: Atossa Soltani
