The Role of Infrastructure Projects in Socio-economic Development: Case study of Geheyan dam

Abstract: Previous research on hydropower projects impact on people’s socio-economic development has mainly focused on relocated people, immediately after they were relocated, arguing that relocation result in underdevelopment of people´s livelihoods. Henceforth, this research contribute to the literature through including a long-term perspective to highlight immediate and long-term impacts on relocated and non-relocated people in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of hydropower projects´ impact. A combination of Horizontal inequality and Social wellbeing theory was adopted as theoretical framework when analyzing sentiments towards government and assessing peoples perception on their and society´s socio-economic development. A field study was conducted in Changyang Tujia Autonomous County in China, investigating the socio-economic impact of the first hydropower project constructed in this county, named Geheyan dam. The result of this study is that Geheyan created horizontal inequality between relocated and non-relocated people immediately after relocation was realized, prominently because of rapid increase of commodity prices in combination with time-consuming process in restoring production systems. However, from a long-term perspective, it brought people out of poverty and improved both groups socio-economic development through enabling urbanization and tourism. The result is; participants’ positive perception of Geheyan, the local and central government indicate that socio-economic development improved – including both relocated and non-relocated people.