Large projects should not be tracked only by asking whether they are active, suspended, or completed.

The more important questions are as follows.

• Who has the authority to bind the country to the project?
• Who actually controls the territory where it will operate?
• Who owns, operates, finances and maintains it?
• What dependencies does it create after construction?
• What land, livelihood, fiscal or strategic exposures already exist?
• What has already become difficult to reverse?
• And what is the next consequential threshold after which future governments or communities will have fewer choices?

A project may still be in “revival” while carrying old displacement, sunk costs and contractual commitments. An operating gas field may simultaneously have a new expansion under construction. A port may create dependence through logistics and access control long after its construction cost is forgotten.

So the useful unit of analysis is not simply the project, but structure of authority, dependency, exposure and lock-in that the project creates.