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THAILAND: Villagers Want Their Rivers - and Lives - Back
By Teena Amrit Gill
RASI SALAI, Thailand, Dec 18 (IPS) - Before the sun rises, Wang is out on
the Mun river, pulling in the nets he had set the day before. Gently and
surely he brings in the fish, a variety of different species which will
feed him and his family, but also help reap in additional income to buy
other necessities.
But it has been many years since Wang has been able to fish in the
river. He and other villagers along the Mun river in Rasi Salai struggled
for years against the devastating impact of the Rasi Salai dam, which
changed their lives forever.
Built in 1994, the first of 13 other planned dams under the Kong-Chi-Mun
Water Diversion project to irrigate land in the Thai north-east, the Rasi
Salai dam made more than 15,000 people landless because of its huge
reservoir.
The dam also blocked fish migration routes and the livelihoods of
fishing folk along the river, and destroyed the largest freshwater swamp in
the Mun river basin. The forest provided food and medicinal herbs to the
villagers, and acted as a fish habitat and a system of natural flood control.
In July 2002, after many years of struggle, state officials finally
allowed for the opening of the seven sluice gates of the dam, and once
again the river flows, the crops have ripened, the fish are starting to
return, community life is becoming vibrant once more."
It was here at the scene of this once again breathing and vibrant river
where over 300 activists and people affected by dams from 62 countries
descended for the Second International Meeting of Dam-Affected People and
their Allies in North-east Thailand from Nov. 28-Dec. 4. The feeling was
one of optimist and hope, shared with fisherfolk like Wang.
The participants said after a week-long session of intensive workshops
and brainstorming that since Curitiba, (the first such meeting held in
Curitiba, Brazil 1997), they have made ''significant progress in our
struggles''.
"The international movement against destructive dams has shown its
ability to challenge the industry in the technical, political and moral
spheres. We have stopped and decommissioned some dams. In some areas we
have achieved recognition of the right to just reparation," the declaration
continued.
For the villagers around it, the Rasi Salai dam itself has been a
failure. Its reservoir sits on top of a huge salt dome, which makes the
water too salty for irrigation. As a result, Thailand's Office of
Environmental Policy and Planning never allowed the dam's irrigation canals
to be constructed. The project cost more than six times the original estimate.
"Not only did the dam destroy our fisheries," explains Aphirak Suthawan,
an activist and villager affected by the dam, "it also destroyed our
agricultural practices by flooding and salinising our lands, as well us our
livestock. As a result about 60 percent of those affected by the dam have
had to out migrate to find work and make a livelihood."
Fifty-six species of fish completely have disappeared since the dam was
built, according to the World Commission on Dams (WCD), a body established
by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union in 1998 to review the
effectiveness of large dams.
"Slowly we are seeing life return to the way it was before the dam was
built. But it is going to take a long time before things are normal again,
and anyway we don't even know if the gates will be left open permanently or
not,'' Aphirak adds.
Though the government allowed the river to run free in July 2000, this
was not a permanent decision or commitment.
Further, east of Rasi Salai close to the Cambodian border, the villagers
affected by the Pak Mun dam have not had as much success. The government,
after a long struggle by local villagers and activists to decommission the
dam and restore the river, allowed the gates of the dam to be opened for
nearly a year and a half, but at present are only allowed to be opened four
months a year.
While the gates were permanently opened from June 2001 to November 2002,
a study by Ubon Ratchathani University in the north-east into fisheries,
social impacts and impact on electricity generation concluded that the
gates should be left open for at least five years.
"We should be in a position to make decisions about our rivers, because
we are the ones whose lives are affected. Even the government should not be
involved in this process," exclaims an activist working with a local
organisation at Pak Mun who preferred to remain anonymous.
After the completion of the World Bank-financed 136-megawatt Pak Mun dam
in 1994, the livelihoods of over 20,000 fishing folk along the Mun river,
the largest tributary of the Mekong river, were destroyed because of the
impact of the dam on the regular migratory cycles of fish, and on their
habitat.
A fish ladder, built in to the dam as a means of mitigating this impact,
was a failure. Benefits from irrigation have been non-existent because of
the soil's high water-retention capacity even beyond the boundaries of the
reservoir. The water supplied by the dam has to be paid for and is
unaffordable for most.
While power generation was given as one of the reasons by the state
Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) not to allow for the
gates to be fully opened, Pak Mun in fact only accounts for 0.5 percent of
EGAT's total generating capacity. Of this total capacity, approximately 40
percent, on an average day, is not used because of insufficient demand.
(END/2003)
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