OTHER IPS WIRE STORIES

• For Exiles in Thailand, Burma is Both Near and Far
• Burmese Caught between Poverty in India, Oppression at Home
• Activists Cheer Pullout of French Firm from Lao Dam Project

Read this report in:   THAI  |  MANDARIN

CHIANG RAI, Jul 16 (IPS) — Over the past seven months, Suphan Beka has been enjoying the comforts many of her school friends take for granted — sipping ice cold drinks at home and watching Thai television shows late at night.

It was only in December that her home in the hills of northern Thailand was linked to this country's electricity grid. ''A lot has changed in our home. We have a fridge, a cooker and I go to sleep late because we now have TV,'' says 16-year-old Suphan.

A similar sentiment is echoed by other teenagers who have been enjoying the changes that electricity has brought to their homes in a small stretch of land 40 kilometres to the west of Chiang Rai, in northern Thailand.

The provision of electricity to Suphan's home is the result of Thai authorities' steaming ahead with plans to ensure that power supply reaches all of the country's rural and urban communities. Currently, close to 99 percent of Thailand's 70,000 villages have electricity, and all urban centres have access to it.

This determination by the country's energy policy makers has also made Thailand, already the major economic power in the Mekong region, the leading consumer of electricity when compared with its neighbours such as Yunnan province in south-west China, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Thailand consumes 1,448 kilowatt-hours of electricity per capita, as opposed to China's energy consumption, which is 827 kwh per capita. Vietnam consumers 286 kwh of electricity per capita, and Burma 68 kwh per capita, according to the 2003 U.N. 'Human Development Report.'

While Thailand's desire to make electricity reach its remotest areas makes a qualitative difference in many of its citizens' lives, some analysts say it also tends to feed a growing appetite for electricity that may have less than desirable effects on neighbouring countries.

That is because Thailand has increasingly been encouraging or taking part in power projects across its borders, including the development of large dams, that would then sell power to the country.

Still, the state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) is pushing ahead with plans to meet greater power demands in the future, says Suphakij Nuntavorakarn, an energy policy researcher with the Sustainable Energy Network of Thailand, a non-governmental group.

These plans are running into a gathering chorus of doubts, questions and protest from both local environmentalists like Suphakij and regional and international environmental lobbies.

On Jul. 8, the Thai government agreed to sign a power purchasing agreement with the government of neighbouring Laos. In effect, it has provided the financial impetus — and the market — for a consortium of public and private sector developers to start work on a hydroelectric project., Nam Theun II, which has been dogged by controversy.

''EGAT is fully supportive of such measures given the way it is supporting dam construction in Laos,'' says Suphakij. ''It wants Thailand to have such sources of power to meet the rising local demands in the future.''

The proposed dam in Laos is one of 32 hydropower projects that have been identified as sites for dam development in the Mekong region, the International Rivers Network (IRN), a U.S.-based environmental lobby, stated in a document released this month.

Power from ''some of the most controversial dam projects in China, Burma and Laos would be transmitted through (an electricity) grid to the energy hungry cities of Thailand and Vietnam,'' IRN declared in its document, 'Trading Away the Future'.

The projects, estimated to cost 4.6 billion dollars, would add to the legacy of ''damaged livelihoods, cultures and ecosystems'' caused by 'development' schemes built in the Mekong region over the last decade, IRN adds.

It blames the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) for supporting this regional power initiative, although a senior Bank economist told a recent seminar here that there is ''misinformation'' about what critics call a 'Mekong power grid'.

''The Mekong power grid is one of the flagship initiatives of the (Bank's) Greater Mekong Subregion programme, which is supposed to encourage cooperation and economic growth in the six countries sharing the Mekong River basin,'' states IRN.

''This project should be halted immediately,'' Susanne Wong, IRN's South-east Asia campaigner, said in an e-mail interview with IPS. 'These institutions (the Bank and the AsDB) are trampling on the rights of affected people, inviting environmental destruction and hindering the implementation of real solutions for meeting the region's energy needs.

But Myo Thant, senior economist with the AsDB's Mekong Department, said here that the Manila-based financial institution had no intention of building a 'Mekong Power Grid'. The AsDB would not support dam construction ''if there is a negative impact on a neighbouring country,'' he added.

''There is misinformation about the Mekong power grid.''

However, he noted, the AsDB is keen on having the GMS countries agree to trade power across national boundaries, which may have been construed as a grand plan to build dams when it is but an accord to trade electricity.

''For now there is an integrated agreement on power trade, but the details have to be worked out,'' he added.

This power trading agreement was reached during a summit of leaders of the six Mekong countries in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh in November 2002.

The leaders agreed to pursue a power ''interconnection and trading agreement,'' allowing countries to supply or purchase power from each other's electricity grids like they do other currently traded goods.

This regional power trading system aims to link national transmission systems, enabling countries to pool their energy resources to meet the region's development agenda, states an AsDB publication, 'Connecting Nations, Linking People.' (END/IPS/AP/DV/IP/MMM/JS/03)