THAILAND: Returning to Prawn Farming a Mistake, Critics Say

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 3 2001 (IPS) - A proposal before the Thai government to lift a three-year-old ban on inland shrimp farming in the country’s central plains reflects a mentality of seeking short- term gain regardless of its long-term damage, critics say.

The proposal, made to the Cabinet this week by Deputy Prime Minister Pitak Intrawitayanunt, will yield short-term economic gains at the expense of “long-term ecological destruction” in areas earmarked for aquaculture farms, they point out.

Although lifting the ban on prawn farming in freshwater areas may boost revenues as Thailand tries to recover from an export slump, opening the central plains to an industry that caused environmental and economic harm may entail too much risk.

“Inland shrimp farms will result in severe environmental damage,” says Jiragorn Gajaseni, executive director of the Bangkok-based South-east Asian section of Greenpeace, the global environmental lobby.

“There is evidence from the past that reveals how destructive shrimp farming is,” he adds, whether in Thailand or other Asian countries that had joined the prawn-farming boom in the past to export to Japan, Europe and the United States.

According to Daycha Siripatra, head of the Alternative Agriculture Network, a Bangkok-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), rice farmers in the areas that have been identified for shrimp farming may be affected adversely by a return to inland prawn farming.

That stems from the high salinity in the soil that arises due to the initial use of seawater to create the shrimp farms and which may harm fertile rice fields in the vicinity.

“The government needs to produce an environmental impact report if it believes otherwise,” Daycha explains.

Thailand’s central plains consist of eight provinces, where much of the land is planted to rice, also a key export of the country.

“All the monetary gains it (prawn farming) has provided over the years will never be enough to cover the damage caused by this industry,” the English daily ‘Bangkok Post’ argued in an editorial this week.

The central plains, the ‘rice bowl’ that has been feeding millions over centuries, “might once again be under threat as the result of a policy shift aimed at short-term gain,” it pointed out.

Pitak, however, thinks otherwise. After submitting his proposal to the Cabinet, the deputy prime minister said the scheme he envisaged for prawn farms would not threaten the environment.

What he has in mind is a “zoning plan for prawn farms” which would require government oversight to ensure that the farms met environmental standards spelled out by Thailand’s National Environmental Board.

Moreover, Pitak says the decision to revoke the ban will occur only after opponents to this policy shift are given a hearing. “All parties for and against the ban, tiger prawn farmers, rice farmers, environmentalists and government agencies will have a say before a decision is made,” Pitak told local media.

A panel created by the government’s National Environment Board is studying the prawn-farming proposal and is expected to submit its report in mid-August.

The July 1998 ban on inland prawn farming, imposed by the previous government, was implemented in response to the trail of destruction to mangrove forests along Thailand’s eastern seaboard and parts of the west coast, too. However, prawn farming is currently allowed in 25 of Thailand’s provinces.

Equally troubling had been the impact of aquaculture on the rice farming and fruit-growing communities in the central plains of Thailand.

Environmentalists have documented similar evidence in other countries that turned to aquaculture to boost export earnings, ranging from India and Bangladesh to Malaysia and the Philippines.

In Bangladesh, for instance, rice cultivation suffered due to saltwater from shrimp farms seeping into paddy lands.

But the Thai government is looking for new ways to earn dollar revenue, given the current decline in overseas demand that has hit Asia and is hurting it as well. Exports, a lifeline in Thailand’s efforts to recover from the 1997 crisis, have slumped 10 percent from January to April this year.

Exporting 49,000 tonnes of prawns and shrimps brought in 107 billion baht (2.37 billion U.S. dollars) last year. But industry watchers forecast that revenues are likely to drop this year — but revenues would still be bigger than the 70 billion baht (1.55 billion dollars) Thailand expects to make this year from exporting 6 million tonnes of rice.

According to Gajaseni, however, economic gains cannot compensate for the destruction of rice fields and the permanent ecological damage that makes the land unproductive.

Shrimp-farm owners, in his view, have done little to stall this pattern of environmental degradation. “They keep moving from one area to another, leaving a trail of destruction behind.”

Thailand’s mangroves bear testimony to this trail of ecological damage.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the destroyed mangroves in Thailand are part of more than 50 percent of the world’s mangroves that have been destroyed largely due to shrimp farm production in their vicinity.

However, some here say there are ways of environment-friendly aquaculture. Prachak Iamsiri, awarded the country’s leading shrimp farmer and a subdistrict head in central Chachoengsao province, says prawn farming there has not caused environmental damage to surrounding paddy fields or farmland.

“Our rule is that we must not pump water and mud from our farms out into canals or public waterways,” he was quoted as saying by the English-language daily ‘The Nation’. “Instead, we have a water treatment system and we have recycled the used water.”