ENVIRONMENT-THAILAND: Villagers’ Knowledge Challenges Academics

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 28 2002 (IPS) - A novel research project by villagers in north-east Thailand, looking into the impact of a controversial dam on their lives, is challenging the monopoly that academics have long had on research in this country.

Already, the work of these villagers – an 11-month study along the part of a river affected by the Pak Mun dam – is being hailed as a triumph for indigenous knowledge over the purely scientific methods usually pursued by university dons.

Completed in 1994 on the mouth of the Mun river – the largest tributary of the Mekong river – in Ubon Ratchatani province, the Pak Mun Dam disrupted the lives of more than 20,000 villagers when the water flow came to a standstill.

The dam blocked the migration of fish from the Mekong river, depriving them of livelihood and altering an environment they had long counted on for survival.

”The ecological data on the fish is very detailed and has more information than the academic studies,” says Chris Baker, an author on political and economic issues in Thailand. ”It is a path-breaking piece of research in Thailand.”

”The research work of the villagers is crucial to understand the way the dam affects the river,” adds Kanokwan Manorom of Ubon Ratchatani University, in north-east Thailand.

The villagers have identified and recorded the fish species in the river and plant life on its banks that have come back after the dam’s sluice gates were opened last year by the Thai government, under pressure from the angry communities.

Pak Mun villagers have since been demanding that the government leave the sluice gates permanently open, which would mean the dam would no longer be able to produce the 136 megawatts of electricity it was designed to generate.

The Pak Mun dam has been a controversial subject for the Thai government, caught between junking what a 24 million U.S. dollar ‘development’ project funded by the World Bank to harness the powers of the Mun river and opposition by affected communities.

The villagers’ grassroots exercise in using grassroots knowledge and gathering information, called the ‘Thai Baan’ study, will come out in book form in early November.

”We think more people in society will listen to the villagers once they read the ‘Thai Baan’ research,” says Chainarong Sretthachau, director at the Thai division of the South-east Asia Rivers Network (SEARIN), a non-governmental group working with the Pak Mun villagers.

”They used local knowledge to explain the impact the dam has on the Mun river,” he adds. ”This knowledge has not been recorded before.”

However, the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is paying little heed to the villagers’ efforts.

It has decided to shut the sluice gates of the Pak Mun ram by the end of October, thus ignoring the central message of the villagers’ study – that those gates must remain open to ensure they have the much-needed river fish for their livelihood.

The 200 villagers involved in the grassroots survey began work on their project in June last year, shortly after the government announced it would open the sluice gates to assess if the dam had significantly hampered the ecology of the river.

At the time, the government commissioned two official studies, one by researchers at Ubon Ratchatani University and the other by the Thailand Institute of Scientific and Technological Research, an agency under the ministry of science, technology and the environment.

The villagers were not convinced that these two groups would be able to portray the ecology of the Mun river after the dam gates were opened and felt driven to conduct their own study, says Chainarong.

The previous research work by some academics into the Pak Mun dam’s impact on rural communities did not capture the correct picture, he explains, adding: ”Some of the academics were operating like hired guns of the government.”

”So many academics have been bought for money,” agrees Baker. ”The problem is the project owner controls or has influence on the research.”

According to available records, over 50 research projects have been conducted by Thai academics on the Pak Mun dam and its impact. These include doctoral dissertations and master’s degree theses, in addition to official studies.

”Being outsiders, the academics have not succeeded in getting the depth and insight about the changes in the river due to the dam unlike the villagers,” says Kanokwan, an academic herself. ”There are some academics who ignore local knowledge for the scientific material.”

The villagers, in contrast, collected information from all the sites along the river that have been affected, localities that were quite familiar to them.

”To assess fisheries impact, 20 experienced fishermen in the Pak Mun area collected fish samples from the Mun river,” states a summary of the ‘Thai Baan’ study. ”They took photographs of the fish categorised and identified them. The fishermen discussed the fish one by one, based on over 50 years of collective fishing experience.”

Before the dam’s construction, the Mun river had 265 kinds of fish, according to the study. But these numbers dropped drastically after dam construction.

Yet between June 2001 to May 2002, when the dam’s gates were open, many of the disappeared fish species reappeared, the villagers reported. ”Researchers found that 156 kinds of fish returned to the Mun river,” the study said.

The villagers documented the number of households that returned to fishing after the dam gates were opened – 6,915 out of a total of 7,286 households, nearly 95 percent.

”The Thai government and the World Bank ignored the livelihood of the people along the Mun river,” says Chainarong. ”The original environment impact assessment for the dam didn’t take into account the impact on fisheries.”

Kanokwan hopes that the villagers’ work will bring about a change in the way the government commissions research on development projects. ”This shows that knowledge can be produced by various people in society, not only academics, and governments should get more than one study before making decisions.”

ENVIRONMENT-THAILAND: Villagers’ Knowledge Challenges Academics

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 28 2002 (IPS) - A novel research project by villagers in north-east Thailand, looking into the impact of a controversial dam on their lives, is challenging the monopoly that academics have long had on research in this country.
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