THAILAND: Activists Turn to Local Heroine to Protect Marine Life

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

KLONG DAN, Thailand, Aug 5 2003 (IPS) - Dawan Chantarhassadi is a woman in demand due to her temporary life as an activist in this fishing town along the Gulf of Thailand.

That means having to leave the hours she enjoys cooking in the restaurant she runs to talk about the significance of grassroots activism. Over the weekend, 46-year-old Dawan participated in a campaign by the environmental lobby Greenpeace aimed at exposing the toxic waste flowing into the upper regions of the Gulf.

”She is unique. It should serve as an inspiration for other communities,” says Jiragorn Gajaseni, head of Greenpeace South-east Asia. ”We hope to use her story to demonstrate the impact grassroots movements can have.”

Women’s groups are equally effusive about Dawan. ”Her achievement is unusual, making her stand out,” adds Usa Lerdsrisuntad of the Bangkok-based Foundation for Women. ”But her accomplishments have not been played up in the mainstream media, unlike in the alternative press.”

Only a short drive from Dawan’s restaurant, which is made of wood and has a rustic interior, is the reason for the praise she is earning – a sprawling wastewater treatment plant that is ready for use but lies dormant.

It was the four-year campaign that Dawan led with the backing of her community that forced the government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to declare in February this year that the Samut Prakarn plant would not be used.

In doing so, Thaksin had added the Samut Prakarn Wastewater Project to the list of the many ”white elephants” in this country, such as the 14 dams built in Kong Chimung water-diversion project in north-east Thailand and the Bang Pakong Dam east of Bangkok.

Some 100,000 people live and work in low-rise buildings that are spread across a flat, open terrain here in Klong Dan, 50 kilometres south-east of Bangkok. The main seafood market in the town is the hub of a thriving economy based on the sea, with most of the catch from nearby villages flowing into it before being redirected to buyers across Thailand and overseas.

This example of a development fiasco had proven embarrassing to the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), since the Manila-based financial institution pumped money into this venture that cost 750 million U.S. dollars.

Because of the public pressure that grew as a result of the campaign launched by the people of Klong Dan, the AsDB had to have its first-ever independent panel to review the Samut Prakarn wastewater plant.

The panel found that the project had no environmental impact assessment, and that there had been no effort to consult the local people who would have been affected by its construction. The arguments that won the day for Dawan and her supporters were the location of the plant in their town and the waters of the Gulf being polluted by the outflow from it.

”The seafood from this part is excellent, like the shrimp, the green mussels,” says Dawan, who looked comfortable in a grey T-shirt worn over a pair of faded blue jeans, her hair pulled back and held with a clip. ”We feared that our catch from the Gulf would be destroyed.”

But despite such a monumental triumph early this year, she still does not sleep easy, adds Dawan. Her struggle came at a personal cost – she used all her savings that added up to 100,000 baht ( 2,400 U.S. dollars) to help finance the campaign to fight a financial behemoth such as the AsDB.

Today, her worries stem from the uncertain future of the plant, which has a tough security cordon to prevent journalists from entering the premises. ”The government has still to announce clear plans about what they will do with the project. Till then, till we see it in operation, we have to be suspicious,” she adds.

This is precisely the concern that Greenpeace has raised about this stretch along the northern arc of the Gulf of Thailand – that marine life is being threatened by the estimated 100,000 types of chemicals being used by factories in the industrial estates along the area.

According to Greenpeace, over 1,500 types of chemicals with highly toxic levels have been released in the environment.

Fear of wastewater polluting the sea has been reflected in research done by the Marine Science Research Institute at Burapa University in Chonburi, which lies along the Gulf. Heavy metal contamination has resulted in mercury found in tissues of fish, a study by the institute reveals.

In addition, the study notes, crabs found in areas close to the industrial estates have been affected by the change in temperature arising from the chemicals in the sea – the crustaceans are becoming more red in colour than the customary grey or brown.

”Communities living along the Gulf of Thailand need to know who is producing the toxic material and what toxins they are,” says Jiragorn of Greenpeace. ”What is needed is a TRI (Toxic Release Inventory).”

A TRI, which is among the goals government set at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, would monitor the scale of toxic material pollution the seas, rivers, land and the air.

It is the need for such information to be made public that awoke the activist in Dawan. ”The community’s right to information cannot be denied,” she asserts. ”It has to be respected, particularly when pollution from factories can destroy the sea, which we depend on for our living.”

Dawan is ready to throw her weight behind this attempt to save the Gulf from the growth of ”toxic hotspots” – a view that Greenpeace welcomes. ”She is the perfect model to inspire communities to demand the right to know who is polluting the seas and with what,” says Jiragorn.