THAILAND: Changes along Mekong River Wash Away Tradition, Jobs

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

CHIANG KHONG, Thailand, Apr 14 2002 (IPS) - At this time of the year, the stretch of the Mekong River that flows past this rural township in northern Thailand should be alive with the fishermen preparing to net the highly-prized Mekong giant catfish.

But the river is empty of such life. The rituals normally performed by the fisherman on the river’s bank before noon, including the prayers and the chicken offerings in their boats, are nowhere in sight.

This emptiness saddens Boonrien Jinaraj, because it affirms that a tradition closely associated with his riverbank community of some 4,900 people is drifting into history — and highlights the risk that fishermen may someday have to switch jobs.

“A way of life, a way of earning money by catching the giant catfish is dying,” says 54-year-old Boonrien, whose deeply tanned and wrinkled face is evidence of hours spent under the sun in search of the world’s largest scale-less freshwater fish.

“For years we depended on the river to live, but I fear we will have to look elsewhere for work,” he adds, reflecting the views of many fishermen in this quiet community dotted with a few wooden houses.

Boonrien was attracted to this vocation as a 10-year-old, when he would accompany his grandfather to the Mekong River and watch fishermen catching the giant catfish — just one example of how fish is closely tied to food security in the region.

The dependency is even greater in the Mekong River’s lower basin. Its fisheries yield of 1.75 million tonnes represents “2 percent of the total world catch and 20 percent of all fish caught from inland waters of the world”, says a document by the Phnom-Penh based Mekong River Commission, an inter-governmental body comprising the lower basin countries of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Last year, the fishermen of Chiang Khong failed to net a single giant catfish, whose full size can measure two or three metres long and weigh 200 kg or more.

The best year was in 1993, when the giant catfish season from April to May, when these large fish swim upstream to spawn, yielded 69 giant catfish or ‘plaa beuk’ in Thai. During a typical season, anywhere from 20 to 40 giant catfish are caught, with each being sold in Bangkok upwards of 85,000 baht (almost 2,000 U.S. dollars).

Community leaders here agree on where the blame lies for the changes sweeping through their lives – China’s construction of the Man Wan dam upstream in 1995, where the 4,200 km Mekong river flows through its south-western province of Yunnan from Tibet before it goes through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam.

“The dam has changed the natural flow of the waters and affected the river’s currents,” asserts Niwat Roykaew, 43, a part-time teacher and local activist. “This year has been one of the worst, with water levels fluctuating rapidly during the day.”

On some days, the water level has been high in the morning, low at noon and high by evening. “At times we have seen differences of one-metre shifts in the level in a day,” he says.

Such fluctuations undermine the chances of netting the giant catfish, the fishermen explain, since the river’s ideal depth should be between two or three meters for a successful catch, the customary depth along this part of the Mekong in April and May.

The changes may also disrupt the spawning behaviour of the catfish, causing worries about the river life itself, not to mention other impacts in countries further downstream of the dams in China.

Changing river flows are also affecting those here who thrive on the river’s edible weeds for a living, earning close to 500 baht (about 11 U.S. dollars) a day.

Dam construction by countries along the Mekong and its tributaries have been done to harness the waters of the river for hydroelectric power, notably by Thailand, Laos and China, which is trying to work out a balancing act between industrialisation and reducing the use of coal-fired power.

“Those who approve such development plans or build dams under the guise of development only see the river as a resource to be exploited,” says Chainarong Sretthachau, director of the Thai wing of the South-east Asia Rivers Network (SEARIN). “They fail to see the people who depend on the river for a living.”

“The dam in Yunnan and the dams in Thailand have disrupted the harmonious relationship between the people living by the Mekong and the river,” he asserts. “This is a typical top-down approach to development.”

He says Thailand’s own Pak Mun dam, built on the Mun River that is a tributary of the Mekong in Udon Ratchathani province, shows the sometimes unplanned effects of dams.

People whose livelihoods were disrupted by Pak Mun got the government to open the dam’s sluice gates for a year until mid-2002, allowing river life to come back. In January 2002, fishermen caught one rare giant catfish, since they could again go upstream to spawn.

But dams are just one of the changes affecting the Mekong, as economic integration and cooperation grow in the region.

In June last year, China, Burma and Thailand agreed on a navigation agreement to allow greater use of the river for bigger vessels for commerce — but also means the blasting of reefs and construction of new ports along the way.

While governments look forward to more cross-border commerce, people in this northern Thai town, home to one among the 11 reefs to be blasted, say the destruction of the reefs would also mean wrecking the rich river habitats that produce fish and others for their livelihoods.

The dynamite blasting of river reefs would enable ships to travel smoothly over a 900-km journey from Simao, a port in Yunnan, to Luang Prabang in northern Laos.

“Development in this region is being pursued in the name of reducing poverty and not creating wealth. But this case shows otherwise,” says Shalmali Guttal of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based research body. “It says that ‘development’ is designed to serve particular sets of interests. The large projects are being approved with little input from the local communities.”

Niwat, the activist, confirms this: “The rapids are being blasted with no notice to us, nor were we asked how we feel about it. Once we lose the river reefs, fishing will become harder here.”

Already, some residents have been forced to look for jobs in Bangkok and smaller cities. Some young men have given up their nets and boats to work as labourers on construction sites. “Will the river be empty next year also?” Boonrien wonders.