[Dryerase] A Development Disaster: The Pak Mun Dam in Thailand, Nov. Public i

[SARAH BOYER]

A Development Disaster: The Pak Mun Dam in Thailand

By Joe Rupp

For the past half-decade Thailand's Pak Mun Dam has been recognized by 
environmental and human rights groups as a posterchild of insensitive, 
inequitable, top-down development strategy. Despite civil society's 
criticism, however, thousands of local villagers still squat in a makeshift, 
shantytown protest village only yards from the dam. They eat, sleep and 
commune in protest of the dam that has stolen their own livelihoods, their 
families' food source and their children's playground. Still today their 
demands to permanently decommission the dam, restore the river ecology and 
revitalize community health remain unmet.

I recently had the opportunity to study about, work for, and live with this 
group of dispossessed villagers.

HISTORY

Pak Mun Dam is situated 5.5 kilometers upstream from the confluence of the 
Mun and the Mekong Rivers. Above the dam, the Mun’s waters are fed by a 
basin three times the size of the Netherlands.

Because of such an expansive ecological base, environmental groups and 
biologists were concerned how the dam would affect migratory fish from the 
Mekong, one of the planet's most diverse waterways. Doctors raised the issue 
of schistosomiasis, a deadly worm that resides in stagnant water. Human 
rights organizations questioned how resettlement and compensation plans 
could prove effective if no topographical map of water level was released. 
Civil society fumed at the lack of participatory process, as countless 
villagers were told of their soon-to-be neighbor. After all, villagers had 
never requested the electricity or irrigation the dam was to provide.

In 1990 the resolution to build the Pak Mun Dam passed the Thai parliament. 
The only environmental and social impact assessment performed for this 
project was completed seven years before. The study assessed a dam of 
different proportions than what was actually built and assumed it to be 
several kilometers downstream from its eventual site. Despite several 
dramatic displays of protest, including villagers strapping themselves to 
rocks slated for explosive removal, the project barreled forward. A thirteen 
percent budgetary boost from the World Bank buoyed the monster, and in 1994, 
voila, a dam was born.

IN HINDSIGHT

Eight years later, it's apparent the only factor keeping the dam in place is 
a fear of losing political face. It can safely be said, the project has been 
a failure on all fronts; project costs nearly doubled, ballooning from an 
expected 3.88 billion Baht to and eventual 6.6 billion. Power generation, 
estimated at 136 MW in the project proposal, barely scratches 21 MW, enough 
to power one Wal-Mart. Irrigation is non-existent. And tourism, the Thailand 
fallback? Well, remember that shantytown protest village? That's positioned 
on the “scenic overlook.” Even more unfortunate have been the effects 
unforeseen, at least by the government and the Electricity Generating 
Authority of Thailand (EGAT). According to the 1998 World Bank Operation and 
Evaluation Report, fish catch and income decreased by 50% from 1994. A study 
by the Thai NGO, Project for Ecological Recovery, found upwards of 75% 
reductions in incomes only a year later.. Vegetation has been destroyed. The 
dry-season riverbank, usually a fertile area for local agriculture, is 
inundated year-round.

Mitigation efforts have proved obsolete. A fish ladder, unwisely modeled 
after the designs of the Columbia River and customized for the 
sleek-swimming Pacific Northwest Salmon has, not surprisingly, flopped. Said 
Dr. Pladprasop Suraswasdi, former director of the Royal Fisheries 
Department, "We know nothing about the pattern and behavior of fish 
migration." Prawns were introduced to the reservoir in hopes of reviving 
local fishing incomes but are unable to reproduce. Local, small-scale, 
subsistence fisherman, accustomed to the shallow rapids, have no equipment 
for the style of fishing the reservoir necessitates. Communities and 
families have suffered the brunt of the load, as children and women have 
been forced to seek low-pay work in Bangkok.

The final judgment broke when the World Commission on Dams (WCD), a panel of 
NGOs, businessmen, politicians and engineers assembled by the World Bank, 
deemed Pak Mun a tragedy. Their case study of Pak Mun, released in 2000, 
states, "If all the benefits and costs were adequately assessed, it is 
unlikely that the project would have been built."

DAMN DAMS

Pak Mun is a textbook example of development projects that lack necessity 
and, for most persons, desirability. Large dam projects are especially prone 
to this tendency. Together with the WCD report, Patrick McCully's "Silenced 
Rivers" throws light on the inequities and drawbacks of dams which usually 
go unreported. Most often a dam is built, then justified, not vice versa. 
Those that lose out are those most dependent on and responsible for a 
healthy local environment: poorly represented, traditional communities. 
Those that win are transnational corporations, which are brought in for 
construction, financing and consulting. These companies benefit most from 
surplus electricity and suffer least from heightened water costs. After 
large chunks of profit and benefits flow over the border, what's left is a 
dam that typically fails to meet expected benefits and exceeds expected 
costs.

The global anti-dam movement reflects a growing sentiment among many human 
rights and earth rights organizations who have watched this pattern repeat 
itself again and again in the South. Supported by NGOs such as the 
International Rivers Network and by committed political activists such as 
Arundhati Roy in India, local communities in the South are able to further 
strengthen their fight.

HOW MANY MILES MUST WE MARCH?

Twelve years after a handful of villagers strapped themselves to the rivers’ 
rocks, the protestor’s resolve has remained undeterred. Pak Mun villagers 
have joined forces with other dispossessed of Thailand to create the 
Assembly of the Poor, a large people’s organization that has limited but 
undeniable influence in national politics. They have organized a 2,000-mile 
protest march and raised more than ten protest villages throughout the 
nation including one in front of Bangkok’s Government House. In 2001 they 
were successful in lobbying the government to open the eight sluice gates of 
the dam in order to perform studies on the natural river ecology and the 
communities it supports. Released last month, this study notes the social 
and ecological damage far outweighs the benefits from electricity. Moreover, 
it illustrates the communities’ and ecosystem’s regenerative ability. 
Regardless, the Thai government is threatening to once again ignore the 
plight of villagers and reasoning of academics. Surely, as long as 
Thailand's powerful continue to take their cues from Western political, 
economic and corporate paradigms, the villagers’ fight to stay afloat will 
still remain.

Joe Rupp is a student at the U of I majoring in Agriculture and Consumer 
Economics with a focus on International Trade, Policy and Development. This 
past year he spent over seven months in Thailand, first as a student and 
then as an informal correspondent between the study abroad program, the 
villagers of Pak Mun and several local and international NGOs. Joe says the 
experience really lit a fire inside him: “Thailand not only exposed me to a 
different way of life, culturally, economically and politically, it also 
clearly showed me the connection between them and us, the United States and 
the rest of the world. You can't understand that and not want to do 
anything.”

For use by dryerase-members. Please send an email to 
imc-print at urbana.indymedia.org when reprinted.

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