Posted on Friday, November 29, 2002

After everything is added up,
Thai dam not worth the cost

By Jose M. Galang Jr., Editor in Chief

Last of a series

UBON RATCHATANI, North­east Thailand — If all the benefits and costs of putting up Pak Mun Dam were adequately assessed, it is “unlike­ly that the project would have been built in the current context.”

This was one of the key findings reported in a study conducted by several teams of experts and researchers for the World Commission on Dams, an independent body formed in 1997 at the initiative of the World Bank and IUCN-The World Conservation Union to probe into controversial issues associated with the construction of large dams around the world.

In its November 2000 final report, the commission summed up va­rious viewpoints on dams as a deve­lopment option. Among other is­sues, the report noted: “The reported returns on the investments made in dams have increasingly been ques­tioned. The notion of costs ver­sus benefits emerged as a public concern, given growing expe­rience and know­ledge about the perfor­mance and conse­quences of dams.”

The commission’s report probed into eight large dams, including the Pak Mun Dam in Thailand. Summarizing its major findings on the dam’s impact on people’s livelihood, the report said:

“In the post-dam period fishing communities located upstream and downstream of the dam reported 50-percent to 100-percent decline in fish catch and the disappearance of many fish species. The number of households dependent on fisheries in the upstream region declined from 95.6 percent to 66.7 percent.

“Villagers who were dependent on fisheries for cash income have found no viable means of livelihood since the dam was built, despite efforts to provide training opportunities. As their food security and incomes destabilized they sought various ways to cope including out migration to urban areas in search of wage labor.”

On a global perspective, the report suggested it was time to “bring the debate home.” The controversy over dams, it said, has appropriately been raised to the international stage.

“A dissipation of that controversy, however, should allow decisions about fundamental water and energy development choices to be made at the most appropriate level — one where the voices of powerful international players and interests do not drown out the many voices of those with a direct stake in the decisions.”

In the case of Pak Mun Dam, it is obvious that the opinions of communities in the affected areas never really figured in the planning process. “Representatives from each of our 56 villages (along the Moon River) have gathered at the dam to protest,” Sunthorn Homsin of Kor Tai village in Ubon Ratchatani’s Phiboun Mangsahan district recalled before a group of visitors recently.

“But the government did not understand what participatory government is,” he told the group hosted by Bangkok-based civil society groups Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance and Project for Ecological Recovery.

In the planning process, Harnnarong Yawalerd of Wildlife Fund Thailand recalled in an earlier forum organized by the two NGOs, the government relied more on foreign groups that extended financing for the Pak Mun project.

It all started, he said, with technical studies conducted by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the old Japanese aid-giving entity. “Under a loan agreement worth 300 million yen, a technical staff from Japan came. The team was composed of Japanese engineers,” Harnnarong said.

Because the area is located in a mountainous site, Harnnarong said, the Japanese study team looked at it from a previous experience. The Japanese construction group Marubeni had previously built in Japan a dam that could prop up water in a mountainous area, he said.

“The Japanese study team later recommended a water project worth 45 billion baht. The study prescribed how much equipment (for the Thailand project) can be brought from Japan,” he said.

“What happened was we were simply asked to copy models from other countries,” he said, noting that inputs from the local residents were never solicited.

Records show that studies on the feasibility of tapping the Pak Mun for hydroelectric power generation have been conducted by various groups since 1967 when the French consulting firm SOFRELEC was commissioned by Thailand’s National Energy Authority for that purpose.

The French group reported in February 1970 that “hydroelectric developments on the Pak Mun river are not viable.”

Still, the state-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) produced a study in 1978 that came up with a recommendation for a power plant that would produce up to 376 gigawatthours a year from a dam that could hold water up to a level of 108 meters above mean sea level. The project proposal did not include a provision for irrigation usage of the dam water.

In September 1980, SOFRELEC updated its earlier report and concluded that “the Pak Mun dam is technically and economically feasible.” The following year, a formal proposal for a Pak Mun dam was included in the government’s Power Development Plan — the dam was to start production in 1988 at 462 GWh a year.

One of the major decisions made on the project in later years was the change in its location about one and a half kilometers further upstream. The move came after studies showed a large number of households would be adversely affected by the construction of the dam — the move also reduced the budget for compensating affected communities.

Total costs of the Pak Mun project, an assessment by experts commissioned by WCD, increased by 90 percent between the 1988 EGAT estimates and the actual costs in 1999. At constant 1998 prices, however, total project costs by 1999 represented an increase of 10 percent (not including taxes and interests) over original estimates.

Resettlement costs, on the other hand, rose by 394.77 million baht in EGAT’s estimates in 1988 to 1,113.1 million baht by 1999, or an increase of 182 percent in real terms.

The decision to change the dam’s location, it was recently found out, was not followed up by a review of the project’s environmental impact. As such there was a long list of “unexpected impacts” in the analysis presented by the WCD team in its final report.

Compared to an originally estimated 241 households, the actual number of households displaced by the Pak Mun Dam project had risen to 1,700 by 1999. The larger than expected decline in fishing yields also increased the number of households that had to be given compensation to 6,202. Compensation for the permanent loss of fisheries has not been given, the WCD report said.

On a hill overlooking Pak Mun Dam is a settlement of families that have sustained a protest movement against the EGAT project. The campers call their settlement Ban Mea Moon Mau Yoon (Long Live Moon River Village).

Mr. Tawee, one of the elders in the village, said the community was set up in March 1999 by people from five sub-districts along the Moon River “to present our problems to the government.”

“The people along the river have lost their culture, their social lives — and their livelihood, too,” he lamented.

“We have stopped fishing,” he said. “The people depend on the fish originally found in the river. There are no more now. Even the fingerlings supplied by EGAT have died.”

The WCD study noted that in contrast to the original expectations of EGAT that about seven percent of the project benefits would be to the fisheries sector in the area, “migratory and rapids-dependent species were affected seriously as their migration route is blocked … The decline in and disappearance of several migrating and rapids-dependent fish species are directly attributable to the Pak Mun Dam.”

EGAT has belatedly recognized that and during the final stages of the dam’s construction a “fish ladder” was attached to the structure. Constructed at a cost of two million baht, the fish ladder was supposed to provide passage for migratory fishes.

The fish pass has not been effective — one resident said in a light vein that “maybe the fish were not intelligent enough to learn how to climb the ladder” — and EGAT has discontinued monitoring its usage.

Two years ago EGAT decided to open the gates of the dam to conduct a study on the fish supply. “Some of the fish came back, and we were able to go fishing again,” Tawee said, “but it was only temporary.”

“For the past eight years (of the dam’s operation),” Tawee said, “all of Ubon’s waste goes to the river. People don’t go to the river now. Before they would swim, catch fish, enjoy the river. Today even the animals are not allowed to go near the river.”

At the Kor Tai village, Chana Kicham said the operation of the dam has divided families in his community. “My children cannot fish so they now have to look for jobs in Bangkok. One of my sons is a taxi driver in Bangkok. He earns 5,000 to 6,000 baht a month.”

Families in Kor Tai used to hold festive get-togethers on the banks of Moon River. But because the young ones now have to work in Bangkok, “sometimes we have our family reunions in the protest rallies which we all attend in Bangkok,” Chana said.

Ban Mea Moon Mau Yoon’s Tawee said: “If we get back our river, the people will come back. Our community will be whole again. Our fishing culture will return, and we can transfer our fishing know-how to the young.”

At the Ubon Ratchatani University, academics who have had intimate knowledge of the Pak Mun Dam’s impact pose this question: “What is the value of a higher Gross Domestic Product when it results in the devastation of the environment and dislocation of communities? Why can’t the government look at the state of Gross Domestic Happiness instead?”

Mr. Galang was in Thailand as a senior fellow under The Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship Programme. He is looking at globalization issues in Southeast Asian economies.

Part 1 | Part 2