by Piyaporn Hawiset
27 August 2001
Thai government faces call to review the social and economic impacts of large dams
Academics and non-governmental organisations sceptical about the benefits of dams called on Thailand's government to reconsider whether they actually produce positive results. Chainarong Sretthachau, director of the NGO Southeast East Asia Rivers Network (SEARIN), said the government would be asked to appoint an independent body to review the social and economic impact of dams, and their safety. The latter component was expected to create considerable opportunities for international dam safety consultants and experts even as it has becoming increasingly obvious that large dams often create more negative impacts than benefits.
More than 40 large dams, each costing more than a billion baht (US$1 = 44 Baht), have been built in Thailand between 1970 and 2000. This was in addition to thousands of weirs and small dams, Mr Chainarong said.
A national council should be set up to approve new projects instead of leaving the decision to state agencies which wanted to build them just for the sake of building dams, he said. Dam projects in Thailand typically are project-driven exercises, with the proponents only interest in the money they can steal from design and construction budgets and similar corrupt activities associated with dam projects. Therefore, the benefit of such projects in sociological and economic terms has thus far for the most part been minimal and in a number of cases has provided negative benefits.
Thavivongse Sriburi, associate professor of hydrological engineering at Chulalongkorn University, said many dam projects were initiated by state agencies solely to get budgetary support from the state and to show they were doing something. He said the officials connected to the projects then spent an inordinated amount of time and resources conniving with politicians and contractors on how to divert funds and how to build the project as cheaply as possible while maximising the budget.
The country's irrigation system, built at a cost of more than 50 billion baht of taxpayer money, could deliver less than 50% of its real capacity, the professor said. Academics and NGOs argued many of Thailand's large dams have a life span of only another 10 years or so because sedimentation of the reservoirs was not considered properly, or because of massive illegal deforestation in the reservoir's watershed. They felt that the country must prepare to cope with this.
The academics and NGOS began campaigning for the decommissioning of some of the dams that they saw as having a severe negative, sociological, economic and environmental impact. These have included the Pak Mun, Rasi Salai and Bang Pakong dams. Operations at the three dams were temporarily suspended without any severe impact on local communities, they said, and in some cases with strong beneficial impacts, suggesting that the construction of these dams should never have been approved in the first place.
If the Pak Mun dam was permanently decommissioned, the production cost of electricity would rise by only 0.6 satang per kilowatt/hour (1 satang = 1/100 baht), according to SEARIN information.
Prof S Parasuraman, formerly of the World Commission on Dams, an independent agency giving independent reviews on 125 dams worldwide including Pak Mun, said the decision-making process for dams should include local communities which would be directly affected. Normally local communities are excluded because project proponents presume that the views of local people would affect the project status and result in the projects not going ahead.
The WCD had proposed guidelines that championed pre-evaluation of the real need for dams and assessment of alternatives before making a commitment.
In 1998, the Namibian government adopted an alternative assessment which allowed it to drop a dam project and use natural wetland that delivered equal flood control capacity. The Netherlands, Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Pakistan had taken heed of the WCD's guidelines. These countries had started evaluating alternative options before making a decision to build a dam, Prof Parasuraman said.