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It doesn't hurt Egat to be polite

by Sanitsuda Ekachai, The Bangkok Post - 23 November 2000

The Electricity Generating Authority has given new meaning to politeness. Last week, the World Commission on Dams released a global review on big dams. It exposes the environmental disaster and human suffering involved and encourages the dam industry to rethink the way it does business by heeding the needs of people affected.

Is the message heard in Thailand? Two days after the review's release, Egat sent a group of employees to "politely" ask the villagers affected by the Pak Moon dam in Ubon Ratchathani to leave their protest village at the dam site. Very politely indeed. About 30 villagers were injured, three seriously. And nearly all the makeshift shacks at the protest site were reduced to ashes.

Of the 125 dams under review, Pak Moon was one of eight selected for a detailed case study by the World Commission on Dams to assess the impact on human development.
The Pak Moon findings echo similar dam experiences across the world. The study shows how a closed decision-making system can cause irreversible environmental destruction and human suffering while the economic returns often cannot be justified.

The commission reveals that the 136-megawatt Pak Moon dam is able to produce only a small fraction of its planned energy output. The study also attributes business inefficiency and, more importantly, the subsequent ecological and human disasters to flawed research and top-down decisions. It's the same dam story everywhere. About 40-80 million people have been displaced by 45,000 large dams worldwide. Efforts to counter the impact on the ecosystem have met with limited success. Mitigation, compensation or resettlement programmes are often inadequate. Meanwhile, a large number of dams fall short of their targets.

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