Ripple Effects:
Thailand

The Pak Mun Dam: From ripples to waves

Of the dams examined in the WCD's Case Studies, Pak Mun dam in Thailand was the youngest. Construction only began in 1991. The impacts were only just beginning to emerge. As a WCD study team, comprised of leading Thai professionals, began work, tensions on both sides grew hotter by the day.

The team could anticipate controversy over the dam, but it could not know how its assessment of costs and benefits might, for better or worse, influence decisions over the development and operation of that dam itself.

It would find out soon enough.

As the study began unresolved compensation issues had already lead to an increase in political tensions. The WCD case study process sought to understand dams by looking at the whole picture, not one side or another.

Traditional fishermen from the riverine communities of the Mun River

As an integral part of the methodology WCD planned two consultation meetings. These meetings were intended to ensure that the views of different interest groups would be considered by the study team, and provided opportunities for comments and input at critical stages of the case study.

From start to finish the case study programme was clear: WCD did not take sides for or against dams; it would not seek to adjudicate; it would simply learn what it could from the history of each project. That is how permission was granted, and how open participation was maintained.

In its study of Pak Mun, WCD learned, among other findings, that: Dam impacts displaced 1,700 households of which a large number have been adversely affected due to declining fishing yields, with 6,200 individuals compensated by 1999.

• Despite compensations for lost fisheries, the dam has interfered with fish migration and breeding patterns, the long-term consequences of which are being monitored, but will remain unknown for some time.

• The permanent loss of rapids upstream of the dam, known to be the habitat of some fish species, is ecologically significant.

• Compensation for lost or diminished livelihood from fishery, resettlement and environmental impact mitigation, estimated at Bt 231.6 million, grew to more than Bt 1 billion.

WCD Commissioners Patkar, Blackmore and Henderson, after attending the second stakeholder

Fish ladder, Pak Mun Dam

meeting, cautioned that the report was prepared only as part of the WCD's information-gathering activity. Nevertheless, and to the WCD's frustration, some findings leaked to the press and were widely reported as the Commissioners' conclusion.

Meanwhile, protests, demonstrations and negotiations led to an independent government review of the dams and issues of conflict in June 2000. The next month the Thai government agreed to open all Pak Mun dam spillways for four months a year to allow for environmental recovery, fish migration and spawning.

Ripple effects move quickly; before it could finish the draft study, the WCD had found itself part of the very experiment it was studying.