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Dams, the environment, Thailand, and Thai perceptions

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Martin Venzky-stalling

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Jun 14, 1993, 6:34:34 PM6/14/93
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Elite view on nature in a changing Thailand - by Philip Stott

--- Garuda eat naga and naga eat ordinary frogs and very small

green frogs. The ordinary frogs and the small green frogs eat

insects and caterpillars. Some animals eat other animals that

are smaller than they. --- (From: Traibhumikatha, ca. 1345

A.D. by (?) Phya Lithai)

A remarkable decision

On 18 March 1988, the thirty-nine member inquiry team

chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Thienchai Sirisamphan,

which had been asked to review the environmental

implication of the proposed Nam Choan dam, made a

remarkable decision (Paisal 1988: 24). The inquiry had

originally been established to explore remedial measure to

contain the impact of the dam development on forestry,

wildlife, geology, and archeology,; instead, the inquiry

unanimously requested the postponement of the project, and

there is much to suggest that the Nam Choan dam will never

now flood the protected forests of the Thung Yai Wildlife

Sanctuary, although nothing in Thai environmental politics

can ever be guaranteed. Recent attempts by a leading and

much respected environmentalist, Seub Nakhasathien, to

consolidate the decision by achieving UNESCO World

Heritage status for the Thung Yai-Huay Kha Khaeg complex

(Seub and Stewart-Cox 1990) have not yet borne fruit, and,

sadly, events have been somewhat overtaken by the tragic

suicide of Seub while at Huay Kha Khaeng. Such are the deep

depressions of the environmental debate in present-day

Thailand.

Such a volte face was unexpected, with certain prominent

member of the inquiry team changing their minds at the very

last moment; the decisions were clearly affected by short-term

political expediency. I is the purpose of this present paper,

however, to analyse the wider trends in Thai society that have

helped to create a climate in which such a decision was

possible at all, a decision which, for the moment at least,

raised the uncosted benefits of "externalities" like wildlife and

wilderness above the hard economic realities of a newly

industrialising country.

The Upper Khwae Yai Project, now forever know as the Nam

Choan dam, had already been halted once in 1982 by a

caretaker Cabinet, which left the decision to the next

government. The dam was to be part of a much larger project

focussed on the Khwae Yai river system for which funds had

been first obtained in 1966. Two dams, the Srinakharind, built

in 1978, and the Tha Thungna or Lower Khwae Yai dam,

finished in 1981, are already on stream; Nam Choan was to

have been the third in the Electricity Generating Authority of

Thailand's (EGAT's) trio of hydropowers producers,

generating 576 MW, or 9% of installed capacity. The

projected cost was US$406 million. Pressure for the dam was

revived in 1986, and EGAT marshalled great political,

economic and scientific resources to achieve its acceptance.

Construction of the dam seemed inevitable.

Yet, in the end, EGAT's resolve was unexpectedly frustrated

by a passionate, if somewhat disparate group of

conservationists, who ranged from academics and students,

though The Nation newspaper, and other mass media, to

international pressure groups and concerned farangs,

including HRH the Prince of Wales and HRH Prince

Bernhard (Stewart-Cox 1987; 1988: 18). More particularly,

however, there was strong local opposition to the dam

development in Kanchanaburi itself, where the existence of

two geological fault lines and the occurrence of a major

earthquake in 1983 (5.9 on the Richter Scale) raised the

fearful spectre of death by dam burst. Moreover, Kukrit

Pramoj, warned sagely that popular concern on this issue

could topple the whole government. At the last throw, Prime

Minister Prem Tinsulanonda and his close advisers clearly

agreed.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

This is not the place to rehearse the arguments for or against

the dam, although it is worth emphasising that, for both sides,

the stakes were high, and that the combined contiguous

habitats of the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the

Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuary, the Kroeng Kavia Non-

Hunting Area, and the undisturbed forest across the border in

Burma possibly comprise the finest remaining conservation

area in the whole of mainland Asia. Moreover, the sheer

diversity of habitats, which range from tropical semi-

evergreen rain forest, though monsoon forest, bamboo forest,

and savanna forest, to many waterside formations, guarantees

a rich wildlife, with rare endemics ad relict species surviving

in a last stronghold. The dam would have breached the

integrity of this "island of forest" in a "sea of uncontrolled

development", and would have inevitably opened up the

region even further to the predations of squatter settlers,

illegal loggers and hunters, and to increasing demands for

more development. The region would have become one of the

last "pioneer" frontiers in Thailand's long history of

extensification, which has already witnessed, for example, the

demise of the dense forests that once clothed the Khorat

Plateau escarpment described in the nineteenth century Nirat

No'ngkhai. Nevertheless, most observers, including

ecologically-sensitive students at the School of Oriental and

African Studies in the University of London, were pessimistic

about the outcome of the inquiry. In a role-playing session

held in November 1987, when the students acted out the

debate over the dam, EGAT clearly won the day. In reality,

the predatory chain was reversed, and the "very small green

frogs" turned and gobbled up the naga".

Concern over the environment has been present in Thailand

well over two decades. The student uprising of 14 October

1973, was partly triggered by a hunting scandal. But the

decision on the Nam Choan dam is of a different order of

maturity, and is one which could be matched very rarely in

other developing countries in the tropics. The elite of the Thai

mu'ang, namely the government, many lesser ranks of the

wider Royal family, the educated, especially those who have

studied abroad, the press and a group of concerned farang,

fought out the battle, and eventually a decisive number chose

for the pa thu'an, the wild, untamed, and unsocialised forest,

thus integrating the pa within the Thai state, the mu'ang, in a

very deep sense.

In this paper, I shall, in general, be avoiding the use of a

common word for `nature', "Thammachat", because I am here

concerned more with "pa thu'an", the uncivilised forest lands

traditionally at the edge of Thai 'civilised' space. Thammachat

is a word too refined and wide in its meaning, embracing as it

does all natural phenomena, such as rain, wind and sun, and

even natural human behaviour. It is also rather formal and

poetic. Thu'an, in contrast, is a powerful word, meaning wild,

illicit, and it is not simply a reduplication of the word "pa".

The two together emphasise the barbaric character of the

forest, which lies outside the civilised and lawful lands; such

regions are wild, uncontrollable, and full of 'energy'.

Interestingly, the word, thu'an, is also used for illicit opium,

bottle of whisky (or 'moonshine'), for charlatans, and quack

doctors. Pa likewise means more than simply forest or wood,

having the sense of 'the wilds' or more wilderness, savage and

barbarous. Pa thu'an, unlike Thammachat, thus stands in

direct contrast with mu'ang. It is arguable that the changes I

describe in this paper mean that for the urban elite of Thailand

pa thu'an has come closer to Thammachat.

I believe that thus subtle change represent a remarkable new

view of cosmology of power in the Thai mu'ang. It is more

than one developing country's learning at last to live with the

imperative of conservation and sound land management. The

pa thu'an is now directly 'under the merit' of the mu'ang, and,

in a sense, as I shall attempt to show, the essentials of Forest

Buddhism have become accepted in the urban heart of the

state (cf. Supaphan Na Bangchang 1990).

*****TEXT SKIPPED - AVAILABLE ON REQUEST*****

ELITE VIEWS OF NATURE

The elite of the mu'ang has thus changed, or is slowly altering,

its view of Nature. Of course, forest, flowers, fruit and

animals have always had a sanitized and stylized place in the

poetry, drama and art at the court, as evidenced in the nirat

genre of poetry. Now, however, the earthy pa is no longer

outside the interest, the merit of the mu'ang. Indeed, many

would argue that it must form an essential land element in any

sensible organised and managed mu'ang., thus helping to

maintain, if I may coin the terms, 'Right Climate', 'Right

Earth', 'Right Water', and harmony between people and the

land. At any scale of Tambiah's 'galactic polity', the argument

seems to hold good (Tambiah 1970). At the village level, the

new view demands the development of agro-forestry, forest

villages, social forestry, access to fuel wood and local forest

products, as well as employment and a benign environment in

which to live. At the regional level, the main concern is

watershed management to maintain humid microclimates,

prevent soil erosion and thus further downstream siltation, to

control flood and drought, and to sustain a wide regional

resource base. At the national, Thai mu'ang level, the concern

is to organise local and regional programmes in a balanced

fashion, to set aside 'core' forest for long-term genetic

resource conservation, for research, for educational purposes,

for recreation, for timber needs, and to present a mature

political and 'green' face t the international community. Above

all, it is recognised that the goods of the mu'ang is ultimately

lined with the wise inclusion of pa as part of the civilized and

socialized state.

But how has this new view come about in Thailand? I believe

that a whole range of factors have inexorably, but at different

time-scles, worked on the thoughtful elements of society.

First, there is the recognition of the sheer rate of destruction

of the forest habitat, which has at last hit home to even the

most unobservant of travellers. In 1960 about 50 per cent of

Thailand remained under some sort of forest cover. In 1988,

although official Government statistics still claim 30 per cent

(Dhira and Suthawan 1987) the real figure is closer to 15 per

cent, with much land legally classified as 'forest' hardly

carrying a tree. In 1982, FAO/UNEP estimated the rate of

forest loss as 3.15 per cent in Thailand (Allen and Barnes

1985), one of the worst rates in the whole world.

Secondly, there has been the steady infiltration of the basic

scientific principles of ecology, which are today widely taught

at all educational levels, and particularly to young children.

Book shops in Bangkok now carry a considerable and

colourful array of 'Nature books' and readers. All carry the

message of the need to look after the wild places of the world.

Some of these are inevitably scientifically poor; others simply

ape farang or Japanese texts; yet others are written for Thais

by Thais about Thai natural history and problems. Although

perhaps underplayed in this paper, it is impossibly to deny the

importance of Western scientific thought dating from at least

the reign of Rama IV, in helping to create elite views of

Nature and ecology. Likewise, the adoption of Rousseauesque

Western romanticism, which become apparent in the early

portraits and fine arts of the Bangkok period, had already

begun to soften and civilise the Thai concept of the pa. The

conservation ideal is thus a Western import, but the move

described in this paper can be seen as a vital element in the

creation of a Thai environmental discourse.

Thirdly, many young people have studied abroad; which is an

elite trend which began early in the twentieth century with

princes and the offspring of high officials. Many of these

western educated students are now very thoughtful about

Thailand and its image in the world, and many of them have

witnessed at first hand elements of conservation in other

countries where they have studied.

Fourthly, there has been the growth of an urban middle class

who increasingly view pa as a place to visit for recreation and

leisure.

Finally, there is the ease with which some of the principles of

ecology can be grasped by a Buddhist and animist people - as

one of my close colleagues at Kasetsart University, Bangkok,

put it, 'Right Action, the law of cause and effect, and the fact

that the Buddha became "enlightened" partly because of the

wild places of the world, all conspire to make ecology a ready

ethic in a changing Thailand'. As my opening quotation

shows, the concept of the food chain goes back a very long

way in Thai thinking; it is possible to overemphasis the

recentness of Western scientific thought.

The decision on the Nam Choan dam is then the first fruit of

this changing view among the elite. The pa is no longer

outside the mu'ang; it must now exist in its new form as

Thammachat, for the mu'ang and for the people at its urban

heart. In many ways, it is the agricultural countryside (ban

no'k), lying between the pa and the centre, which constitutes

todays backward and uncivilised space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Quoted from: Thai Construction of Knowledge, edited by

Mansas Chitakasem and Andrew Turton, SOAS, 1991, pages

142-154

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