Drought in Thailand sparks water fight

Farmers depending on irrigation unhappy over water management
Nirmal Ghosh Straits Times 11 Mar 11;

BANGKOK: The early onset of seasonal summer drought this year has sparked quarrels between farmers in northern Thailand, again highlighting the critical issue of water management in the region.

Provincial officials this week found themselves besieged by angry farmers who have regularly confronted each other - in some cases at gunpoint - to demand more water from the local canal system.

Reports say 12 northern provinces have been hit by the drought.

Chiang Mai's governor, Mr Panadda Diskul, is scheduled to meet the farmers on Monday to work out a solution to the problem.

'Farmers living in the same district have been fighting over water supply, and in many cases, they have pointed guns at one another,' Mr Jamras Lumma, the leader of a farmers' network in the north, was quoted as saying by The Nation newspaper yesterday.

Roughly half of Thailand's agricultural land is irrigated. The fights typically erupt between farmers living downstream from water sources, when farmers upstream use the bulk of the water.

Parts of Chiang Mai and Nan provinces in the north have been declared 'disaster zones', making them eligible for extra funding for relief measures. The country's fleet of cloud-seeding planes to bring rains began operations over the two provinces last week.

Meanwhile to the east, controversy continues to rage over the Pak Mun Dam - with locals insisting that its sluice gates should be permanently opened for five years, to allow uninterrupted water flow. The gates are currently closed for eight months a year.

Some 1,000 people from the province of Ubon Ratchathani protested outside the prime minister's office in Bangkok earlier this week to press their demand, but left empty-handed when the Cabinet postponed a decision on the issue for 45 days. The Cabinet, which consulted experts, said the issues were too complex for a quick decision on how long the sluice gates should be kept open.

There are fears, for example, that allowing the water to flow freely would result in an overall reduction of water level in the river and associated reservoirs - an argument the protesting locals reject.

Also, government agencies have disagreed on the drought forecast.

The Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department has warned that 5.5 million people in 26 provinces, mostly in the north and north-east, are vulnerable to drought conditions.

The department recently advised farmers in 23 provinces in the basin of the Chao Phraya River to refrain from growing a second crop of rice as a precaution.

But the Irrigation Department has said the climatic La Nina effect will bring rain in March and April. And it said that water level in reservoirs is at around 62 per cent which is normal, and would last through the dry season.

The Pak Mun Dam - commissioned in 1994 and subject of the demands by protesters in Bangkok - has spawned several adverse effects for locals.

Thousands were initially displaced by the dam and the reservoir.

And according to a World Commission on Dams study, the project underperformed in both power generation and irrigation, and triggered a decline in fish catch in the Mun River.

The dam continues to be symbolic of the controversies surrounding water management in the region.

'There is no clear policy,' said Dr Anond Snidvong, director of Sea Start, a climate change research unit and think-tank.

'And policy alone also won't solve all the problems. We need to put more value on water. Value doesn't mean a cost, it is an attitude.'

Experts have been urging the Thai government to step up rain and flood-water harvesting. Parts of northern and central Thailand were inundated with flood water in October and November last year, killing more than 230 people.

The government is currently reviewing its water policy.