Fiddles and fishes around Pak Mun dam

29 January 2000

Around the world, dams excite controversy. The World Commission on Dams is an independent body set up by the World Bank and NGOs to review how effective dams are. One of its case studies is Pak Mun dam in Ubon Ratchathani. The hearings are this week. The background studies focus on two questions. Was the dam worth building? What did it do to the Mun river’s fish?

On the first issue, the conclusion seems crystal clear. The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) concludes that the decision to build the dam "does no one credit". That’s very polite language. What they mean is: everyone fiddled the figures.

On a straightforward assessment, the project never made economic sense. So the electricity authority (EGAT) argued: let’s compare this hydro-electricity project against an alternative gas-fired generator and see which one is cheaper. Then they compared a 75-megawatt dam against a 150-megawatt gas-based generator—an apple against a much bigger pear. Surprise, the dam was cheaper.

The Cabinet gave approval in 1990. Then EGAT increased the project cost by 70 percent. The National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) was entrusted to check the dam was still worthwhile. EGAT threw in some extra irrigation and fishery benefits which were completely imaginary. The NESDB waved it through.

After completion, the World Bank reviewed the cost-benefit again. For some reason it changed one of the key figures (opportunity cost of capital) from 12 to 10 percent. That changed the appraisal from marginal to okay.

Decharut Sukkumnoed takes this investigation a bit further. Is the electricity produced by Pak Mun a good deal? His tentative answer is that Pak Mun power costs nearly twice EGAT’s average. But does Pak Mun help to make the northeast more self-reliant by reducing power bought from elsewhere? EGAT claims it does not collect the figures of peak output needed for this calculation. That is odd given this security angle was a major justification for the dam. Decharut does a work-around. At the critical low point in the dry season, Pak Mun may reduce the region’s power deficit by as little as 2 percent.

On the dam’s feasibility, the conclusion seems clear. But about fishing, everything is very muddy.

EGAT claimed the dam would increase the fish catch, because the lake behind the dam could be stocked. Environmentalists have claimed that fishing has been devastated because the dam has flooded rapids where fish breed, and blocked migration patterns. Five thousand people, including fishermen, are still camped at the dam-site demanding compensation.

Sansanee Choowaew plots the results of studies since 1990, including a recent survey of her own. They seem to show that the catch has dwindled to about one fifth. Detcharut asked villagers on the Mun and Songkhram rivers to compare their income from fishing in 1990 and in 1998. On the Songkhram, the catch is down a little. On the Mun, down a lot—again to about a fifth. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti talks to a lot of those still living around the dam. They complain bitterly about the lack of fish.

A Mahidol University environmentalist team puts this in a little more perspective. There are many reasons why fishing on the Mun may be in decline. The water discharged from the big dams upstream (Ubonrat, Chulabhorn) is already foul because poor dam design results in awful chemistry in the reservoirs. Agro-chemicals and urban discharges make it worse. The fish have lots of reasons to go elsewhere.

But still this team believes the Pak Mun dam has contributed to decline. The dam has flooded two famous stretches of rapids (Saphue and Tana) which are vital for breeding. But that’s only part of the story. A Khon Kaen University team boated up the river and found not just two flooded rapids, but fifty-one.

The Mahidol team also reviews EGAT’s claims about fish culture behind the dam. EGAT based its projections of an increased catch on evidence from reservoirs at standard barrage dams. But fish culture does not work well in lakes behind run-of-the-river dams like Pak Mun. Since 1995 EGAT’s expenditure on stocking has been almost as high as the revenue from the fish catch. Stocking may be "worse than throwing money in the water".

So far, so clear. But TDRI has looked into data on village incomes collected by the National Rural Development Committee (NDRC). Since the dam was built, according to this data, the income from fishing has not dwindled, but vastly increased. In some places, it has multiplied six times. As a result, the Pak Mun area is prospering more than adjacent localities.

How are the conclusions so different? Are the environmentalists so blindly anti-dam that they are fiddling the figures just as badly as EGAT and the World Bank did? Or could there be a problem with TDRI’s village data? These figures are collected by the village headmen. During the Pak Mun controversy, the headmen were cultivated by EGAT and were strongly pro-dam. Could it be that TDRI does not want to be seen siding with "the mob"?

The conclusion on the feasibility seems clear. On any honest, transparent estimation, this dam should not have been built. But that raises a bigger question. Why was everyone so concerned to fiddle the figures to make sure it was built? Here we are still in the mud.

The conclusion on the fish is muddy. But perhaps the differing data point to something very clear. We don’t really know whether the fish increased or decreased because nobody made a proper survey before the dam was built. The dam-builders fiddled the figures, and simply forgot the fish.

The subsequent fight between fishermen and dam-builders was one of the nastiest stories of the 1990s. The World Commission on Dams should be an opportunity to put such stories in the past. The WCD aims "to develop internationally-accepted standards, guidelines and criteria" for assessing such projects in future.

Such standards should abolish the dam-builders’ careless attitude towards costs and environment. But there is also a problem over the process of decision-making on such projects. Some dam-builders still believe that natural resources are national resources which national institutions (like EGAT) can dispose of at will. The 1997 constitution enshrines a very different view. Local communities are now much fiercer in the defence of resources on which they depend. There is now a desperate need to develop a proper process which will result in better decisions respecting national needs, local needs, and environmental realities. We need such a process to save money, save fishermen, and save fish.