By Prangtip Daorueng*

CHACHOENGSAO, Thailand, Nov 16 (IPS/AMIC) - "The river has changed. It has become narrow and unusually dry in the dry season," says fisherman Pohnpaisarn Wimonrat. "There is no longer enough fish for a small fisherman like me to catch."

It has been almost three years since Pohnpaisarn abandoned fishing, and started bringing tourists around in boats.

Every weekend, Pohnpaisarn waits for tourists at the pier next to the main temple in this central Thai province. Thais travel from other provinces to come and worship here. As tourists stroll along the Bang Pakong River, they often hop on boats like his for a two-hour cruise upstream.

The 35-year-old "captain", as he is called here, has lived by the river all his life. His home district of Bang Pakong, where the Bang Pakong river discharges into the Gulf of Thailand, has for generations been blessed with rich water and plant species.

But Pohnpaisarn says these rich resources are slowly fading away, leaving the locals with less than enough to live on.

The Bang Pakong River is connected upstream to the Prachin Buri River Basin, stemming from three rivers in the east of Thailand. From there, the Prachin Buri River combines with the Nakhon Nayok River as the Bang Pakong River, before flowing out into the Gulf of Thailand. The whole river system covers four provinces, and has a large drainage area of 18,670 sq km.

For decades, the Bang Pakong River Basin has been home to a wide range of communities in agro-forestry, agriculture, and fisheries. The fertile land along the river bank is one of Thailand’s rich production areas for several species of plants, including wet and dry season rice, annual and perennial crops, home gardens and mixed orchards.

People who live by the Gulf of Thailand downstream have traditionally relied on the fishery resources of freshwater and marine catch as sources of income.

But the locals say the river has gone through many changes in the past decade, after industries began to creep into Bang Pakong and nearby areas. Heavy water use brought by modern agricultural and marine activities and problems around the water management structure have added to the problems. All this leads to alarming river water pollution, riverbank erosion, soil degradation and devastating floods.

"I still remember how easy it was to catch big prawns in the river when I was a child," recalls high school teacher Piya Pinchanchaiyouth. "Now the river is so polluted that it kills many of them."

Piya points out that disputes often erupts among local farmers as a result of competing uses of the river water. Traditional rice growing and small fisheries have slowly been replaced by private agricultural enterprises. Many farmers and fishermen have turned to setting up pig farms, shrimp and fish farms to earn more income. Conflicting water treatment and chemical use by farmers cause serious disagreements.

Piya cites as an example conflicts between rice farmers, who use freshwater for their rice fields, and shrimp farmers, who work on brackish water. "Many rice farmers turned their land into shrimp farms located next to rice fields," he says. "When brackish water from shrimp farms leak to rice fields next door, it damages the rice. Pesticides used in most rice fields also kill the shrimp," he points out.

But such problems are manageable if solved through community negotiations. According to Pohnpaisarn, fishing communities in the Bang Pakong area came up with a system to solve pollution caused by its members.

"Farmers along the riverbank do the same thing," says Piya. "Community members tell each other to avoid damaging the river."

Dialogue is the key to river management, according to Sakda Thongprasit, member of the Bang Pakong River Basin Subcommittee supported by the Department of Water Resources. In 2004, the subcommittee received 50,000 U.S. dollars from the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) to start a process called ‘The Bang Pakong Dialogue Initiative’.

"It’s a process in which water users in the community get together to find a solution for existing conflicts," says Sakda.

According to him, the process involves all stakeholders such as farmers, civil society groups, government officials and companies. Sakda says a dialogue between communities and Toyota Motors in 2006 over a new Toyota plant in Bang Pakong is an example of such work.

"We invited Toyota people to talk to 600 villagers from the area where the plant was being built. Villagers raised several questions to them to make sure that the plant would not destroy the river. It is our way to tell businesses that they need to show responsibility in protecting the environment. It went well, and we feel that so far they keep their promises," Sakda explains.

At the same time, locals like Sakda and Piya are worried about ecological damage caused by factors outside their community.

Sakda points to a dam system upstream as a source of erosion in more than 100 spots along the river bank. Pohnpaisarn, who spends hours aboard his boat each day, adds: "I have seen a lot of land erosion in the past two or three years. The river has become narrower. It’s very dry in the dry season, and the tide goes much higher in the rainy season, making it more difficult to ride a boat."

Busabong Chaokanha from the non-government organisation Development Activities of Citizens Forum based in Prachin Buri province upstream, agrees that the upstream dam is a problem. According to her, natural freshwater is held in three major dams before flowing downstream into Bang Pakong.

A dam was also built upstream for the purpose of blocking seawater from entering agricultural areas nearby.

"The dam’s blocking of seawater has had a severe impact on the Bang Pakong river downstream," Busabong says. "The tidal influence from the Gulf of Thailand to Bang Pakong has become extreme, leading to land erosion along the river bank. Farmers also run out of freshwater in the dry season. Pollution is also a big problem because the waste from pig farms along the river bank gets stuck in the dry river," she explains.

The problem does not end there. Sakda says the freshwater shortage has become serious in Bang Pakong area as water is sucked away by industries upstream. Freshwater from the Bang Pakong River is also fed by a private company through a pipeline to Chonburi province nearby, leading to complaints of shortages in the Bang Pakong area in the dry season.

In 2005, Eastern Water Resources Development and Management Public Co Ltd, known as East Water, received government approval for a water pipeline project between Bang Pakong and Chonburi provinces. In a 2006 report, the company announced a medium-term plan to supply 50 million cubic metres of water from Bang Pakong to Chonburi.

Sakda says locals remain unclear about the amount of water to be taken from them. While the Bang Pakong Dialogue Initiative is good, "we do not have authority to ask for information from private companies despite the fact that it is very important for people’s well-being," he says.

"We know that the company pays the government for a water management concession while earning money from its sale of water to Chonburi province," explains Piya, the teacher. "What do Bang Pakong people gain from this despite the fact that it is our river?"

But Pohnpaisarn believes that his river can still survive, if action is taken now. At the end of the year, when Irawaddy dolphins migrate to the Gulf of Thailand, he happily brings tourists on his boat to try to catch sight of them.

"They still come here and it means the Gulf (of Thailand) is still in good condition," he says proudly. "I hope they continue to come.")

(*This story is being distributed by IPS Asia-Pacific under a communication agreement with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, in Singapore, which produced it.)

(END/2007)