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Abstract:
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"In the post World War II era, planners within Thailand's development agencies perceived water resource development as a key strategy toward stimulating modern economic development. Despite more than three decades of planning and the construction of numerous large-, medium- and small-scale water projects intended to increase water availability and improve standards of living, the river ecosystems and human communities of Northeast Thailand are instead experiencing a host of interrelated problems including water shortages, pollution and social conflict centered on water. These problems are readily evident in the Nam Phong river basin.
"Since construction of the Ubolratana Dam in 1966, the Nam Phong river basin has been the focus of intensive planning and management initiatives carried out by an assortment of state agencies in the hopes of stimulating regional economic development. Results have been mixed. Most recently, controversy over environmental degradation erupted after several industries released toxic substances into the river in the early 1990s. Galvanized by these highly publicized incidents, a coalition of state agencies, academics, business leaders and non- governmental organizations (NGOs) have spearheaded efforts to develop an effective action plan for management of the river's water quality. The action plan, in effect, calls for cooperative management, or co-management, of the river among a set of stakeholders with diverse interests toward and interactions with the biophysical processes and structures that comprise the river basin.
"Specific details relating to implementation of the action plan and creation of institutional mechanisms to manage the river basin remain to be worked out. Local village organizations in coordination with a variety of local and regional NGOs have promoted an alternative set of actions based on local control over resources and, in the future, a network of village organizations responsible for stewardship of the Nam Phong. Both state officials within specific agencies (resource managers, water planners) and NGOs are in effect advocating that the Nam Phong river basin be perceived as a common pool resource and that this conception will lead to ecological sustainable resource use and meet livelihood needs.
"Several questions emerge from this apparent move towards co-management in the Nam Phong basin. How might administrative and bureaucratic boundaries of multiple agencies be rearranged in order to be compatible with watershed-based resource management? In the absence of clearly designated property rights and in the presence of a rapidly changing socio-ecological context, what are the prospects of instituting a resource management approach founded on co-management ideas? Is it possible to forge an effective co-management regime for a river basin at the scale of Nam Phong? How can the aims of the state with regard to water resource development (e.g., energy for industrialization, irrigation development) be reconciled with the livelihood needs of basin residents (e.g., fisheries, drinking water)?
"In this paper, I explore the prospects for and obstacles to co-management of a medium-scale river basin within a rapidly changing socio-ecological context. Thinking of a river basin on the scale of Nam Phong as a common pool resource has certain conceptual and practical advantages. However, the political and socio-economic obstacles to creating an effective management framework for the basin are substantial. One of the thorniest dilemmas is how to create effective and democratic institutions for managing water resources in a river basin characterized by environmental conflict and within a national (and international) political-economic context that demands ever more rapid resource exploitation."
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