Where a Lake Is Life Itself, Dam Is a Dire Word
The New York Times - April 28, 2003
By SETH MYDANS

OMPONG PHLUK, Cambodia — The old skiff nudged gently against the tree trunks and the boatman ducked his head to avoid low-hanging branches.
Yellow birds hopped and twittered above him; fish swam below. The boatman was making his way through a flooded forest, a strange compromise of nature in which land and water time-share the fertile plains of central Cambodia. It is an intricate ecology of flux as the waters of the country's great
lake rise and fall with the seasons, now favoring the fish, now the flatlands. It is a balance that is threatened now, with plans to dam the river that feeds it, muting its annual rhythm. When the restless lake, the Tonle Sap, breathes in, it expands like a giant lung to more than double its dry-season surface area, submerging farms and forests. When it breathes out, fish course down the river by the millions, herons and whistling cranes cluster around the ponds it leaves behind, and villagers abandon their tall stilt houses to pursue its receding banks to new fishing grounds. At its largest during the midyear monsoon, the lake is 30 feet deep and covers more than 4,500 square miles. When it begins to drain in the fall, it shrinks to less than 1,100 square miles and the water that remains is just waist-high.
In the 5,000 years since it was abandoned by a drying ocean, the lake has given birth to a complex, self-contained world in which rivers, plants, wildlife and human beings sustain each other through the changes. When the lake is full, the so-called black fish fill the flood plains, spawning and feeding. When it empties, these homebodies stay behind, waiting in small ponds for the water to rise again. Some find nests for themselves and their tiny offspring in the hollows of uniquely evolved underwater plants. When the lake empties, it is the migratory white fish — mostly catfish — that choke the rushing waters as they race to spawning grounds in the sea or high up the Mekong River.
It is the Mekong, flowing south from China, that feeds the life cycle of the lake. Roaring with floodwaters during the rainy season, it meets the river — also called Tonle Sap — that drains the lake, just as they both reach the capital, Phnom Penh. The power of the Mekong's current forces the Tonle Sap River to swallow its own water, change direction, and flow back up to fill the lake again. The changeable river, forever retracing its past, is often taken as a
metaphor for Cambodia, a nation that cannot seem to break free of its unhappy history. Around it, though, the world is marching forward. In southern China, ambitious plans are under way to transform the landscape by damming the Mekong and its tributaries. No one can say exactly what will happen then downstream. But the annual floods and the regular rise and fall of the lake here will be affected, threatening its finely tuned environment.
Most of Cambodia's protein comes from the fish of Tonle Sap and more than a million people make their livings directly from the lake. This poverty-ridden nation has little alternative food or employment to offer. Few people here know anything about dams or China, and for now, the seasonal ebb and flow of the great lake and the life around its edges continue as they always have. Shoved northward by the Mekong, the Tonle Sap River pours back into the
lake, bringing with it the young fish of the new season and feeding the migrating birds that return to meet it. It inundates the rice fields and mung bean plots that have given villagers a season of farming and it floods the surrounding forests, driving the birds and monkeys to higher branches. These forests, filled with small white butterflies, are an otherworldly interlude at the heart of the country. As the skiff of the lone fisherman rippled though the quiet water, the trees around it seemed to spring to life. Skittering up and down their trunks and branches was something the Cambodians call water lightning, a reflection off the water of the light that filters through the leaves. Jumping and wriggling like an electric current, the thin bands of light seemed to make the trees dance — strange nervous goblins trapped between the smooth surface and the sheltering canopy. Emerging from the trees, the boatman entered the waterworld of Kompong Phluk, a tiny village at the mouth of the Roulos River, whose waters gave birth to the Khmer empire of Angkor more than 1,000 years ago. There is no sign of that ancient glory in this poor village, where palm-leaf houses rise above the surface on 30-foot stilts, pigs and crocodiles lounge in floating pens and quavering Cambodian melodies ripple from radios across the lake.
Large nets are hung to dry in the sun alongside racks of drying fish. Women in small boats paddle from house to house selling the staples of village life, such things as cooking oil, rice, cigarettes, incense, noodles, candles, chili sauce and sugar. Already the water was beginning to drain from the village. There was something like a scent of renewal in the air, an anticipation of the reappearance of the earth. Under a bright blue sky, villagers were preparing to pack up and follow the shrinking lake as their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Until the lake rose up again beneath it, Kompong Phluk would be a ghost town teetering on crooked stilts.

Laos: Secrets, lies and tree plantations

World Rainforest Movement Bulletin n0 68, March 2003.

Later this year, the Board of the Asian Development Bank will decide whether to fund a project titled "Tree Plantation for Livelihood Improvement" in Laos. A consortium of consultants is currently preparing the project. However, the preparations are taking place without the benefit of an open public discussion. According to Akmal Siddiq, Senior Project Economist at the ADB, "The draft reports produced so far are not ready for public distribution and will only be available after Board approval." If the Board agrees to fund the project, it will be the second plantation project that the ADB has funded in Laos. The ADB's US$11.2 million Industrial Tree Plantation Project started in July 1994, with a target of establishing more than 9,000 hectares of fast-growing tree plantations. According to the ADB's project description, the new project "will build on the successes and lessons learned from the ongoing Industrial Tree Plantation Project".

Last year, Bartlet W. Édes, the ADB's external relations officer, wrote an article about the Bank's involvement in plantations in Laos for the ADB's in-house magazine, ADB Review. In the article, entitled "Back to Trees", Édes wrote that the ADB's project "protects the natural forest, involves local villagers in decision making, and develops a promising new sector in the Lao economy." In fact, the project does none of these things. ADB-funded plantations are replacing forests with monocultures. Villagers are not meaningfully involved in the decisions which cause them to lose their land and forest to eucalyptus plantations. Economically, the plantations are only viable because of subsidies provided by the ADB and the Lao Government. Under Lao Forestry Law, plantations are exempt from land tax, and the company BGA Lao Plantation Forestry, which benefits from cheap ADB loans, pays only 5 per cent income tax. Meanwhile, the Lao Government gave BGA the 50 year land lease for its plantations rent free, in return for a share in the project (see WRM Bulletin 43).

In his article, Édes stated: "Because plantations are all being established on degraded land --not on natural forest areas-- plantation development in the Lao PDR is unlikely to have the adverse environmental consequences associated with establishing plantations witnessed in other Asian countries." The ADB's project documents contradict Édes statement. According to a 1995 report by consulting firm Jaakko Poyry, plantations are to be established on "unstocked forest land". The ADB's consultants define unstocked forest land as "previously forested areas in which the crown density has been reduced to less than 20%" and "abandoned 'hai'" [swidden fields]. This definition allows companies to describe villagers' community forest, swiddens, grazing and common land as "unstocked forest". Bartlet W. Édes notes that the ADB project has established "a policy framework for developing sustainable industrial tree plantations." However, neither the policy framework, nor the policy studies produced for the ADB are publicly available.

In 1999, the ADB funded a study entitled "Current Constraints Affecting State and Private Investments in Industrial Tree Plantations in the Lao PDR" (see WRM Bulletin 52). Snimer Sahni, project officer at the ADB, stated that the document is not available to the public. The ADB's consultants have since produced a "National Strategy for Sustainable Plantation Forestry". Akmal Siddiq of the ADB declined to answer requests for this document. According to Bartlet W. Édes, "Tree-planting firms negotiate with villagers for the use of forestlands. Commons, swiddens, grazing land, and community forests are protected by the villagers themselves, who must give their written consent to any commercial use." Once again, Édes' statement is misleading. Villagers do not have the power or sufficient information about the impacts of eucalyptus plantations to bargain with plantation companies. For example, in company documents, BGA classifies up to 48,000 hectares of the land leased to the company as shifting cultivation, grazing land or degraded forest. This is, in other words, land that is currently used by villagers.

Once villagers realise the problems associated with fast-growing tree plantations, they are reluctant to hand over their land to companies. In early 2001, the sub-district leader of Xiang Khai sub-district in Xaibouli district told independent researchers, "Eucalyptus plantations are causing forest, soil and water resource degradation. I do not want anyone to grow any more eucalyptus trees in my sub-district" (see WRM Bulletin 59). Bartlet W. Édes' most glaring piece of misinformation is his statement, "Herbicides are not used; rather, a biodegradable product called glyphosate is applied to control weeds." Glyphosate is, of course, a herbicide. It is the active ingredient in a range of products manufactured by Monsanto. Monsanto started selling Roundup, its first glyphosate-based herbicide in 1974. Since then annual sales of glyphosate herbicides have soared to around US$1.2 billion. According to the company, "glyphosate herbicides produced by Monsanto are among the world's most widely used herbicides." Monsanto defines its glyphosate products as "broad-spectrum, non-selective herbicides." Put simply, glyphosate herbicides will kill just about anything green with which they come into contact. Glyphosate herbicides are sprayed three times a year between the straight rows of eucalyptus trees in the ADB-funded plantations. The herbicide ensures that nothing grows in the plantations other than trees. Villagers' knowledge and uses of the wide range of plants that grow in the forest are being destroyed as their forests are converted to monoculture.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the ADB is reluctant to encourage an open debate on the impacts of the ADB-funded plantations. The ADB has organised two workshops, which were attended by World Wildlife Fund, World Conservation Society and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). This, according to ADB's Akmal Siddiq, indicates that the project is being prepared with the "active cooperation of and consultation with all the stakeholders". Siddiq declined to answer questions regarding the Bank's previous involvement in promoting monoculture tree plantations in Laos and declined to release any of the project documents. Instead, he stated, "The project feasibility study will be completed by May. Approval from ADB Board is expected by October."

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

Reversing Groundwater Decline

Recent research has demonstrated how modifying existing irrigation schemes can recharge groundwater on a vast scale - improving food security, reducing farmer's vulnerability to drought, and helping to alleviate South Asia's growing water crisis. "As a result of this strategy, declining water tables have been arrested, pumping costs for irrigation have been reduced, and agricultural productivity has been improved," says Dr. Tushaar Shah of the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program - a new initiative to introduce research knowledge into the policy planning process. A 10-year pilot project has transformed an earthen irrigation system into a highly productive groundwater recharge system, simply by switching from providing irrigation during the dry season to providing canal irrigation only during the monsoon. The project - focusing specifically on the Lakhaoti Branch Canal system in Uttar Pradesh - was carried out out by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, and evaluated by researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Roorkee University, the Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI) of Uttar Pradesh, and the State's Irrigation Department. When the monsoon raises river flows, surplus water is diverted through the system to provide farmers with irrigation for wet crops such as rice. Seepage water from the canals and fields recharges the underlying aquifers. That stored water is then pumped back up for a second cropping season post- monsoon. This system ensures farmers are no longer at the mercy of monsoon rains, which sometimes fail to provide enough water when and where it is needed. They are guaranteed sufficient water to irrigate both a monsoon and a post-monsoon crop. There are also benefits for national and state governments. "From a government point of view, one of the most attractive advantages of this approach is that the 'infrastructure' - earthen canals and groundwater aquifers - already exist and can be modified at very low economic and environmental cost, compared to planning and building dams, tanks, or other water storage facilities," concludes Dr. Tushaar Shah The research suggests the system can be replicated in other regions where there are viable aquifers and surplus river flows during the monsoon. Locations where the construction of a dam or reservoir threatens to cause environmental damage or incur huge financial costs would also benefit. Direct benefits of the Uttar Pradesh pilot project:

* 26 per cent increase in average net income pre ha for farmers

*Average depth to groundwater decreased from an average of 12 m below ground. (1988) to an average of 6.5 m (1998).

*Annual pumping cost savings of Rs. 180 million.

*Annual energy savings of 75.6 million kWh.

*15 per cent increase in cropped area for rice.

*Reduction of 50 per cent in water conveyance losses with potential for further improvement.

For more information on the project see 'Innovations in Groundwater Recharge,' issue 1 of the Water Policy Briefing series (www.iwmi.org/waterpolicybriefing <http://www.iwmi.org/waterpolicybriefing>) For questions and comments contact Dr. Tushaar Shah on +91-2692-29311-13 or e-mail t.shah@cgiar.org

Background :

The IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program is a new initiative supported by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) -a non-profit research and development organization dedicated to providing practical solutions to a range of water management problems. IWMI-Tata presents new perspectives and practical solutions derived from the wealth of research done in India on water resources management. Its objective is to help policy makers at the central, state and local levels address their water challenges - in areas such as sustainable groundwater management, water scarcity, and rural poverty - by translating research findings into practical policy recommendations.