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Lessons from a Community’s Struggle with Coal in Thailand

By Lalanath de Silva (Posted: March 9, 2009) 

The story of the Mae Moh coal plant in Thailand shows why early community engagement is critical to the development and implementation of a sustainable project.

On March 4, 2009, a landmark court decision provided much-needed relief for communities harmed by pollution from a controversial coal power project in northern Thailand. The story of Mae Moh highlights the importance of public participation and access to information in protecting the rights of communities affected by development projects.

About the Mae Moh Coal Power Project

The Mae Moh coal-fired power plant sits in the hills of Lampang in northern Thailand. The plant is an enormous complex consisting of 13 power generating stations. Until 2008, the project was the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia.

Near the power plant lies its fuel source—a lignite coal mine, where open-air pits cut a 135 square kilometer slice out of the surrounding farmland. The government predicts there is enough coal in the area to meet a large percentage of Thailand’s energy needs through 2035 (it currently provides 12% of Thailand’s electricity), and recently approved plans to expand the mine to access 187 million tonnes of additional, proven coal reserves.

Impacts on Local Communities

Sixteen communities live near the power plant and mine. As the project has expanded over time, the mine has grown closer to their lands (only 800 meters away from one village). The power plant has expanded from one unit of 75 Megawatts in 1978 to 13 units of 2,625 Megawatts in 1996, and now consumes over 40,000 tonnes of lignite each day.

Fifteen years ago, the size of the project reached a tipping point. Thousands of communities began to complain of respiratory illnesses and severe damage to their crops. The communities alleged that wind blew coal mine dust into their homes and farmlands and that the smokestacks of the power plant did not contain appropriate filters, allowing the release of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and other toxic chemicals into the air.

In 1992, the plant activated all 11 of its generating units (now expanded to 13), and within a few days thousands of people in the area began noticing breathing difficulties, nausea, and inflammation of their eyes and throats. Communities estimated that within 2 months, 50% of rice fields were damaged by sulfur dioxide emissions. In 1998, mobile inspection clinics organized by the government diagnosed 8,214 patients, and found that an estimated 3,463 suffered from respiratory illnesses. Communities alleged that the project was connected to several deaths, including six Mae Moh villagers who died from blood poisoning.

Communities also complained that chemicals from the plant leaked downhill into water supplies, where uninformed people fished from the water. In October 2003, the State Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning Office found high levels of arsenic, chromium, and manganese in most water sources near the plant.

The Government’s Response

The communities claimed that the government continued to grant permits and licenses to expand the project despite these impacts, and that the government failed to inform stakeholders about the project’s environmental and health risks. As people experienced harm to their health and crops, they complained to the government, but felt the government was not responsive. Communities described how public relations officials made promises to address their concerns, but then failed to follow through.

Communities also complained to financiers of the project, including the Asian Development Bank, Export Development Canada, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank. In 2001, ADB financed an evaluation of the project’s environmental and health impacts, which brought sulfur dioxide emission levels into compliance with national standards. As a result, fewer people now suffer from respiratory illnesses.

While this was an important first step, the government’s and financiers’ responses did not address communities’ other concerns such as compensation for crop damages, resettlement to safer areas, and payment for medical treatment. As a result, the communities resorted to lawsuits for redress. In 2002, local activist Maliwan Najwirot created the Occupational Patients Rights Network, which has filed several lawsuits against the government. In May 2004, a court ruling awarded approximately US$142,500 to villagers for crop damages caused by the power plant.

On March 4, 2009, a Thai court ordered the government (the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand) to pay $6,800 plus interest to each plaintiff in a lawsuit brought 5 years ago by several hundred villagers whose health was harmed from living near the project. The court also ordered the government to move affected people to new land at least five kilometers from the project, to rehabilitate the environment at the coal mine, and to replace a controversial golf course with trees. This landmark decision provides a much-needed turning point, so that Mae Moh communities can finally begin to restore and rebuild their lives.

Lessons Learned

During the struggles of the past decade, Mae Moh communities have turned their experiences into an important lesson for others. Representatives of other Thai communities frequently visit Ms. Najwirot and the site to learn how to organize themselves, and how to address the tensions that development projects can create between those community members who benefit from jobs and electricity, and those who are harmed.

Mae Moh also provides important lessons for governments and companies about the importance of engaging communities early and throughout the life of a project so they can better identify and mitigate risks, and build trust to resolve problems that do emerge. This in turn helps to prevent costs from disaster cleanup, lawsuits, and tarnished reputations.

Finally, the project demonstrates the importance of transparency and public participation in the review and approval of permits and licenses that entail potentially harmful activities. In Mae Moh’s case, engagement with communities could have provided an earlier indication that construction or expansion of the project was not worth the environmental and health risks.

For more information see the story on the World Resources Institute website.

Environmental Democracy

Published: 2006

An Assessment of Access to Information, Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in Selected European Countries; The Access Initiative European Regional Report

This report was conducted using the assessment method developed by The Access Initiative, a global network of civil society organizations. Unless otherwise noted, the opinions, interpretations and findings presented in this document are the responsibility of the authors and not of The Access Initiative. For additional information about The Access Initiative, including its members and leadership, please see www.accessinitiative.org.

Supported by The European Commission, Directorate General Justice, Freedom and Security Sole responsibility for this publication lies with the authors, and the Commission of the European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Highlights from the TAI Global Gathering

By Monika Kerdeman (Posted: March 6, 2009) 

50 people representing 29 countries participated in the second TAI Global Gathering, held in Sligo, Ireland at the Sligo Institute of Technology. The gathering was the largest international conference held at Sligo Institute of Technology. Highlights from the meeting include:

  1. Jeremy Wates, from the Aarhus Convention Secretariat in Geneva, opened the conference by discussing the importance of access work in the role of shaping environmental policy.

  2. The deputy leader of Seanad Eireann (the Senate of Ireland), and Green Party chairperson, Senator Dan Boyle, addressed the gathering. He spoke on Ireland’s need to ratify the Aarhus convention and the importance of access to information in a mature democracy.

  3. TAI partners shared ideas, stories, successes and solutions for moving the network to more action on the ground.

  4. Latin American partners agreed on next steps for a collaborative regional advocacy plan.

  5. The TAI Secretariat shared major themes and messages from its publication, Voice and Choice: Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy.

  6. Partners discussed case studies on access rights for the poor carried out by five TAI partners and next steps for including poverty-access rights analysis in all future TAI assessments.

  7. The Thailand Environment Institute (TEI) introduced partners to a draft citizen’s toolkit.

  8. New sectors were explored in the context of TAI, including climate change, forestry and aid effectiveness.

Click here to read the full report from the gathering.

TAI Global Gathering 2008

Published: 2008

This report is a detailed account of the objectives and outcomes from the second TAI Global Gathering, held in Sligo Ireland. At the gathering more then 50 TAI partners from 29 different countries met to discuss network activities and share access rights success stories.

Mixed Results From Nairobi

By David Heller (Posted: March 4, 2009) 

During its annual meetings in February, the UNEP Governing Council failed to adopt guidelines that would have directed developing country governments to create national legislation that respects and protects access principles. Unfortunately, adoption was postponed until the Council’s next set of meetings in 2010 because of a flawed UNEP process that neglected to include civil society organizations and developing countries in the process of drafting the guidelines.

Though on its face this development is a significant setback for access advocates, other news from Nairobi leaves ample reason for hope: failure was not due to fundamental opposition to access principles, and the U.S. no longer stands in the way of such a global access movement from happening.

Adoption would have been a concrete step towards ensuring all global citizens have the right to access information, participate in their government’s decision making process, and seek judicial redress in matters affecting the environment. Still, we cannot interpret their failure to adopt as a lack of respect for these principles.

Why?

Language in the decision also reflects an interest in using the guidelines to inform national law. In addition to “taking note of” the guidelines, the Council requested that the UNEP Secretariat “carry out further work on the guidelines with a view to the adoption by the [Governing Council] at its next special session.”

With adoption imminent, some “further work” is a necessary but ill-timed element of getting relevant parties to agree on proper guidelines; such preparatory activities should have been carried out prior to Nairobi.

We owe this pending setback to the flawed consultative process used by UNEP when it drafted the guidelines.

Though they were written by a select group of high-level experts and judges, UNEP failed to oversee a process of consultation where civil society and developing country delegations could deliberate on the guidelines’ merits and influence its content. Out of 192 member countries, for instance, only 40 participated in the drafting.

This lack of inclusion is especially troubling considering the burden that adopting these guidelines would entail for many nations. Since essentially states are being asked to graft a series of ambitious multilateral standards into their own domestic law, it’s logical that they’d want to have a say in the content of whatever it is that they’d be committing to.

Instead, most developing nations were simply presented with a finished product and asked to sign off on it in Nairobi.

It was no surprise then that during the meetings, developing nations representing the G-77 were the guideline’s most outspoken opponents. Sources privy to deliberation say that their reactions of disapproval stemmed from the aforementioned procedural issues; as opposed to disagreement with the guidelines’ substantive content.

These nations had little prior knowledge of the substance of the guidelines due to their lack of participation and consultation in their construction, and were understandably unwilling to undertake the burden of implementing what they had no hand in creating.

Noticeably absent from the list of opposing delegations were the E.U. and U.S. During deliberation, both influential parties supported adoption. Moreover, both acknowledged that the grievances expressed by developing nations were legitimate.

The U.S.’s position represents an about-face from previous policy under the Bush administration. This drastic change, according to Augustine Njamnishi,TAI coordinator in Cameroon and part of his country’s UNEP delegation, did not go unnoticed.

“Wholehearted U.S. support of the guidelines raised eyebrows and suspicions,” Njamnishi says.

U.S. officials must recognize the diplomatic anxiety that their changed policy preferences cause. The U.S. should fully explain the rationale behind its decisions, justifying votes with principled reasons that can be universally followed.

Despite this apparent improvement in U.S. policy towards governmental transparency, newly appointed UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner was visibly disappointed by the Council’s decision to forego adoption, according to Njamnishi.

But this disappointment should not have been a surprise. By failing to include an overwhelming majority of UNEP members in the drafting of guidelines, the access principles promoted within these documents were ironically neglected by UNEP and absent from its method of guideline creation.

Seeing a silver lining in Nairobi’s outcome, some UNEP officials remarked that the further consultative work called for in the Governing Council’s decision would be a valuable learning experience for developing countries. While it pays to be optimistic, this doesn’t excuse the missed chances for consultation prior to Nairobi.

And we must be wary of assuming that the upcoming consultation will be any more inclusive than it was before. If UNEP’s halfhearted effort to extend an invitation to civil society and the developing world prior to Nairobi is any indication, their future involvement is far from guaranteed.

UNEP must learn from its mistakes and go to great lengths to include as many civil society and developing country representatives as possible in forthcoming consultations. Come the next Governing Council meeting, this will ensure more delegations will be presented with guidelines they’ll be more likely to support – those that they have agreed to and are fully prepared to implement.

Given its re-discovered priorities, the U.S. ought to embrace its global influence and lead this process.

The agenda is ambitious, but no more so than the goal.

Formación de Capacidades en Acceso: El caso ecuatoriano

Published: 2008

Este video muestra el proceso de fortalecimiento de capacidades que inició el Centro Ecuatoriano de Derecho Ambiental en el 2005, como resultado de la evaluación realizada por la Iniciativa de Acceso, donde se detectó que uno de los grandes vacíos existentes era justamente la falta capacidades en la ciudadanía y en los funcionarios gubernamentales respecto de los derechos de acceso.

Nuestro proceso de formación de capacidades aplica metodologías participativas apoyadas de materiales desarrollados con enfoque pedagógico, así como también con actividades de difusión y discusión de los temas de acceso en la agenda publica.

Citizen Voices in Water Sector Governance

Published: 2005

The Role of Transparency, Participation and Government Accountability

This brochure gives a summary of the findings of case studies chosen specifically to address a range of issues in the water sector. TAI partners started a new activity to evaluate access in the context of water sector governance. TAI will facilitate pilot application of TAI indicators to water sector cases in order to determine how they need to be modified or supplemented to capture sector-specific issues. TAI partners will share their findings this spring at the TAI global meeting and the World Water Forum in an attempt to influence the global dialogue on water governance and help countries work to achieve Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 10 (Millennium Development Goal 7 is to ensure environmental sustainability, Target 10 aims to reduce the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water).

Environmental and Social Assessment Memos

Published: 2008

The objective of these memos is to provide helpful informational research to further populate the available materials on access rights issues.

The information memos are commissioned by the TAI Secretariat. They represent the ideas and thoughts of their respective authors and do not represent the official position of the Access Initiative or the TAI Secretariat. While the secretariat does its best to ensure the quality of these memos they are essentially the work of their respective authors who take full responsibility for their content. Please contact the TAI Secretariat if you have ideas for topics which are not covered in the current research.