Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand

5. Water Demand

5 Water Demand It is striking how little attention has been given to the waterdemand implications of several decades of agricultural transformation in the uplands of northern Thailand. In a classic example of “problem closure” in environmental policy, researchers and government regulators have mainly focused on upland catchment degradation—and the ongoing debate about resource protection—rather than giving attention to rapidly changing patterns of resource use. This has created a focus on the problems of water supply rather than on the impacts of changes in water demand. The lack of attention to water demand is surprising, given the widespread evidence that dry-season agricultural production has increased from a very low level in the mid-twentieth century, to the point where it covers much of the paddy land in the narrow valley bottoms and extends even farther when sprinkler irrigation has been adopted on hillslope fields. Concerted analysis of the implications of this agricultural intensification in the uplands of northern Thailand is long overdue. Broadening the focus of environmental knowledge to incorporate water demand opens the way to a more accurate and balanced understanding of the hydrological challenges faced by farmers in the uplands of Thailand. The discussion in this chapter is based largely on a detailed case study of the Mae Uam catchment in Mae Chaem district of Chiang Mai province . Some water resource tensions appear to be emerging in this catchment, and the detailed data that is available on local agricultural transformation provides a unique opportunity for examining the underlying drivers of this resource tension.1 Comparative material is also drawn from other areas in northern Thailand to suggest that the processes observed 117 in Mae Uam are by no means unique. Overall the data from Mae Uam and elsewhere provide an important counterbalance to the predominant narrative that forest clearing has generated a crisis in water supply. In fact, these data suggest that the most likely cause of increased water resource tension is a dramatic and unprecedented increase in the level of demand for water in the dry season. This alternative perspective has important political implications in that it shifts primary attention away from the inhabitants of supposedly sensitive upper-watershed areas and directs attention to the various sources of water demand that exist throughout the catchment system. the mae uam The Mae Uam River has its sources on the western slopes of Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. From this high mountain source, the river runs in a southwesterly direction to its junction with the Chaem River, dropping about 2,000 meters in the process (figure 5.1). The total area of the Mae Uam catchment is 43 square kilometers, with elevation ranging from a low point of 480 meters (near the district center of Mae Chaem) to a high point of almost 2,400 meters (near the peak of Doi Inthanon). The average slope is 18 degrees and flat land suitable for intensive irrigated agriculture is confined to narrow strips along the valley floor. The population of the Mae Uam catchment is approximately 3,500, distributed between seven villages. In the two most upstream villages almost 85 percent of household heads surveyed identify themselves as Karen. As discussed in chapter 3, the Karen are the largest “hilltribe” group in northern Thailand who, in response to official charges of hilltribe natural resource degradation, have developed a reputation in academic and activist literature for their conservationist, forest-friendly, and noncommercial orientation. In the other five villages of the Mae Uam catchment almost all households identify as khon muang, the majority lowland population in northern Thailand. Even though the downstream villages form part of the district township of Mae Chaem, the Mae Uam catchment is overwhelmingly agricultural , with 93 percent of household heads surveyed indicating that farming is their main occupation. Up until the last two decades, the agricultural focus of both Karen and khon muang households was the production of rice for subsistence purposes. Rice was grown both in irrigated 118 Water Demand paddy fields and in rain-fed hillslope fields. Rice production was, and still is, supplemented by vegetables grown on the edges of rice fields and in home gardens and by the collection of bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and wild vegetables from surrounding forests. Prior to the mid-twentieth century it appears that Mae Uam formed part of a relatively open land frontier, with satellite communities experiencing little dif...