Asia Times: ADB takes water away from poor, say critics


	May 9, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

ADB takes water away from poor, say critics
By Teena Amrit Gill and Satya Sivaraman

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - For centuries, the Thai saying ''rice in the fields and fish in the water'' has been held as a metaphor for the country's agricultural prosperity and the underlying reason for the easy-going nature of its people.

Little wonder then that Thailand's farming community and social activists are battling a new proposal to charge farmers a fee for supplying water - without which neither rice nor fish are possible.

The water-pricing measure is among the strings attached to a $600 million agricultural sector loan, negotiated between the Thai government, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japanese Organization for Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) in June last year. Ostensibly, the loan is meant to facilitate the recovery of the Thai economy, which has been ailing due to the Asian economic crisis that began in 1997.

A new water law proposed by the ADB will see Thai authorities charging farmers water-user fees to recover irrigation investments and invite the private sector to lease the state irrigation system. The Thai government is also expected by donor agencies to reform water laws and regulations.

''The reform of water laws and regulations will take away the right of communities to use water and this will become the right of the state which can then privatize water,'' says Montri Chantawong of a Thai NGO working group set up to study the impact of the ADB loan. According to Montri, the process is similar to the way the state took over the people's rights to use forests earlier and then gave logging rights to private companies - allowing them to deforest the country.

Opposition to the water-pricing proposal has been growing rapidly in recent weeks, especially ahead of the May 6-8 ADB annual meeting, where the issue has been hotly debated at a parallel NGO meeting, the People's Forum 2000. It is also one of the common issues raised at protests outside the bank meeting venue.

The bank and the Thai government defend the proposal by citing the need for increasing the efficiency of water use and by promising to confine such fees mainly to large farmers, agro-industrial concerns and golf courses using free water. ''The letter of intent signed between the government of Thailand and the ADB says clearly that the process of water pricing will be gradual and the ability of small farmers to pay will be taken into account,'' says J Warren Evans, manager of the ADB environment division. According to him, the pricing of water is in keeping with demands by environmentalists to incorporate the costs of resources which are being rapidly used up because they are available ''free''.

Likewise, the ADB's 1999 annual report, released in April, says the lack of adequate water and declining quality are a ''major human tragedy'' that worsens poverty in Asia. It seeks a ''blue revolution'' to boost efficiency amid a water crisis, saying most of the water gets used, and often wasted, by irrigation. But the ADB itself concedes that ''in many cases the irrigation schemes (that it has funded in the past three decades) have performed well below expectations''.

Advocates of privatizing water also claim that in developing countries, the poor seldom have proper access to water and the state ends up subsidizing water supplies to the rich. ''The profit motive induces private firms to be more diligent in collecting bills, reducing leakages or thefts and upgrading infrastructure,'' says Christopher Lingle, a corporate consultant, in a recent article in the Bangkok-based English language daily The Nation.

But critics disagree. ''The best water resource management should involve several solutions. The government should give priority to the community-based solution supported by local NGOs,'' says the director of the Project for Ecological Recovery, a Bangkok-based environmental NGO. He says the ADB's program for the Thai agricultural sector cannot solve the the sector's main problem, because it seeks to legitimize the use of water by the industrial and agro-industrial sector and cut down the rights of poor farmers to water.

Among the stated aims of the ADB's Agriculture Sector Programe Loan (ASPL), as it is called, are the revision of national policies to hike productivity, enhance export competitiveness and restructure agricultural institutions. Other conditions included with the loan stipulate that the Thai government should end subsidies for agricultural inputs and allow greater private sector involvement in seed promotion and distribution.

The ASPL also seeks to reform the structure of the Thai Agriculture Ministry and create a Private Sector Consultation Council that will make plans for the efficient management of these reforms. ''The main thrust of the ASPL is to make the Thai rural and agricultural sector more market driven and privatized,'' said an NGO briefing paper at the People's Forum 2000 held here on the eve of the ADB meet. ''However this totally ignores the other functions and features of Thai agricultural communities, including food security, traditional land rights, sustainability, social cohesion and community structures.''

Given strong opposition to the water-pricing proposal, the Thai government too appears to be treading warily and avoiding any quick decisions on it. ''There is still time to fix things. Whether water pricing will be good or bad is not clear now, but we still have time to discuss it,'' Sommai Phasi, deputy permanent secretary at the finance ministry, told Thai media recently.

Political analysts point out that the Thai government has been seduced by free market ideologues at the bank to accept the water-pricing proposal because of the short-term attraction of getting the $600 million loan. In the long run, however, they say successive governments will come under pressure from international donor agencies and business lobbies to implement the policy which can be a big money spinner for the private sector.

According to a recent study by the Thailand Development Research Institute, a Bangkok think tank, at current levels of productivity the average Thai farmer can only afford to pay around 0.3-0.4 baht per cubic meter of water. For the same quantity, the industrial sector pays 8 baht.

By forcing the farmers to pay for water, business lobbies hope to create a vast market for supplying water and over a period of time steadily raise prices - as has happened with privatized electricity utilities all over the world. (Inter Press Service)

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