Water shortage

[barrys]

Just found this in today's online Bangkok Post - written by a Thai - makes interesting reading


OUTSIDE THE BOX
Thailand has a shortage of brain power, not water

* Published: 31/03/2010 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News

Long ago, a marooned mariner was supposed to have murmured, "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

He was right. Water covers most of our planet, but only some 2.5% of it is suitable for drinking, as the remainder is salty.

Thais do not face the same predicament as that unfortunate mariner, for Thailand has a lot of fresh water from rains which the monsoon brings every year. Lest we forget, it was just a few months ago that many parts of the country were flooded after persistent rains.

Middle Easterners are interested in buying land here not because they want land per se - their countries have vast expanses of land. What they actually want is the fresh water that comes with the Thai land.

It is, therefore, rather odd that Thailand is currently facing a water shortage so serious that a water emergency has been declared in 53 provinces. It should be obvious that this situation arises not because of a lack of water; rather, it is a lack of brains.

Consider the growing of rice. Thais know very well that rice needs a lot of water. It is, therefore, perfectly suitable for the rainy season. But attempting to grow rice outside of the rainy season is foolhardy.

Worse, in some areas, farmers try to grow a second crop during the dry season, using the limited water that is made available from irrigation schemes.

If subsistence farmers try to grow some rice to feed their families, it would not be hard to understand. The second and third crops planted during the dry season, however, are all for sale. When there is not enough water and the growing rice plants wither, farmers run to the government for help. When they manage to produce a lot of rice, causing its price to drop, they also run to the government for help.

Isn't it shameful to see such cries for help occurring year after year?

Granted that the Northeast receives relatively less rain water than other parts of the country. Still, compared to most parts of the world, it receives plenty. But a lot of people who receive less do not repeatedly face water emergency. Take people of the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, which are largely desert or semi-desert, for example. That part of India receives much less rain than the northeast of Thailand. But our Indian brothers there face no repeated water emergency because they wisely manage what they have.

Besides conservation and growing crops that are suitable for the scarce water, they are known to use ancient techniques called "rain harvesting" to store the limited rain water that they receive each year.

One technique is simple but requires the cooperation of many landowners to dig a large number of ponds spread over their lands. Many ponds are required because under the semi-desert conditions, an isolated pond would dry up quickly both through seepage underground and through evaporation.

With a lot of them, however, there is plenty of water percolating into the soil to moisten the ground over a large area, slowing down the seepage.

The Rajasthanis and Gujaratis do not draw water directly from those ponds but via individual wells dug in the moist ground, which not only yields the needed water but also induces trees to grow, making the environment more habitable for both people and animals.

With the predictable monsoon bringing a lot of rain water each year and the availability of irrigation water during the dry season, Thais however, have never learned to conserve water or think twice before planting water-demanding rice in the dry season and polluting their rivers and canals.

They've never learned how to cooperate to dig a large number of ponds, either. When they do dig ponds, it tends to be done for them by politicians whose aim is to pocket part of the pond-digging budget provided by the government. Those ponds are too few and too scattered apart to form a critical mass needed to moisten the land as is achieved in India.

Learning about this, some politicians may find it a good excuse to take their canvassers and cronies on another junket labelled "study tour',' which is the last thing Thailand needs.

What our country urgently does need is proper water management. The way things are going, however, I would not be surprised if one day in the near future I hear a marooned foreigner - eyeing a dirty Bangkok canal with people crowding its banks - murmuring, "People, people everywhere but not a brain to think."

* Sawai Boonma has worked for more than two decades as a development economist.

[JD]

Locking this one as it is a repeat of this post made earlier today.

http://www.huahinafterdark.com/forum/vi ... 20#p165822