For a full year, Singkarn Ruenhom will be working with 14 others to document the potential destruction that a huge dam could wreak on the residents and rural farmland along the Yuam River.
They will be conducting a “people’s environmental impact assessment” to counter the findings of a 2021 study by Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department and Naresuan University that reported only four houses in the river village of Mae Ngao, where 170 people live, will be affected by new infrastructure.
Local residents say the destruction from the dam – officially called the Yuam River Diversion Project – will be far greater, clearing a minimum of 600 hectares of land and affecting the livelihoods of an estimated 40,000 people in 46 villages.
“I think about life in the water, the plants and the animals. They will go extinct.” If the project goes through, Singkarn said after hooking a fish in the river, taking a photo and documenting his catch in Thai and Karen. “That’s something we can’t bring back.”
In the past, such grassroots research efforts have warranted some big wins for communities in both Thailand and Myanmar over major construction projects that were scratched. In those cases, too, environmental impact assessments were either bypassed altogether or not made public.
In 2019, villagers in northeast Thailand staged forums and protests alongside their environmental study, which successfully blocked the company from moving mining equipment to a new potash drilling site despite obstruction lawsuits hedged from the company.
The Hatgyi Dam, a project which was slated for construction in a conflict zone in Karen State, was delayed due to both ongoing conflict and grassroots impact reporting. After the coup in 2021 in Myamar, it also faced attempted revival under military administration.
Saw Tha Poe, who works at Karen Rivers Watch, says the cross-border community has needed to join forces to demonstrate the impact to areas downstream and track fish species.
“Many Karen people along the river in both the Thai and Burma side have a good relationship and collaborate together, doing the research, doing the surveys, for example, about the fish species,” he said, adding that the community has found some to be endangered.
With a group of volunteers, Thai professors Malee Sitthikriengkrai and Chayan Vaddhanaphuti teach research methods they can use alongside their daily routines to document how the soon-to-be dammed river would affect not only livelihoods but the local environment overall.