Thai villager beats back waves, but faces new climate threat

Kok Karm, Thailand (AFP) Oct 8, 2009 – Using nothing but bamboo poles and remarkable ingenuity, one Thai villager succeeded in beating back the waves that had slowly engulfed his seaside community and robbed it of precious land. But now that heroic feat may be undone by a new foe — the forces of climate change that are inexorably pushing up sea levels even as Thailand’s vast Chao Phraya river delta, home to 25 million people, continues to sink. An hour’s drive from this village, negotiators from 180 nations are gathered in the capital Bangkok trying to hammer out a global treaty to forestall the worst ravages of global warming. But Vorapol Dounglomchan’s battle against environmental catastrophe began nearly 30 years ago, when he helplessly watched the house he grew up in, at the mouth of the Tha Chin River, crumble as the ocean inched its way inland. Damming upstream along the river basins that spill into the Gulf of Thailand had prevented sediment from building up, upsetting the delicate balance with the erosive force of the sea. The clearing of mangrove forests — whose shallow roots take hold in brackish tropical estuaries around the world — to set up shrimp and salt farms hastened the destruction. Dense and slow-growing, the mangrove wood was converted into charcoal, and sold for pennies. “Over a 20-year period we lost about a kilometer (deep) of coastline,” Dounglomchan said, sweeping his arm in an arc over an area that is today nothing but tidal mud flats, punctuated by the concrete skeleton of his home. Seventy families had to resettle farther inland, he said. …