Pham Tuan Phan, who assumed the post of MRC chief executive this year, stressed that point while delivering his presentation about the organisation, empowered by the 1995 Mekong Agreement, at the Greater Mekong Forum last week, where leading river experts and policy-makers attended to find out the best approach to ensure the river’s sustainable development.

The governance of the river was once again debated at the forum. At one session on the MRC’s roles and the recommendations for its improvement attended by top experts and policy makers, Pham detailed what the MRC has been doing over the past 20 years in an attempt to convince people that there has been progress in the organisation’s efforts.

Besides the umbrella 1995 agreement, the MRC now has basin development strategies, which cover key activities from this year to 2020, and five principal procedures to guide the best practices in water use of the Mekong, including a highly controversial prior consultation process for notable development projects, including hydropower.

“The MRC is imperfect, but it’s indispensable,” concluded Phan at the session. Phan told The Nation that the MRC is the best regional arrangement in dealing with the increasing challenges in the basin, and this has something to do a lot with history.

Phan said the basin had a declaration in 1975 under which the riparian countries needed consensus voting to go with their projects, but it did not work. He said that would have been especially the case under the present circumstances where the countries prefer to find mutual opportunities for developments.

With more flexibility, the 1995 agreement has become the best deal and works well among the member countries although it is not as robust as its predecessor, he said. “It somewhat satisfies the needs of the countries with a spirit that the countries feel that they can honour. That’s why [it is the best deal],” Phan said.

Phan rejected the notion that the MRC is a regulatory body. It is an inter-governmental organisation which provides a platform for cooperation among its members. He called this “a platform for water diplomacy” which is in place to facilitate members.

As the body’s chief executive officer, Phan realised it still needs improvement. He said the organisation is working on the trans-boundary impact assessment, the monitoring and reviewing of projects and redesigns, and an extended duration for a review under a prior consultation process known as the Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA).

Other non-profit organisations promoting sustainable development along the river see shortcomings in the process. One of those organisations, International River, released its latest statement on the Pak Beng Dam and questioned the MRC and the prior consultation process, which it regards as being flawed and has no reform in sight.

International Rivers cited the experience from previous projects by Laos, Xayaburi and Don Sahong, which it said demonstrated major flaws in the process. The prior consultation process is the principal platform for discussions and agreements on the river’s development projects, but International Rivers said no agreement was reached by either the MRC’s joint committee or council for these two projects as the MRC itself also acknowledged.

The major flaws of the process are the lack of facilitation of necessary information to help understand impacts on neighbouring countries, and the lack of clear requirements for meaningful participation, affecting transparency, it noted.

“Indeed, by the time prior consultation is initiated, experience shows that key decisions have already been made and project agreements concluded,” it said.

As such, International River expressed concern over the Pak Bang dam and urged the relevant parties to suspend the project.

But Pham said: “It would be nice [to have a robust consensus vote like the previous declaration], but it may be too much … We need to look from the perspectives of the riparian members too.”

He said that farmers, unable to solve issues individually, should run enterprises together in their communities to boost their bargaining power and gain more support from the government.
Sansern also said the government had established the Cooperative Distribution Centre (CDC), which now has more than 100 branches across the country to help sell agricultural produce. He added that the CDC may also be expanded to meet demand from farmers wishing to supply their produce to the centres.
Established in October last year, Sansern said sales of the centres reached Bt6.3 billion in just six months.
In addition, the government had provided an online channel to distribute the products, with around nine categories of produce sold on the website co-opclick.com, including rice, water, coffee and dairy products. The online market had helped reduce the costs as well as reach customers over a wider area, Sansern said.
He said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had expressed his admiration for the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives in its fruitful attempts to assist the farmers in a sustainable way by helping them sell the products rather than subsidising them.
The spokesman added that the government would continue to support e-commerce and would help people develop their potential in online trading.
Chinese giant e-commerce website Alibaba.com had now collaborated with the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and would open a training centre in Thailand with the aim of grooming at least 5,000 more online entrepreneurs capable of competing in overseas markets, Sansern said.
Meanwhile, following the fall in the price of rice, help continues to pour in to help rice growers sell at a better price.
Former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra helped sell tonnes of rice at Bt20 per kilogram, or Bt100 per 5kg bag, in the past week, with a lot of supporters buying rice from her. However, Democrat Party politician Warong Dechgitvigrom expressed concern that the sales would affect the rice price. He said that although it was true each tonne of rice would be sold at Bt20,000, it should also be noted that it was the price of rice, not rice grain.
Warong explained that a kilo of rice was milled from 2.38kg of grain. So when Yingluck sold the rice at Bt20 per kilo, the price of the grain would be only Bt8,403 per tonne, he said. Such a price is lower than the government’s offer at Bt9,500 a tonne, he said. Warong stressed that Yingluck was buying grain from growers at a cheaper price and therefore not helping the growers.

THAILAND HAS nothing to fear from the protectionist policies of US President-elect Donald Trump, Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha said yesterday.
“Why be afraid? We are not trading with the US only,” Prayut said. “We’ve made alliances with countries of all sizes.
“We have to see if he [Trump] can practice what he has said. It’s necessary, yet we shouldn’t … judge domestic affairs. We have to figure our position [with the US] to handle negotiations.”
Human rights defenders and environment conservationists have expressed concerns over Trump’s political platform, which might be more lenient to the military government in Thailand.
Trump’s policies might enforce more protection of the American market, which could have a detrimental affect on Thai exporters, and his ambiguous foreign policy is also causing uncertainty around the world, analysts said.
Trump’s presidency would not tamper with worldwide mechanisms to counter human rights abuses, said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thailand.
“It would rather highlight the active role of human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, to nonpartisanly combat human-rights abuses around the world, including the US, if the president-elect’s policies infringe on the basic rights of the people,” he said.
Sunai’s remark was in response to mounting concerns over the worsening human rights situation across the world following Trump’s election campaign, seen by some as exacerbating the problem.
The researcher said Trump’s team was likely to roll out divisive policies as a challenge to international human rights bodies.
“Actually, it is the nature of Republican Party, the right-wing party, that does not place priority on human rights issues. Unfortunately, Trump also individually tends to severely infringe people’s rights,” he said.
In addition, the relatively decreasing role of the US as a human rights and moral leader would underscore the duty of human rights organisations, he said.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, such a challenge would be met with multilateral opposition, he said.
Thai environmentalists were also concernedaboutt the new US administration, as the president-elect was a climate-change sceptic and opposed to policies aimed at mitigating climate change.
Trump has said the US would stay away from the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep the world temperature from rising more than 2 degree Celsius. He also said he would cut all federal climate budgets and would restart the coal and fossil-fuel industry in the US again.
Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH) director Penchom Saetang worried that the overall climate change mitigation effort would be damaged if Trump proceeds with his election promises.
Penchorm said: “The US is one of the biggest greenhouse gas producers and always had a bad reputation for disagreeing with the global climate-change mitigation effort. The US did not participate in the Kyoto Protocal, but under the Obama administration, Washington participated more in climate-change prevention and also joined the Paris Agreement.
“However under Trump’s presidency, I am afraid that the US will go back to its own standpoint and jeopardise overall efforts to rescue the world from climate change.”
She said that Trump’s intention to quit the Paris Agreement would send the wrong message to other nations.
Srisuwan Janya, president of the Stop Global Warming Association, said if the US has a negative policy towards climate-change prevention, other countries might follow the same course.
“Trump should not consider only his country’s economy. The US is a member of the world and thus it has to care about others who share the same planet,” Srisuwan said.
Meanwhile, Tara Buakhamsri, Greenpeace Thailand director, had a more optimistic view. He said environmental groups in the US were strong and Trump would find it difficult to implement his harmful policies.
“From his stance, Trump fully supports the fossil-fuel industry and aims to cut support for the environmental fund. However, I think he cannot implement his policies easily, because there are political procedures to be made by Congress and more importantly there is quite strong US environmental activism,” Tara said.