As
Thailand's ailing king surveys the calamitous scene from his 16th floor
hospital window, the 83-year-old monarch encounters an element that has
challenged, virtually obsessed, him most of his life: water.
It's rising around him, the floodwaters
sweeping through Bangkok and overflowing the banks of the Menam Chao Phraya,
the River of Kings, that rushes right past Siriraj Hospital, where he has lived
wheelchair-bound for the past two years.
The flood, the worst in half a century, is
something King Bhumibol Adulyadej has tried harder than perhaps anyone to
prevent. He has sounded alarm bells — not always heeded — against
overdevelopment and come up with ideas that have mitigated the damage from the
immense annual surges and retreats of monsoon-spawned water.
The country's current woes — nearly 400 dead
and 110,000 displaced — illustrate both the price paid for ignoring his
warnings, as well as the limits of man's ability to control nature's sometimes
overwhelming force.
Analysts also note that, in tackling such
complex problems, no single individual can substitute for well-coordinated and
planned action by expert authorities — something critics say Thailand sorely
lacks.
Even now, as the Thai capital and its environs
fight the onrush, the world's longest reigning monarch is offering advice on
how best to channel the unprecedented buildup of water from northern highlands
into the sea. But unlike times past, the constitutional but powerful monarch is
unable to undertake inspections or cajole, sometimes reprimand, ineffective
bureaucrats into action.
Heir to a legacy of Thai kings who saw the
controlling of water as a royal task, one of Bhumibol's first development
projects was a reservoir in 1963 to trap fresh water and prevent salt intrusion
in the seaside resort of Hua Hin. Today, these royally initiated projects
number more than 4,300, with 40 percent related to water resources.
"The king's ideas, proposals and implicit
or explicit stamps of approval can be detected throughout Thai water resource
management policy and practice of the last 40 years at least," says David
Blake, a water expert at England's University of East Anglia who has studied
the issue in Thailand.
Although never formally schooled in the
subject, the U.S.-born king exhibited an engineering and scientific bent which
in the early 1990s he turned to Thailand's vulnerable capital.
"In a way he was a killjoy. This was the
time of the great Asian economic boom and yet the king was telling people about
floods, bad traffic and misery," says Dominic Faulder, senior editor of a
forthcoming book on the king. "The pessimism and warnings were not what
many people wanted to hear."
Faulder adds that the king was focused on
trying to solve the problem, as opposed to "some of the (political)
bickering and recriminations we see going on now."
The king called his most notable move the
"monkey cheeks" strategy, recalling from childhood pet monkeys which
would munch on bananas, then retain the food in their cheeks to swallow later.
The water that yearly rushes down from the
north is diverted into "cheeks" on the approaches to Bangkok, then
flushed into the sea or used for irrigation. This involved construction of
reservoirs as well as dikes, canals and water gates. Along with an improved
drainage system in the city, it's credited with mitigating floods in the 1990s
and the past decade.
"We must use the wrath of nature as our
teacher," the king said in 1990. "If we can find a way to keep
floodwater in reserve and to use it when it's needed, it will be a double
boon."
However, Blake says, the plan implied that
communities around Bangkok would be sacrificed to save the heart of the capital
— something that is now occurring. And overzealous bureaucrats at times
diverted waters into farmland rather than the reservoirs.
Since then, potential reservoir sites to the
west, east and north of the city have been filled in for industrial parks,
housing, golf courses and the international airport.
"The major cause of the flood is the fact
that we built our houses on wetlands. My point is that humans have changed
nature so much from what it used to be," Bhumibol said.
As early as 1971, the king warned that massive
logging of the great northern forests would trigger future floods.
Deforestation, which reduces the land's ability to absorb water, is today
recognized as a contributor to the flooding.
Over the next two and a half decades,
traveling to every corner of the country, Bhumibol set out to both harness and
manage water, from draining swamps in the south to designing upland irrigation
for indigenous hill tribes in the north.
The king backed the construction of the
country's biggest dams, each bearing the name of a royal family member
including his own, although he later acknowledged their dangers and began
favoring small-scale dams and weirs.
He sought to alleviate drought by seeding
clouds to induce rain with chemicals fired from aircraft — a somewhat
hit-and-miss effort.
Not all of his ideas worked; in many cases,
Blake says, the king's inventions or principles weren't carried out properly.
Bhumibol himself said he was just proposing
"feasible ideas. Implementation must remain with those in charge. If they
are misinterpreted or mishandled, they are doomed."
Sumet Tantivejkul, who heads the Chaipattana
Foundation which implements royal projects, says that among the king's most
important contributions is his focus on sustainable water management. He has
used his position to propel the issue to the forefront of the national agenda.
Some of his inventions are almost whimsical.
To help clean up a highly polluted swamp in
the heart of Bangkok, the king devised a simple filter made of water hyacinths,
which easily absorb toxic wastes. The saturated plants are then detoxified and
used as fuel, compost and weaving handicrafts.
"Bangkok is a toilet without a
flush," the king said, describing a sprawling capital once graced by
numerous canals increasingly awash with fetid water.
He also invented a low-cost water aerator
resembling a paddle wheel on old steamers for which he was awarded an international
patent — the first to any king.
DENIS D. GRAY - Associated Press
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