ABSTRACT
The Pak Mun Dam, located on the Mun River in north-eastern Thailand, is one of the most controversial hydropower dam projects in the Mekong River Basin. This chapter considers four ‘what if’ questions related to the dam: what if the developers had understood the scale of the project’s negative impacts; what if national borders had not been an obstacle for assessing the impacts and for compensating those impacted; what if the main objective of the project had really been to be accountable to local people and the environment; and what if the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand had sincerely required and embraced the idea of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) with regard to the dam. Ultimately, the four ‘what ifs’ are intricately linked to the idea of FPIC. If the developers had taken FPIC seriously, there might have been three critical differences in the outcomes. First, there would have been much better understanding and recognition of the social and environmental impacts of the project. Second, the scale of the project’s impacts would have been much better understood. Third, once the scale and cross-border nature of the impacts were well known, the project would not have been built.
