Thailand's resort islands facing environmental crisis

Thailand's resort islands facing environmental crisis

Sarah Stewart, Agence France-Presse, Phuket, Thailand

Thailand's resort islands are facing an environmental crisis, overwhelmed by development and the demands for water, sewage and garbage disposal generated by millions of tourists, experts say.

Koh Phi Phi, the jewel-like twin isles made famous by the Hollywood film The Beach, have been so badly polluted that the Tourist Police has proposed closing them down for up to two years to repair the damage.

Samui island, which burst on to the tourism scene in the 1980s and received 837,000 international visitors last year, is running perilously low on water and last month the waterworks opened its pipes for just half an hour a day.

"If the natural beauty of Koh Samui were a goose that has laid the golden egg for Thailand's tourism industry, then the current water crisis is telling us that the goose is dying," lamented an editorial in The Nation newspaper at the time.

And on Phuket, Thailand's biggest and most popular island destination, environmentalists despair about the damage to the reefs and endangered species caused by decades of exploitation of its natural resources.

"We should slow development down so that we can operate in the long term, and not let these islands die," says Tanu Nabnien from the Phuket office of the Wildlife Fund of Thailand.

Tanu says the worst culprits in Phuket are the foreign-owned five-star hotels, many of which were built on national park and ecologically important coastland during the 1980s when the tourism industry boomed.

As well as soaking up massive amounts of water and other resources, the luxury resorts have cordoned off private beaches, ensuring easy access for their guests but not for the turtles who used to come here to lay their eggs.

"Before, we had many turtles coming to lay their eggs on Phuket but since the hotels were built on the beaches they have disappeared," he says.

The coral reefs that fringed the island 20 years ago are now rare sights even on outlying islands. Nevertheless, some tour companies still send people crunching over the coral on popular "reef walks".

And when tourists carefully put their rubbish in the bin, they may not realize that the 289 tons of refuse they produce every day is incinerated in a facility condemned by environmental campaigners Greenpeace.

Tanu, a native of Phuket, says that apart from wrecking the environment of the once-stunning southern islands, the influx has changed the whole character of the community which visitors once found so beguiling.

"Before we thought of the tourists as our friends, but now we just think of them as business," he says.

Over on Phi Phi island, a boatride away from Phuket's international airport, a once idyllic retreat has been turned into a backpacker ghetto crowded with hundreds of shops, restaurants and dive operators.

"Building is the main problem we have on this island," says Ian Pullen, a British diving instructor. "Every year there are more and more bungalows and they can't cope with the garbage and the sewage.

"In the last two or three years since tour operators got hold of the place, things have really exploded," he says, adding that the annual drought is so severe, business owners have begun to dig their own wells.

And with 22 dive shops on the tiny island, he says it is not uncommon to find 50 scuba divers all crowded around a popular reef on any given morning.

The long-time resident says he is now thinking of leaving, driven away by the terrifying speed of unplanned development.

"It's not the Phi Phi I came to 10 years ago. The people who are here now are just out to make money," he says.

Tourists drawn to the island by glossy travel brochures admit they are shocked by the sight that greets them, particularly Maya Bay which was the scene of the fictional Beach, but which now is swamped by hundreds of sightseers who crowd out its tiny arc of white sand.

"I do find it very overpopulated," says Dahlia Saibil from Toronto. "There's a 7-Eleven in the main street and a foul smell in the lanes, I think it must be sewage or garbage."

But while Phi Phi, famed for its pretty limestone bays and azure waters, continues to bring in 10 million baht (about US$227,000) per day in tourism revenues, there is huge pressure to keep it open for business.

Charn Wongsatayanont, the former head of the Phuket Chamber of Commerce and the Phuket Tourism Association, says the industry must realize that its livelihood is on the line over the environmental issue.

"The tourism business here rests on natural beauty, and once your 'product' is gone, then your business is finished," he says. "We are quite worried about that and aware of the problem.

"It needs people to speak out, but many in the tourism industry do not understand. They just say, 'You can't stop development'."

Charn says the problem worsened after the 1997 economic crisis, when business owners were fighting for their survival and conservation work was considered an unaffordable luxury.

"Since then the impact on Phuket has been great... in the next five years it could become critical," he says.

Apart from a lack of public awareness, the industry leader says the island also lacks the necessary laws, budgets and law enforcement resources to ensure environmental standards are upheld.

"During the boomtime, people built first and asked permission later. if no one complains, nothing is done about it," he says.

"The issue is very sensitive because the industry thinks it's not our duty, but in fact it is everyone's."

Local authorities insist they are slowly putting in place the infrastructure needed to cope with the annual influx to the southern islands that forms the mainstay of Thailand's valuable tourism industry.

Prasit Koysiripong, CEO of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization, points to achievements like the wastewater treatment plant that by 2004 will halt the outflow of raw sewage into the ocean off the island.

"Four years ago I felt very upset, very worried... but I think it's much better now, things are changing every year and people are quite aware about the environment."

Environment campaigners, he says, are "good-hearted people who want Phuket to be kept very well... but sometimes the things they're worried about have changed already."

But Wildlife Fund Thailand's Tanu is not optimistic. "The government is aware of the problem but they're not coming to grips with it," he says. "These problems are having a terrible effect on all of southern Thailand."