
Niwat Roykaew campaigned for more than 20 years to put stop to a project that would forever change the ecosystem of the Mekong River and the lives of those that depend on it
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The Goldman Environmental Foundation has announced the seven recipients of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s foremost award for grassroots environmental activists. Among them is Niwat Roykaew, school teacher turned river protector.
Roykaew, who goes by the name ‘Kru Thi’ (teacher in Thai), was born and raised on the banks of the Mekong River, in the Chiang Kong district of northern Thailand. Although retired, Kru Thi has been an ardent advocate for the environmental rights of the river and the people who depend on it. Flowing 2,700 miles through China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, the Mekong River is intrinsically linked to the lives of more than 65 million people. It is second only to the Amazon in terms of freshwater biological diversity, and its annual flood-drought cycle creates essential conditions for major fish migrations, but multiple dams and large-scale development projects along the river have long been a threat to this essential ecosystem.
Over the last two decades, hydropower dams have resulted in unseasonable flooding and droughts. ‘Since the first two dams were built on the upper reaches of the Mekong River in Yunnan province in southern China, I’ve seen the unusual water fluctuations with my own eyes,’ says Kru Thi. ‘The river was no longer rising and lowering with the arrival of the monsoon and the dry season. This disruption to the natural cycle of the river has had an adverse effect on the life within it.’ In a paper published in 2018, the Mekong River Commission warned that hydropower development would result in a dramatic reduction in fish stocks, with an overall decline in fish biomass of between 40 to 80 per cent by 2040.
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In 1995, Kru Thi founded the Chiang Kong Conservation Group, a network of 30 Thai villages affected by the river developments, to address the issues caused by the dams. In the early 2000s, China announced joint plans with Thailand for a transboundary project that would convert a section of the river into a Panama Canal-like industrial navigation channel that would allow the passage of Chinese cargo ships from China, through Laos, and on to Thailand. The work involved blasting a rocky, 400-kilometre stretch of the Mekong near Chiang Kong. The Mekong blasting project, officially called the Lancang-Mekong Navigation Channel Improvement Project, would have disasterous environmental and social consequences.
Upon learning of the project, Kru Thi began to act. He drew on his large network of civil society groups, local communities, NGOs, and media in order to gain the attention of the developers and government, while working with academics and researchers to document the biodiversity of the upper Mekong that would be lost following the completion of the project. Using citizen science, the group were able to identify 100 species of fish that lived in the river rapids, including several that were endemic.
After many stops and starts, in 2020 the Thai government was finally forced to formally abandon the Mekong River blasting project. The decision marks a rare win in a region facing significant environmental pressures, and is a testament to the collective power of Kru Thi’s campaign. We caught up with Kru Thi and translator Pianporn Deetes to hear more.

Q: It’s been more than 20 years since the Mekong blasting project was first announced. What made you feel so strongly about stopping it from happening that you were motivated to keep campaigning all this time?
For the people living along the Mekong River it has been our lifeline since our ancestral times. We depend on it for our food, our transportation and our income, as well as our beliefs and for other spiritual aspects.
The Mekong river is the largest inland fishery in the world and lots of people are largely dependent on its fisheries. One species in particular – the Mekong giant catfish, the largest freshwater fish – is only found in the Mekong where its numbers have greatly reduced. And small whitefish, which are at the bottom of the ecosystem’s food chain, are also in decline, which is destroying food security for the population that lives in the basin. The fish catch has dramatically diminished and the price of fish is getting more and more expensive.
Projects like the rapid blasting project alter the natural cycle of the Mekong river; all aquatic life is life affected and that adversely affects our livelihoods. Fishers can no longer make a living for their family, gardeners and farmers that work along the riverbanks are affected by the unusual water fluctuations and have to focus instead on inland farming. Those who have no other land or resources must turn their backs to the Mekong and work as low-paid labourers in cities because they have no other choice.
Q: How did you start and build support for the campaign?
When we heard about the project, we worked to campaign and to disseminate information to the local people. We’re a grassroots movement and we believe that with the participation of the community from the Mekong village we will have more power.
There were several meetings exchanged and discussions with different villages along the Mekong River. One of the things I’d like to highlight is the research we did to gather more information about the Mekong, so that we could use this knowledge to explain how important the river is for us and to help us defend it.
Q: You’ve faced many setbacks over the years, what have been some of the biggest challenges to opposing the project?
When we first started the movement it was really challenging to know how to build understanding and confidence in the fishers and the farmers that, as citizens, they have the right to participate in the decision-making of such an expensive project. Even though it’s a transboundary project – it’s being led by the Chinese government – we are Thai citizens and we have every right to question and meaningfully participate. And the second step was knowing how to advance the knowledge of the local people through our own research, and finally knowing how to explain the value of the Mekong River to policymakers.
We used local knowledge and citizen science to explain to the policymakers how we see the river. For example, when the engineers arrived they explained that the rapids are an obstacle for large scale navigation. But for us, those ecosystems represent a spawning ground for the fish that migrate downstream to this area to breed. It’s like the nursery for the fish of the Mekong River.
Q: How do you feel about the success of your years of campaigning to put a stop to the Mekong rapid blasting project? What are your plans for the future of the conservation group?
The Mekong is a sick and wounded river. There are 11 dams upstream with more dams downstream and more and more are planned to be built by different companies from different countries. Even though we’ve had success with the rapid blasting project, that’s just one problem solved.
One of the key things that the Mekong conservation group is working on is developing our local knowledge of the wider public and in our schools, all the way from kindergarten and primary school up to PhD-level. We also have a programme to empower the youth of the Mekong River, because we believe that building the knowledge and the awareness of the future generations is very important.
Q: What does it mean to you to receive the Goldman Environmental Prize?
I hope that the announcement of this prize will help bring the issues faced by the Mekong River to the attention of the public at a global level. The Mekong is a river of the world, it’s not just my river, and the question of how we can heal its wounds is an important one that I would like to see resolved soon. It’s been over 20 years since I first started working on the Mekong River issues, and the problems are still there. So being able to keep up the momentum and hold the public’s attention is very important.
The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s foremost award honouring grassroots environmental activists. Find out more about the prize here

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