How often does one move house in a lifetime? Once, twice, maybe three times?
Villagers use bamboo to make sea barriers.
Kanit Sookdang, a 54-year-old villager of Ban Klong Prasong, Krabi province, has moved house five times in the last three decades. There is nothing nomadic about her lifestyle, but coastal erosion is forcing her to move.
Kanit’s situation is not unusual in Ban Klong Prasong. The village, situated on a small island located only 500m from the mainland, has been a victim of severe coastal erosion. Beaches and coastlines have been edged away by seasonal storms that usually come between June and November.
“My home stood there... once,” Kanit said, nonchalantly pointing somewhere out to sea. “Every year, villagers always see sand beaches being swept away by seawater and houses simply disappearing into the sea. There is nothing much we can do. People often ask, why don’t we leave this village? How? This is my hometown,” added Kanit, a mother of three.
It is not that the authorities have turned a blind eye to the problem. After the devastating tsunami in 2004, the Krabi provincial authorities built a 2m-high concrete wall along the beach. But the hard concrete wall has proved of little help. Seawater still finds a way to corrode and submerge land by seeping under the concrete structure, causing the land to subside. In fact, the wall has changed the pattern of the waves. Hitting against the concrete barrier, the waves become harsher and more powerful. Strong waves ricochet and destroy other nearby areas, from beaches and trees to even fishing boats.
Coastal erosion forced Kanit Sookdang to move houses five times.
Coastal erosion has been a major problem among villagers along the coasts of Thailand. It is estimated that 5m of the country’s coast is being eaten away by seawater annually. According to the authorities, areas around the Gulf of Thailand face more problems because they are affected by construction of deep sea ports and sinking land, caused by overuse of underground water. Already 180km of the 1,660km coastal area around the Gulf of Thailand has been affected by coastal erosion. The hardest hit area is in Chachoengsao province, where 25m of shore land is submerged by seawater every year, according to the Department of Marine and Coastal Resource (DMCR), under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. The erosion along the Andaman Cost is relatively milder, with 23km out of a total 954km of coastline being submerged. But coastal erosion is expected to become more severe with global warming and climate change.
“I find the sea level becoming higher and higher each year. Storms are more frequent and unpredictable. If the situation continues, we may have nowhere to live,” said Kanit.
But she and a few other villagers refuse to give up. In order to find a solution, they attended a workshop conducted by conservation group Raks Thai. “Building Coastal Resilience To Reduce Climate Change Impact” (BCRCC) empowers villagers to deal with the impact of climate change.
The workshop visited villages with similar coastal problems and share their experiences and solutions. They visited Ban Khok Kham in Muang district of Samut Prakan province, where two years ago villagers constructed bamboo fences to deal with the aggressive waves.
“Bamboo is very strong, highly durable, but also very flexible and bendable,” says Kanit. “The best way to fight nature is nature itself.”
Once back in their hometown, Kanit and the others floated the idea of a bamboo fence around the island. “Other villagers look at us and laugh. They think we are bunch of crazy people. They believe in expensive solutions like concrete walls, despite the wall not really protecting us from the waves,” said Kanit.
Making a bamboo wall along the coastline is not simple as it looks. After sticking bamboo poles in the sand for a few days, they were washed away by waves. After six months of trial and error, the villagers finally learned to do it right. “The wave varies from place to place. Here, we need to put the top of the bamboo into the sand and make a small hole along the trunk to allow sand to seep in and make the bamboo stand solidly in the sea,” Kanit said.
Last year, villagers finished building the first 600m of the bamboo fence. However, that alone won’t stop erosion, so they have also started to plant a mangrove forest — the best protection against storms and coastal erosion — between shorelines and the bamboo bulwark.
“The bamboo fence will last five years and we might need to repair and mend it along the way. But we hope the forest will be fully grown within that time,” said Kanit.
The bamboo wall seems to give them hope. Sand and soil have gradually returned to the beach, and trees have also grown relatively quickly. Small aquatic animals such as molluscs and crabs have returned to the beach and the newly-grown trees. “We are no longer a bunch of crazy people,” she said, adding that the Krabi provincial administration approved 1.5 million baht to build another 500m of bamboo barrier. “We have been living with coastal erosion all of our lives. But it is the first time that we feel that we may have hit the right note and be able to fight against the problem.”
Coastal erosion along Don Sak in Surat Thani is a serious problem and needs the urgent attention of the government.
