Thailand's natural beauty has long lured millions of foreign vacationers, but after the tsunami a row is brewing over how best to protect the environment while accommodating surging tourism. Barely 100 days after giant waves pummeled the resort-cluttered Andaman coastline leaving about 5,400 people dead, the kingdom remains torn between safeguarding mother nature and promoting a multi-billion dollar industry. Niphon Phongsuwan, a senior biologist in Phuket at the department of marine and coastal resources, said the tsunami's sparing of most environmental gems along the coast should not blind tourism development to the need for greater protection.
"We have to accept today that we have developed in the wrong places ... in some places too close to the shoreline," Niphon said in Phuket.
Hotels have sprung up "without care for the environment", often polluting coastal waters with waste and causing sediment erosion, he added.
"If we keep doing that the environment will only get worse."
Niphon said a plan to rehabilitate the region included better land-use control, coastal zone management and sustainable tourism development, but that forces in the tourism industry clashed with conservationists.
And with tourism playing such a vital role, it's difficult to propose sweeping new regulations without encountering a buzzsaw of political and business opposition.
Thailand is struggling to recover its battered tourist industry, which is Southeast Asia's largest with 10 million visitors last year. The multi-billion-dollar industry is a huge cash spinner for Thailand, generating some six percent of gross domestic product.
Since the tsunami, the government has mulled a "buffer zone" along Thai coastlines barring any new construction within a certain distance, in some places up to 50 metres (55 yards), from the high-tide line, conservationists said.
Hundreds if not thousands of Thai hotels, restaurants and shops are closer than that to the shoreline.
Wichit Na-Ranong, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said the tourism industry would fight tooth and nail against such a zone, arguing it would hamstring much-needed development along the coast.
"I will not allow this to happen, no matter how far back you set the limit," Wichit told reporters in Phuket, where he owns a luxury resort.
In the aftermath of the tsunami, researchers and officials conducted rapid impact assessments of damage and concluded that the worst fears of an environmental catastrophe proved unfounded.
"We were expecting a lot more devastation everywhere," Lynsey Hill, a United Nations co-ordinator for reef cleanup in Thailand, told AFP.
Some coral reefs were badly damaged but expected to recover, while a few beaches on Thailand's tourism jewel Phuket saw broad swathes of sand washed away and will need reconstruction to bring them back to their previous splendour.
But most environmentalists agree that the damage has been limited.
The tsunami, ironically, has done some good to Thailand's exhausted natural resources.
It has driven tourism numbers down along the Andaman coast, giving overexploited beaches, coral reefs, mangrove forests and idyllic islands a much-needed breather from the hoardes of holidaymakers.
It has washed clean sand into bays and led to swelling fish populations as thousands of fishing vessels were destroyed or damaged by the waves.
Most importantly, it triggered a massive cleanup operation that has removed tonnes of trash from coral reefs, sea beds and coastlines.
"It has given us an opportunity to clean up almost everything," Thavivongses Sriburi, director of the Environmental Research Institute at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, told AFP.
The aftermath also is an opportunity to flesh out Thailand's broader policies on the delicate balance between preservation and progress.
However, conservationists said the government had missed the opportunity to improve its environmental standards.
"The government is looking at tourism only," Thavivongses said, citing a 100-million-dollar post-tsunami rehabilitation plan approved by cabinet but focusing mainly on reviving the tourism industry.
Thailand does have key conservation legislation in place, notably an environmental act of 1992 and the constitution of 1997 which enshrines the rights of local communities in conserving natural resources.
But the government and the United Nations, in a joint report last year, said the country is facing "severe natural resource depletion and environmental degradation."
Immediately after the tsunami, Phuket authorities pledged to crack down on beachfront development. But construction is already humming along the beach front, often right in the sand where previous structures were washed away in December.
Phi, the once-sublime island so devastated by the waves, and Khao Lak, the strip of beaches north of Phuket crowded with ritzy coastal resorts where so many foreign tourists died, is proving to be a hot spot for re-development concerns.
So is tiny Raja island, an idyllic outcrop south of Phuket where only bamboo huts recently lined the back of the pristine beach and construction was scarce.
Today, an 80-room upscale Raja resort is almost complete, with a two-story main building fronting the beach and a plaza stretching down to the sand.
The giant waves virtually wiped out the ground floor, but that caused only a slight building delay.
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