The hastily agreed memorandum of understanding (MoU) on critical minerals that was signed by Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, and U.S. President Donald Trump on October 26 shocked many community leaders in northern Thailand. The MoU made no mention of any environmental safeguards, and Thai communities have already been devastated, and their precious rivers ruined, by existing rare earth mines.
Rare earth mining in Myanmar had already unleashed a plague of toxic chemicals that has poisoned rivers in northern Thailand and contaminated parts of the Mekong, the longest river in Southeast Asia, long before the signing of Thailand-U.S. rare earth deal. Now recent tests show the flow of heavy metal contamination has reached areas much further along the Mekong and another international river, the Salween, has suffered arsenic poisoning.
A Full-blown Environmental Crisis
The first laboratory tests on water samples from the Salween were carried out by Dr. Wan Wiriya, an environmental scientist based at Chiang Mai University. “We found arsenic five times more than the accepted level when we tested water quality on the Salween River along the Thai-Myanmar border,” he told The Diplomat.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-based Stimson Center think tank released a report on November 24 that paints a grim picture of the region’s unregulated mining boom and the damage it has had on ecosystems, livelihoods, and rural communities across mainland Southeast Asia.
In the report and interactive dashboard, the Stimson Center used satellite imagery to identify 2,420 polluting mines releasing deadly chemicals such as arsenic, cyanide, and mercury into international rivers and tributaries. In particular, it found “at least 549 unregulated in-situ leaching rare earth mining sites in Myanmar, in addition to more than 340 heap leach sites that are mostly used to extract gold.”
The co-author of the report, Brian Eyler, expressed his great worry over this unprecedented environmental crisis. “Governments in the Mekong need to wake up!” he said. “Their rivers are potentially already polluted with arsenic, mercury, and cyanide and other dangerous toxins.”
Just how far the toxins have penetrated further down the Mekong into the critical food chains of Cambodia and Vietnam, where no testing has been done, is unknown.
A new investigative report in Mongabay established that this testing is long overdue. Vital fish migration routes in Cambodia are threatened from an illegal gold mine in Cambodia, which appears to be linked to mercury poisoning and contamination of the Sesan River and O’Ta Bouk River in Virachey National Park. Inside Laos, mining by the side of the Sesan River, which lies close to Cambodia, is also a major threat to the mainstream Mekong.
Cambodia must check for possible contamination from the huge cluster of unregulated alluvial mines not far from the border with Laos’ Sekong River, Eyler urged, adding that “they should test for acids, heavy metals, arsenic and other toxins.”
The magnitude of this regional environmental crisis – laid bare by Thai researchers, independent academics, and the Stimson Center – has yet to be grasped by regional bodies.
Although the Mekong River Commission (MRC) has confirmed abnormal levels of arsenic at two points on the river between Thailand and Laos, it has also played down the scale and gravity of what Thai experts have dubbed a regional environmental crisis.
Communities complain of a sluggish response. “The government has still failed to provide a clear strategy for stopping the arsenic flow and restoring our river,” Saengrawee Suweerakan, a river conservation activist from Thaton, one of the worst affected towns along the Kok River, told The Diplomat.
New evidence of arsenic poisoning in Isaan, northeast Thailand, was revealed by official provincial government tests, but received very little publicity. The authorities have yet to offer any public health advice.
“In Thaton some tests found arsenic in Morning Glory a vegetable, cabbage, and chili,” Saengrawee said. “The authorities did not provide clear information about what the farmers should do. They could not wait, so they planted their usual crops.”
The high arsenic levels in Isaan region, according to Eyler, “are likely from a combination of unregulated gold mining activity and rare earth mining in Laos near the Thai-Lao border.”
As reported by the Bangkok Post, People’s Party MP Phattarapong Leelaphat alleged that Suchart Chomklin, Thailand’s deputy prime minister and environment minister, had ignored the toxic contamination. “Arsenic levels in Mekong River passing Loei, Bueng Kan, Nong Khai, and Nakhon Phanom provinces exceeded safety standards, yet officials withheld the information from the public,” the Post paraphrased Phattarapong as saying.
However, Suchart has denied the criticism. Earlier this month, he announced the establishment of three task forces to address the crisis: one for cross-border cooperation, one for environmental and health monitoring, and another for developing alternative water management measures in 22 river basins, including the Mekong.
The Thai-U.S. MoU
It is in this alarming environmental context that Anutin and Trump signed their MoU on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit held in Malaysia in October. The agreement was justified by supporters on the grounds that it was designed to strengthen cooperation between Thailand and the United States on developing and diversifying global supply chains for critical minerals and rare earths.
However only days later, it triggered a protest led by a coalition of 27 NGOs at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. Lertsak Khamkongsak, chairman of the Thai NGO Coordinating Committee on Development commented, “This MoU would make the United States a protector and defender of both legal and illegal import routes of critical and rare earth minerals from Burma [Myanmar] and Laos into Thailand, regardless of the severe impacts that mining in Burma would have on the lives, property, environment, and ecosystems of the Thai people.”
According to supporters of the deal, the MoUs with Thailand and Malaysia serve primarily as entry points for dialogue and alignment. The United States is scrambling to build an alternative rare earth supply chain to counter China’s dominance of the sector. In addition to the deals with Southeast Asia, Washington has also inked agreements on critical mineral supply chains with its traditional allies in the region, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.
Beyond the environmental angle, some have warned of geopolitical consequences. For both Thailand and Malaysia, China is their major trading partner. It is in their interests to avoid being dragged into any alignment where they could be viewed as a pawn in the rare earth war between China and the United States.
As a result, the Thai prime minister faced a barrage of criticism in Parliament. He insisted that the MoU “carried no binding obligations.” However, Thai agreements signed in Malaysia appeared to create a linkage between a review of Thailand’s trade tariffs and approval of the MoU.
Dr. Suebskul Kittanugron, the director of the Social Innovation Research Center at Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, observed, “It is very clear that the government is subservient to the U.S. in business, trade, and tariffs.”
He added, “The authorities need to do more for villagers hit by toxic floods. They need answers. We want our lives back. Chiang Rai needs a center for heavy metal testing and more open reporting. We don’t need this MoU.”
Reclaiming Rivers: Is There a Solution?
How can Thailand and other affected countries seriously address the worsening pollution crisis linked to mining operations – especially those across international borders?
Many experts recognize that China is the only regional country that has the capacity and the connections both to curb Chinese managers of rare earth mines and rein in its proxy, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which occupies two large territories in Myanmar’s Shan State. The UWSA provides security for most of the Myanmar rare earth sites that are directly linked to the pollution crisis of the Mekong and the Salween.
China is well aware of the dark side of rare earth extraction from its own experience of environmental devastation in China. This resulted in new legislation to curb pollution. These environmental safeguards prompted many Chinese companies to move south and set up their operations across the border in Myanmar’s Kachin and Shan states in order to evade the new environmental regulations.
As the Stimson Report pointed out, engaging with Chinese regulators who responded to similar issues in southern China’s Jiangxi and Sichuan provinces, and learning from Chinese experts who have studied the impacts of the illegal and unregulated mines, would be a critical step forward.
These Chinese experts also know which mitigation options have already been tested and used inside China, and which could in principle be adopted and applied on unregulated mine operations in Myanmar and Laos. New research on this subject is already being published.
It will take years or maybe decades to before water is safe to drink and crops can be safely grown and irrigated without testing for contamination, unless some new miracle technology is discovered.
Given the high stakes for all of the Thai provinces lying along the Mekong, is Thailand’s government willing to signal to the region that solving this rare earth problem is a major foreign policy priority?
In an email to this author, Phattarapong Leelaphat of the People’s Party wrote, “If the Thai government is serious about coping with transboundary water pollution from mining activities, they should act fast, and raise this issue as a regional environmental disaster. It not only affects Thailand but also fellow Mekong states, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Urgent action is needed.”
If all the lower Mekong countries adopt a common understanding that they are indeed facing a regional environmental crisis, they are far more likely to secure China’s willingness to hold a serious dialogue.
Given the vast fortunes at stake in the global rare earth markets, and growing world demand for rare earth technology, achieving a new deal to protect suffering communities, not to mention rivers and other ecological assets, is a tough challenge.
Wan Wiriya, the environmental professor believes Thailand has a choice. “The government must rethink any mining ambitions,” he said. “Thailand is unsuitable for mining investments of any kind, including rare earth extraction, due to the high risk of environmental degradation affecting water, soil, and air. Thailand’s strengths lie not in mining but in tourism, culture, and soft power.”
