Today, I want to talk about climate change, adaptation, mitigation and change management situation in Thailand, after research and reading several related papers, I’ve concluded that the actions and changes made in order to prevent or at least minimize the effect of climate change is not enough. Here’s why;
First of all, large corporations, who we believe are main contributors of GHG emission are mostly petrochemical related companies, either upstream, mid-stream or down-stream. These companies, in order to stay competitive with transborder trade, need to come out with emission reduction action plans, or else they will be sanctioned from either their supplier or consumer. Transborder trade turns out to be the main reason these companies expedite to show that they cooperating and contributing to the change. However, the remaining, small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs) don’t seem to have much of an action plan. In Thailand, there are a lot of these enterprise/factories/plants scattered around the whole country, which, if studied, are the main pollution producers due to loose regulation, monitoring and enforcement. Several environment incidents erupted during the past decade such as Ming DIH Chemical explosion (1) , Star Petroleum Refining oil leakage (2), Floral Manufacturing explosion (3), Industry wastewater dump (4)(5) etc.
Second, weak government sectors. If you look at the works and outcomes in the past couple of years, pretty much, due to COVID-19 pandemic, are wither inefficient or ineffective. Because workers are forced to work at home they’d stay-at-home, so they don’t come out and get things done. How can you run a business or monitor project progress or correct faulty actions when you’re doing these in front of a screen at home with kids crawling on your back and still worried what you’re going to cook for lunch? Thus, a lot of projects from the center or the government executed in a poor way , didn’t finished in time or worst hasn’t even start. Since these projects could take a long time to complete, several semi-retired officers wait for their predecessor such as the case for the previous Bangkok’s governor. This is a major setback for government contribution in climate change as several initiatives were planned to be driven by authorities.
Third, the public sector itself. For the past 5 years, I haven’t seen much of a national campaign or climate change activities yet. There is probably only 1 or 2 campaigns that I noticed, that is perhaps the single use of plastic bags or no bags policy(7) where supermarkets don’t give plastic bags to carry your goods. Apart from that. things like reduction of municipal waste, low carbon emission transportation or consumption reduction etc. never got executed in a large scale. For example, we have recycle campaigns, but in reality, not effectively. At home, waste are separated, but later mixed in the collection and disposal process. When compared with other countries like Japan or Singapore, we are still far from being effective.
Unless we recognize and change our behaviors, climate change will indefinitely possess a problem for all of us, examples such as the major floods in Thailand in 2021 (8), with widespread floods affecting 31 provinces, resulting in an increasing number of damage and casualties. Forest fires in Northern Thailand, happening every dry season (9). High PM2.5 levels during summer in Bangkok and its vicinity as well as the North and Northeast.
With the above issue at hand, my recommendation follows;
First, all stakeholders (private, government and public) must align and have the same goal or target. Even though the actions are different but the outcome has to align and contribute in the same direction. For instance, should the outcome be flood prevention, private sectors could minimize GHG reduction, government to restore forest and increase watershed capacity and last proper municipal waste disposal to prevent clogged drainage.
Second, define certain agency to run this campaign. This agency should be the leader and spokesperson, receiving feedback, providing resources and knowledge and penalize those who failed to perform. As politicians come and go, state run agency should be the forefront leader with support from politicians and academics to run the programs/campaign effectively.
Finally, continuous monitoring on progress/issues and outcome. Without proper direction on where we are now and were we will end up, it is impossible to reach those goals set in the master climate change plan (11). According to the report, were are still behind (12).
