By Nirmal Ghosh
Thailand Correspondent
nirmal@sph.com.sg

 

IN BANGKOK
 
GOVERNMENT policies and regulations in Thailand still "do not take climate change into consideration at all" despite the clear risk to Bangkok, according to Dr Anond Snidvongs, one of the country's foremost experts on climate change modeling.
 
Most designs and plans for infrastructure and buildings, remain based on the premise that "everything is constant" he said at a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) last Monday.  
 
Dr Anond, director of SEA START — a research unit dedicated to predicting the impact of climate change in south east Asia — pleaded for an open and wide debate and exchange of ideas on how to secure Bangkok against the imminent risks posed by the combined forces of sea level rise, land subsidence and extreme storms.
 
With him on the panel was Prof Cor Dijkgraaf, an expert in urban planning currently based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands — a country below sea level that survives only because of its extensive system of dikes.
 
Prof Dijkgraaf drew some interesting comparisons between the Netherlands and Bangkok. And he had some interesting old pictures as well — of parts of old Bangkok under water decades ago before the city’s drainage system was upgraded.
 
If Bangkok wanted to prevent similar scenes in the future, "you have to start thinking of this now," he said.
 
"You can do all the research, make all the calculations, but if there's no political will you can't get it done. You have to ask if you can afford not to take measures to avoid the cost of doing nothing in the coming years," said Prof Dijkgraaf.
 
Much of Bangkok is at sea level or about 1 metre above it, and the land is steadily subsiding in nearby coastal zones, and in parts of the city itself. At the same time the level of the sea is rising. In a worst case scenario within the next 40 years, vital installations and tens of thousands of homes and offices and factories will face major floods.
 
While listening to Dr Anond I recalled the fund-raising dinner for prachatai.com which I had attended in December 2009, where Governor of Bangkok MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra had spoken about the challenges of the future.
 
I went back to the recording and sure enough he had mentioned climate change and the threat to Bangkok.
 
"For Thailand the most worrying problem a the moment is rising sea level which will definitely accelerate the rate of coastal erosion," he said.
 
MR Sukhumbhand said Thailand has lost 113,000 rai (around 45,000 acres) of coastal land over the last 30 years. In the province of Samut Prakarn alone, a few miles south of Bangkok, land loss had been to the tune of 10,000 rai (around 4,000 acres).
 
I remembered travelling in a boat in the area with Dr Anond in 2007, purring along through water several metres deep where a road had once been, complete with the telephone poles sticking up out of the waves.

The waters of the Gulf of Thailand lapping at the telephone poles of Bang Khun Tien, which were on dry land only 20 years ago. This low-lying region is fighting a losing battle against the rising sea level, clearly seen in this photo taken in 2007.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh

Disturbingly, MR Sukhumbhand continued to say: "By 2050... large parts of Bangkok will be under water. We need a combination of short term and longer term measures (for drainage and coastal defence), which of course require massive investment — which we have not even begun to do."
 
At the FCCT, Dr Anond made another interesting observation — that the rate of subsidence of part of the coast, both on the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman sea, had increased after the December 2004 earthquake that had created the devastating Asian tsunami.
 
Up to 1.16 million buildings in Bangkok — 900,000 of them residential — were at risk from the worst case scenario of a coincidence of land subsidence, sea level rise and a storm surge, he said — and "ongoing efforts are not enough" to cope.
 
Proposed measures to deal with it include a large storage dam, a barrage across the mouth of the Chao Phraya river, storm surge barriers across the upper Gulf of Thailand, and diversion channels.
 
"Even in the scientific community we don't believe we have sufficient certainty to advise on what to do and what not to do," he acknowledged.
 
"But people in Bangkok need to start thinking of the future."