Discussion: Ongoing Challenges After the Major Flooding in 2011
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Contributed by:Siripong (Pong) Treetasanatavorn
Article last edited 30 Apr 2014 by TSP
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Discussion: Ongoing Challenges After the Major Flooding in 2011
The increasing likelihood of extreme drought and flooding has set a new precedent to the management of the basin. With an ongoing deforestation, groundwater abstraction in urban areas and global climate change, the basin will inevitably confront with further tensions from extreme scarcity in the dry seasons and water excess during the monsoons, unless long-term strategies are implemented at the provincial, regional and national levels.
In addition to this generic challenge, the scale and scope of the tension have since the major flood in 2011 been extended to a new dimension. This incident exposes the vulnerability and the level of disruption and aggravation that a natural disaster could affect the basin integrity in the following four areas.
Urban city management: Particularly the urban area of Bangkok under the management of BMA and MWA has been under a severe pressure to strengthen its infrastructure to protect not only the inner part of the city, but also the entire city and the peripheral zones. BMA is naturally aware of the scale of the challenge, and yet is caught in a difficult position to define and manage a certain set of priorities, particularly in terms of zone management. That is, in order to improve the integrity of the city in the short run, it is most likely required to define and implement the “temporary water-storing areas” (see §5), in parallel to improving the canal efficiency, sewage and drainage systems, limiting groundwater use, and developing a participative campaign calling for collective actions with/from the urban dwellers. Nevertheless, BMA must decide where to water-storing areas should be located and how to manage the technical implementation and the related politics thereof.
Balance of the upstream and downstream: The most contentious dispute in either drought or flood incidents is focused on the management of water distribution across the upper and medium basin areas and at the delta. The dispute is often aggravated under an assumption of political manipulation, human errors, or mismanagement of the water release from the major dams in the upstream. In fact, it is often neglected that the underlying force could well be down to the extent of deforestation and climate change that increases scale, scope and frequency of the incidents. Nevertheless, such could not be perceived as an excuse, since the authority could still have plenty at its disposal in the short run, particularly by employing a more transparent, fact-based and politically nonpartisan approach in the management of the upstream and downstream of the basin. The management and active communication of this matter to a broader group of stakeholders could gain general understanding of the issues at hand and their complications, eg, by including state and non-state experts, trustworthy (and probably neutral) policy advisors, as well as constituents across parties and interest groups.
Industrial area protection: The flooding disaster disrupted the operations of a number of critical industrial areas along the Chao Phraya River in the medium basin (eg, industrial parks in Ayutthaya) and in the delta (eg, in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area). Given a critical role the basin in the global supply chain networks, such as manufacturing of automobiles and parts and semiconductors such as hard drives and electronic devices, the flooding incident, in effect, disrupted the global value chains in the second half of 2011 and also in part in 2012. This issue gave at least three consequences:
- Direct impact to the affected industries in terms of loss of revenue, inventories, tools and machineries, as well as implied costs in terms of restoration and recovery of the physical assets;
- Higher-order impact: It is not clear to which extent the investment decisions were and have been impacted in the affected industries in relation to future investments in Thailand. Even though there are no published statistics in this matter, one should wonder if and how the Government of Thailand, particularly via BOI, could restore investors’ confidence and convince the public and the investors that Thailand shall do whatever it takes to protect interests of the investors going forward, particularly with the prospect of Thailand being one major actor in the ASEAN Economic Community or AEC ; and
- Opportunity costs: The recovery cost made by the industry, BMA and the Government of Thailand, could have been used in creating other policy, economic and social values, should the flooding have not affected the industrial operations in the first place.
Trust in the management of the administration: this flooding incident brought forward a grave concern in terms of crisis management at the provincial, regional and national levels. Even though a number of factors are unpredictable and uncontrollable (eg, the amount of rainfalls and the consequence to the basin), trust in the management capabilities of the administration may be affected, particularly for those who were directly affected (eg, in the discussion of sources of tensions in §6).
- More importantly, on a political level, it is the perception of trust (and mistrust) that matters the most as a critical underlying component of the legitimacy of any elected representatives and administrations to represent the corresponding constituents in the first place.
In fact, the same logic can also be applied to those who were not affected but perceived the unanticipated outcomes affects several others in the same communities by certain policy decisions , particularly in an emergency situation with limited transparency in the decision making process. Generally speaking, the more the administration could preserve the integrity of the entire community (regardless of their political interests), the better chance it gains and eventually becomes a trustworthy representative of the people of the entire community, region and nation going forward.
