Parched paddies strike Thai junta's economic weak spot

Jerome Taylor in Seed Daily via AFP: ...Thailand's vital rice belt is being battered by one of the worst droughts in living memory, forcing impoverished farmers deeper into debt and heaping fresh pain on an already weak economy -- seen as the junta's Achilles heel.

When they seized power in May 2014, Thailand's generals promised to restore order and prosperity after months of street protests paralysed the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra and brought the economy to a near standstill.

By severely curtailing civil liberties, former army chief turned Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha has largely managed to renew calm. But the generals have proven less adept at kickstarting what was once one of Southeast Asia's most vibrant economies.

Post-coup gains of a rebound in tourism and increased fiscal spending have been offset by disappointing exports, declining manufacturing and weak local demand. In May the country's economic planning agency further revised down its GDP growth forecast for the year to between 3.0-4.0 percent, one of the lowest rates in Asia and well below Prayut's hopes for at least 4.5 percent.

Now the kingdom faces the prospect of a dismal main harvest of rice -- traditionally one of the country's top exports.

Water levels in some of the main reservoirs are at their lowest levels in 20 years prompting the junta to call on farmers in the Chao Praya river basin to delay sowing crops. Prayut also ordered officials to clear irrigation channels, dig more ground wells and employ cloud seeding technology to create artificial rainfall. But the wet season has yet to arrive in earnest and water remains precariously elusive for many....

A rice plantation near Chiang Mai, Thailand, in wetter times, shot by Martin-Manuel Beaulne, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license 

Thailand totters towards waste crisis

Bangkok Post via AFP: A blaze at a vast rubbish dump home to six million tonnes of putrefying trash and toxic effluent has kindled fears that poor planning and lax law enforcement are tipping Thailand towards a waste crisis.

Locals had long pressed for the closure of the foul-smelling Praeksa landfill site, which is wedged between a cluster of industrial estates on the fringes of Bangkok. But a ferocious eight-day fire that cloaked the eastern suburbs of the capital in poisonous smoke earlier this year thrust Praeksa to the heart of a national debate over rubbish.

Bangkok produces around 10,000 tonnes of waste a day, a substantial portion of the 27 million tonnes generated each year across the kingdom. The ruling military regime has put waste disposal high on its to-do list, recognising that poorly regulated pits are filling quickly and prone to disaster.

Experts warn that dumps are time bombs for the environment and the increasing number of communities forced to live cheek-by-jowl with them. Open dumping "offers a quick and easy solution in the short run," the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific said in a study, warning of severe environmental problems and long-term health issues caused by contaminated water and land.

Of Thailand's 2,500 open rubbish pits, just a fifth are properly managed, according to the kingdom's Pollution Control Department. The rest are at the mercy of illegal dumping - including of hazardous waste - fires and seepage into nearby land and water systems....

A recycler buying trash door to door in Thailand, shot by Mattes, Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

"Third wave" of malaria resistance lurks on Thai-Cambodia border

IRIN: Public health experts and scientists warn history's third major bout of drug-resistant malaria could spread across Asia to Africa unless "radical action" is taken. Artemisinin-resistant strains on the Thailand-Cambodia border threaten the treatment's efficacy and pose containment challenges.

"The bad news is that drug-resistant parasites are actually found in a wider area than we previously thought," said Nicholas White, professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, and author of a July 2014 study that revealed drug-resistant malaria parasites have spread to critical border regions of Southeast Asia (including the Cambodia-Thailand and Myanmar-Thailand borders), and that resistance to Artemisinin, the world's most effective anti-malarial drug, is now widespread in the region.

Artemisinin is effective against malaria, but it must be used in a combination of several drugs. In 2007, the World Health Assembly (WHA) issued a resolution calling for the end of monotherapies (or using a single drug) to treat malaria as this practice was causing resistance. A full dose of Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) is now prescribed to prevent the development of drug resistance.

According to White, who also chairs the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, despite the new evidence of resistance along the Thailand-Cambodia border, not all hope for effective interventions is lost. He told IRIN: "The good news is that we can still treat it using longer ACT courses and we can map its spread using a molecular marker."...

Frustrated Thais work on flood management in legislative vacuum

Thin Lei Win at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: On a blistering May afternoon, consultants hired by the Thai government unveil the next phase of a scheme aimed at preventing a repeat of Thailand’s 2011 floods, its worst in half a century. Yet the snazzy presentation fails to persuade local leaders and villagers from provinces west of the capital Bangkok.

They are unhappy with plans to dredge canals, as well as the focus on large infrastructure projects. What’s more, construction work that’s already finished was done without their knowledge or consent, they complain.

By the end of the four-hour session at the Nakhon Pathom office of the government’s irrigation department, which oversees water management in Thailand, the two dozen community representatives are frustrated and distrustful. “If water overflows into farm land, what happens? If there’s damage, who will be responsible?” asks one community leader, voicing widespread scepticism in the room over the scheme’s effectiveness. Questions about flooding are on the mind of many as the monsoon season approaches.

Adding to the worry, Thailand’s political paralysis - following an army coup last month – has left in limbo a law that could help address water management problems exposed by the 2011 floods, such as the lack of a central agency to handle water resources.

Memories of those floods - which killed 800 people, affected nearly 14 million and disrupted global supply chains - loom large at the irrigation department meeting.

....The integrated water law is now stuck with the Law Reform Commission of Thailand. Under the previous constitution, the final draft of the law could be proposed either to the government or parliament....

2011 flooding near Bangkok, shot by DANIEL JULIE, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Thai floods force closure of 17 factories in industrial zone

Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Reuters: Seventeen factories were temporarily shut on Monday in a major Thai industrial zone dominated by foreign companies, after flood waters blocked nearby roads, a senior official said.

But the official did not identify the stricken plants at the Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate, a sprawling manufacturing zone home to more than 500 factories, located 114 km (71 miles) east of the capital, Bangkok.

The 17 factories were shut after the workers proved unable to reach them and the navy has been asked to help pump out the water, Wibun Krommadit, Amata's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "There is flood water outside the premises and on some surrounding roads, blocking entry for workers who are unable to easily get to work," Wibun said.

Nearly half the factories in the industrial estate are operated by Japanese firms. Floods have spread across more than half of Thailand's provinces this year, but the government has ruled out any repeat of the devastating floods of late 2011.

Those floods were the worst in half a century and caused massive disruption to industry and global supply chains, slashing economic growth to just 0.1 percent in 2011....

October, 2011 flooding in Thailand, shot by DANIEL JULIE, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Industry alarm over worsening Thai floods

Space Daily via AFP: Soldiers plucked stranded homeowners from chest-deep water and floods threatened major manufacturing plants in central Thailand as international firms raised alarm over authorities' ability to handle the inundations.

Heavy rains have swept the kingdom in recent days, with the worst of the flooding concentrated in central and eastern provinces where international factories have been waterlogged in a development that has raised parallels with devastating inundations two years ago.

"We have not received any help from the government -- we are disappointed with them," said a member of the management team at a subsidiary of Japanese electronics and auto giant Mitsubishi, whose plant at in Chonburi province's Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate is one of several surrounded by water.

"We cannot calculate the losses right now," she told AFP, asking not to be named, but added that the factory had been shuttered for three days and some 800 employees had been sent home on full pay....

Image from a November, 2011 flood in Thailand, shot by DANIEL JULIE, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Typhoon leaves 74 missing in China as Thailand, Vietnam brace for floods

Reuters: Seventy-four Chinese fishermen were missing on Monday after a typhoon sunk three fishing boats in the South China Sea as Thailand and Vietnam braced for torrential rain and flooding.

The ships were hit by Typhoon Wutip on Sunday as they navigated gales near the Paracel Islands, about 330 km from China's island province of Hainan, state news agency Xinhua said, citing sources with the Hainan maritime search and rescue center.

Rescuers had rescued 14 survivors, the sources said. The boats were sailing from the southern province of Guangdong.

Rains from the storm are expected to reach Vietnam on Monday before hitting Thailand on Tuesday.

Thai officials warned that more heavy rains could inundate already flood-hit areas of the northeast. At least 22 people have been killed in this year's flooding....

Typhoon Wutip on September 30, 2013, from NASA

Thai provinces hit by floods, authorities say industry safe

Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Reuters: Nine people have died and more than 1 million have been affected by flooding in Thailand, officials said on Wednesday, but authorities offered assurances that floodwaters would not reach central industrial areas and near Bangkok as in 2011.

Widespread floods in 2011 killed more than 800 people and caused massive disruption to industry, cutting economic growth that year to just 0.1 percent. Authorities discount the possibility of any similar disruption, but have expressed concern over one industrial estate in Ayutthaya province, 80 km (50 miles) north of Bangkok.

"We are monitoring Saha Rattana Nakorn complex in Ayutthaya, where flood walls are only 30 percent complete, but are confident that we will be able to take care of all industrial estates," Chatchai Promlert, director general of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department, told Reuters.

Ruangrit Kusolgambot, director of the estate which specialises in production of parts for global auto makers, told Reuters the water would not enter the compound. "The water is a safe distance from our complex and water levels in surrounding areas have decreased significantly over the past few days" he said....

Greater Mekong countries 'lost one-third of forest cover in 40 years'

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): Five Asian countries have lost nearly one-third of their forests in the last 35 years and could be left with little more than 10-20% of their original cover by 2030 – with devastating effects on wildlife and humans, a new report suggests.

Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam have lost nearly 40m hectares (ha) of forest cover since 1980 but have retained about 98m ha of natural forest, just over half of the region's land area.

Using satellite data, the WWF researchers calculated that since 1980, Cambodia has lost 22% of its 1973 forest cover, Laos and Burma 24%, and Thailand and Vietnam 43%.

The report on ecosystems in the greater Mekong area warns that these countries risk losing more than one-third of their remaining forest cover within the next two decades if they fail to increase protection.

"The greater Mekong is at a crossroads," said Peter Cutter, landscape conservation manager with WWF-Greater Mekong. "One path leads to further declines in biodiversity and livelihoods, but if natural resources are managed responsibly, this region can pursue a course that will secure a healthy and prosperous future for its people."...

A Thai rain forest, shot by Michael Cory, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Can Thailand adapt to climate change?

Bandid Nijathaworn in Thailand Business News: Flooding in Bangkok shut down global supply chains, torrential storms in Beijing and the Philippines took lives, and, most recently, the rare landfall of a hurricane in the US northeast caused immense and multifarious damage and suffering.

Natural disasters have always occurred, but in the 21st century to date, humanity is witnessing unprecedented climatic variations while hundreds of millions of people migrate to increasingly vulnerable coastal urban areas.

Construction of flood prevention walls along the rivers are aimed at replacing sandbag embankment used during the flood crisis last year. It’s clear – global challenges can be tackled, and the private and public sector are beginning to acknowledge the urgency in implementing solutions. The greatest hill to climb now is enabling the environment for investment in building resilient communities that will be ready to adapt to a changing world.

The World Bank reports that us$ 75 billion-us$ 100 billion annually will be needed for the next 40 years or more for developing countries to adapt to these challenges and prevent loss of life and jobs. The difference remaining after current allocation (about US$ 3.5 billion-US$ 9 billion, according to the OECD) is US$ 71.5 billion-US$ 91 billion.

The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change is addressing these and other climate issues during the next two years and will bring the message of the urgent need to adapt to its wide network of business and government leaders. When the Council met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, November 12-14, for the Summit on the Global Agenda 2012, it developed work plans for its three focus areas: adaptation metrics, climate smart investments, and communications and engagement...

Migration not always a way to adapt

IRIN: As the impact of climate change unfolds, many have predicted forbidding scenarios of millions of impoverished people flooding into often affluent countries. Yet a ground-breaking study released on 28 November reveals a more nuanced relationship between climate variability and migration, which could provide insight into how events might transpire in the coming years.

The study, carried out by Care International and the UN University (UNU) in eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, reveals that in nearly all instances where rains have become too scarce for farming, people have migrated - but within the national borders.

The project also considered possible future scenarios in Tanzania, where even scarcer rains over the next 25 years were projected to double migration from vulnerable households.  The project’s researchers hope their findings will inform the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks, currently taking place in Doha, by persuading participants to speed up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and develop effective policies to adapt to rising temperatures.

The three-year research project, Where the rain falls: climate change, hunger and human mobility, covered over 1,300 households and 2,000 individuals in Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Guatemala, Peru, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam. 

...It is one of the first empirical efforts to explore how poor households use migration as a risk management strategy to deal with climate stressors and food insecurity. The study also offers insight into how households adjust their behaviour in the face of these changes, which could inform how policymakers support rural communities....

Young people in Guatemala in 1980, shot by Infrogmation, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Flood-prone Thai cities in urgent need of a new urban vision

Richard Friend in the Nation (Thailand): It's that time of year again and we are anxiously watching the weather in fear of floods. The occurrence and impact of annual monsoon floods appear to be intensifying. At the height of last year's flood in the Central Plains, I entered a taxi in downtown Bangkok. The radio was airing a discussion on flooding.

For my taxi driver, the cause of the problem was obvious - "It's all about the spread of towns, housing and industrial estates. We should never have built in the floodplain areas in the Central Plains and Bangkok!"

Sometimes the most obvious explanations for problems are the most easily ignored. It does not take a great leap of the imagination to realise that filling in land that floods naturally every year, blocking natural drainage in a vast floodplain ecosystem, and clearing the natural cover of the watersheds across the Central Plains will take its toll. But it seems that this has not been reflected in policy, planning and practice.

The transformation Thailand has gone through over the last 25 years is phenomenal. You can see this from satellite images of the country over the last quarter century, showing where forest cover on the border has come to a stop.

But we must also look at where and how we have built our homes, factories, shops and roads.  By and large, we have built in rich agricultural land, digging up rice fields, and filling in areas that manage natural water flows. If you travel around Bangkok and the Central Plains, in between the roads and buildings you can clearly see the vegetation fighting back against the concrete. In between the modern buildings the land is still what it always has been - a wetland in which flooding is part of the natural annual cycle....

From October 11, 2011, a true-colour satellite image showing flooding in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani Provinces in Central Thailand (right), compared to before the flooding (left). From NASA

United Nations launches initiative to plug 'gaps' in Thai disaster management

Phuket Gazette (Thailand): Marking nearly one year ago since floodwaters inundated most of Thailand and its capital Bangkok, the Royal Thai Government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched a new initiative today to boost the capacity of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) to be able to respond to large-scale floods and other natural disasters.

The DDPM is the central agency in Thailand responsible for coordinating disaster response and disaster risk reduction. Its Phuket office features frequently in the news, particularly during monsoon season floods and in the days before and after tsunami drills and tower tests.

“This partnership with UNDP is an opportunity to enhance the level of knowledge and the disaster management capacity of Thailand to acceptable international standards,” said Bangkok-based Wiboon Sanguanpong, Director-General of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation.

“Disaster severity is increasing and is impacting Thailand to a much greater extent. Department staff and the organization as a whole need to learn new knowledge and skills to deal with the increasing complexity.”

The three-year initiative will strengthen the capacity of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation to adapt to disasters when they occur, by boosting the institutional capacity of both the Department and related line ministries to be better prepared to address climate change and environmental security issues....

Thai military and volunteers work to repair a leak in a dike on the canal in On Nut, Bangkok. The flooding was a mere 300 meters away from Bangkok's main thoroughfare Sukhumvit, but has been contained, October 31, 2011. (VOA)

Floods dampen Thai adaptation plans

Marwaan Macan-Markar in IPS: Thailand’s flood-management blueprint  received a jolt when the dykes in Sukhothai were breached by the rain-swollen Yom river last week, submerging large stretches of the former royal capital.Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra toured the flood-damaged historic city 430 km north of Bangkok, reliving relief operations that were mounted last year when the central plains, including the capital, were hit by the worst floods in the country’s history.

The barriers designed to prevent the river overflowing were in need of repair, but this “wasn’t done after last year’s flood,” science and technology minister Plodprasop Suraswadi told a local radio station.

While the scale of the damage from last week’s floods is marginal when compared with last year’s historic disaster, the timing of this latest threat – which could also affect other towns and cities downstream from Sukhothai - puts the one-year-old Yingluck administration in a spot.

After all, it comes barely two weeks after the government unveiled plans about its flood management strategy for the country that conveyed a “new attitude towards coping with floods in urban areas.”

The 11.5-billion-dollar flood management plans were conceived to avoid the mistakes from the past, aiming to “go beyond just defending urban centres from floods,” says Anond Snidvongs, a Thai flood expert. “The main principle in the plan is to include the need to live with the impacts of climate change.”....

Thailand's flood defences under strain again

Reuters: Up to a quarter of Thailand's provinces, including the tourist resort of Ayutthaya, have been inundated by floodwaters amid concerns the government failed to act fast enough to strengthen flood defences after last year's devastating floods.

Thousands have fled their homes in Northern Thailand after heavy rain caused a major river to overflow at the start of the month, sending up to a meter of water into some towns. So far, four people have died.

Scenes of residents wading through waist-high water and stacking large sandbags around shops and homes in Sukhothai, about 430 km (265 miles) north of the capital Bangkok, are a stark reminder of last year's floods that killed more than 800 people.

Thailand registered just 0.1 percent annual growth in 2011, largely as a result of the floods which swept down into Bangkok.

Although the latest flooding is not as bad as a year ago, another disaster could deal a blow to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's Puea Thai government which came under fire for mismanaging the 2011 crisis....

An image from the 2011 floods in Thailand, shot by ลิดกับเป้, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Could Thailand withstand another flood?

Asia Sentinel: A year ago, central Thailand was inundated with what may have been the worst floods in the country’s history, covering the Ayutthaya plain with up to three meters of water and drowning a major segment of the multinational car and electronics industries that had settled there.

The question today is whether it could happen again. Although the Thai government has developed a reconstruction plan focused on immediate relief and recovery and as well as projected long-term solutions including raising dykes, extensive reforestation and other solutions, there are reasons to be concerned whether the government is moving fast enough.

Certainly, as climate change has grown more severe, severe weather incidents have been picking up all over the region. Although there have been no signs so far that Thailand might take another hit like the country got from last year’s Tropical Storm Nock Ten, which inundated 20 Thai provinces, at least 85,000 people in Myanmar next door to Thailand were forced out of their homes this month by what has been described as the worst flooding since 2004.

Other cities have been hit hard as well. Manila has been flooded repeatedly. Beijing was hit by the heaviest rainfall in 60 years in late July, leaving 37 people dead and thousands stranded at the city’s main airport. Roofs collapsed and downed power lines electrocuted an unknown number of people Taiwan has been battered by Tropical Storm Tambin, which dropped 500 mm of rain on the southern part of the island and appears about to return it again. Tropical Storm Bolaven has turned into a super typhoon, with sustained winds of 185 km per hour and is headed straight up the Yellow Sea towards North Korea. Citizens of Jiangsu in China have been warned to prepare for severe weather.

“While the 2011 (Thai) flood disaster was exceptional in scale and impact, climate change projections suggest that natural disasters of this kind are likely to occur more frequently and more severely in Thailand in the years ahead,” the Asia Foundation warned in a recent report. “It is important to recognize that this unique moment needs to extend beyond the communities that were most seriously affected by the 2011 flooding and that Thailand needs to develop good practices, lessons learned, and knowledge-sharing to shape and influence broader and longer-term environmental governance in Thailand.”...

Floodwaters inundated Rojana Industrial Park in Ayutthaya Province, Thailand, in the 2011 inundation. US Marine Corps photo

Experts raise concerns about transparency in Thailand's flood-prevention measures.

Whichit Chaitrong in the Nation (Thailand): Disaster experts and businesses leaders have warned the government about the lack of transparency and doubts about the cost-effectiveness of the Bt350-billion spending plan for flood prevention.

Seree Supharatid, director of the Rangsit University's Centre on Climate Change and Disaster Centre, yesterday expressed concerns over the government's spending plan for flood prevention in the long run.

He said the country may not get the best flood solutions as Plodprasop Suraswadee, minister of science and technology, demanded that foreign and local contractors submit their conceptual plan within three months from now. "The three-month period is too short to make a good proposal; it should be at least six months," said Seree, at a seminar hosted by the Anti-Corruption Network movement.

He explained that in the short period, contractors could not make the best proposal as the landscape has been totally changed after the devastating flood last year. Since then industrial parks, communities and individuals have built their own flood barriers, he said. "Even if it is a small river basin we spend about two years studying it," he said.

He said that flood prevention was not like building roads and railways as the flood plan needs a combination of various projects, such as water retention, flood barriers and floodways.

...He warned that the government should not rush and plan only for the next 20 years but should look 50 to 100 years ahead. For example, Bangkok is sinking every year by 2.5 centimetres and within 50 years it will sink 1.5 metres...

From 2011, a true-color satellite image showing flooding in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani Provinces in Central Thailand.

Managing the Mekong

Shada Islam in Dawn (Pakistan): ...As it prepares to host the ninth Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem) in early November, Laos is also gearing up for more international scrutiny of its policies. And with Vientiane situated on the bend of one of the world’s largest and most legendary rivers — the Mekong — world attention is focused on how Southeast Asia’s smallest and poorest nation is going to deal with increasingly shrill world demands that it stop plans to build a hydroelectric dam on the mythical river.

Laos is not alone in having to deal with controversy and potential confrontation over the sharing of the world’s water resources. Almost all majestic rivers — the kind that songs are written about and which have become part of our global heritage — are the source of tension among neighbouring nations. Think about the Indus, the Ganges, the Amazon and the Nile.

...Countries can either opt for competition and protectionism over water or decide to work together to ensure the equitable, efficient and sustainable management of water resources. Interestingly — and at least for the moment — Laos appears to have opted for the second track. After a spate of criticism from its neighbours over plans to build a huge, multi-billion-dollar dam on the Mekong, officials in Vientiane say work on the dam has been suspended in order to undertake further studies on the impact of the project.

Laos has made no secret of its plans to use the Mekong to expand its generating capacity and sell electricity to its neighbours. But according to reports, Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith admitted recently at a regional meeting in Cambodia that the Lao government had decided to postpone the construction of the dam because “We have to do further studies”....

A gondola on the Mekong in Laos, shot by Ricardo Hurtubia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Thai farmers fight ‘global warming fines’

By Prangtip Daorueng in IPS, an infuriating instance of a government using climate change as an excuse to dispossess the rural poor: Small farmers in the Baan Pra village of Thailand’s southern Trang province have been living in anxiety ever since they were slapped with stiff fines by the government in 2006 and ordered to vacate their ancestral lands for ‘contributing to global warming’.

Last month, the villagers, after suffering bankruptcy and loss of land, appealed in an administrative court, pleading against a controversial formula used by the department of national park, wildlife and plant conservation under the environment ministry to compute the fines and evict them.

Baan Pra’s ordeal is not an isolated. Thousands of smallholders with farmlands abutting national forests have been in distress ever since the environment ministry began enforcing the 1992 National Environmental Quality Act five years ago.

According to the Land Reform Network (LRN) that represents community-based farming throughout the country, approximately 2,000 small farmers hae been booked for causing global warming nationwide. LRN is one of five civil society groups assisting the Baan Pra villagers in resisting the draconian policy.

...“Being charged for causing global warming and fined sums of money they never dreamt of owning were a big shock to the villagers,” said Boon Saejung, LRN coordinator in Baantad mountain area which covers four southern provinces including Trang....

A satellite view of Trang, Thailand, from NASA

Meeting reviews Mekong projects

Vietnam News: Foreign ministers from Lower Mekong nations and the US convened for their fifth meeting yesterday in Phnom Penh to review the implementation of programmes on the environment, education, health and infrastructure.

This year's meeting saw the first presence of Myanmar as an official Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) partner nation, together with Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Viet Nam. At the meeting, the ministers agreed to add a new pillar of agriculture and food security chaired by Myanmar, to establish the pillar "connectivity" on the basis of broadening the co-operation content in infrastructure, and strengthen co-operation with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) while broadening programmes on water.

The environment and water pillar, formerly known as the environment pillar, will be chaired by Viet Nam. The meeting agreed to strengthen co-ordination among LMI countries through a co-ordination network. They also decided to establish an LMI working group of experts and outstanding figures.

The ministers also ratified a LMI concept paper and a plan of action to implement the LMI during 2011-15, while releasing a statement on gender equality and female empowerment. A LMI working group for gender was also formed.

At the meeting, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced an LMI programme to 2020, pledging a US$50 million assistance package for LMI activities over the next three years, as well as committing $2 million for the fisheries programme and $1 million for a MRC research programme on the impacts of hydroelectric dams on the main flow of the Mekong River.

On the same day, the Friends of Lower Mekong (FLM) Ministerial Meeting also took place in Phnom Penh, bringing together foreign ministers and high-ranking officials from the LMI countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the European Union, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, among others....

The Mekong River in Laos, shot by Allie Caulfield, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license