Farm sector must adapt to reality of global warming, group says

"This question is emerging amid the serious global-warming problem. This is a factor that we can't control. The best we can do is to reduce the impacts," Sirithan Pairoj-Boriboon, executive director of TGO, said recently.

The recent bad weather in Thailand is the result of global warming, he said. The rainy season has been starting earlier and earlier in recent years, and the most serious problem is flooding. The sector that has been affected the most is agriculture, so agencies should start thinking about adapting the sector, he said.

"So, can we change ourselves to cope with the problem? We may have to change the arable areas or the seasonal crops if we want the agricultural sector to survive," he said.

TGO would proceed with its project to lead Thailand into a low-carbon society, with the concept of encouraging local administrations upcountry to invest in pedestrian areas and bicycle lanes to create more choices for transportation, he said.

Then companies - which may start with those that are keen on corporate social responsibility activities or emit much carbon into the atmosphere - would buy carbon credits from these local administrations, he said.

TGO will start from a few communities in the provinces. If the project is successful, it will ask the government to support the activity and spread it to other areas nationwide. This project has benefits for both local communities and the private sector.

FOCUS ON FORESTS

Thailand recently hosted the Climate Thailand Conference under the theme, "Climate Change and Green Economy: Pathway to Response", which was the second national carbon-neutral conference.

The focus of this year's event was the country's forests. TGO has launched the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the United Nations and Thailand's First Assessment Report on Climate Change. The key finding was that forest destruction has had a heavy impact on climate change in this country during the past decades.

For example, the surface tem-perature in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea from 1967-2006 rose by 0.1 degrees Celsius per decade. The country's average temperature tended to increase by 0.95 degrees from 1955-2009, higher than the global average of 0.69 degrees.

This is concrete evidence to show that the climate change problem in Thailand would grow worse if the country does nothing, he added.