Permits for outdoor burning may be a way to reduce haze in the polluted North

But economists have long recommended that polluters pay for the damage they cause – in this case to the health of millions of people across the northern provinces and the loss of jobs in the tourist industry as visitors flee. If the government is serious about restricting burning, it should offer to sell farmers annual burning permits for a limited area. The number of permits would be reduced year by year, and hence their price would rise. Burning would no longer be a cheap way of clearing land, and farmers would have a strong financial incentive to halt the process. “Slash and burn” farming might have been harmless in medieval Thailand when the population was very small, but is a damaging anachronism in a country with pretensions to belonging to the modern world.

Tony Bottrill

Chiang Mai