Time now to heed the advice of HM the King

The global demand for daily sustenance will more than double over the next half-century. The central issue influencing human destiny is neither the global financial crisis nor climate change, but whether humanity can accommodate and achieve an enormous sustainable harvest. Scarcities of almost everything to produce high yields of foodstuff – fresh water, farmland, mineral nutrients, oil, natural gas and fish – play into and compound the other factors.

As a major exporter of rice and fruit, Thailand and Asean should reassess priorities and plan to increase investments in agricultural stocks, which will also help reduce urban-rural inequities and socio-economic disparity. Pragmatic idealists should envision a greener, sustainable sufficiency economy where agricultural products and freshwater sources are treated with as high a regard as oil and gas

With increasingly frequent global disasters and severe weather extremes, government policies must better plan how to curtail misuse and overuse of our deteriorating environment, ensuring more secure and saner futures for our offspring.

Charles Frederickson

Bangkok