Experts want stronger laws on environment

At a public forum on “Suggestions to Reform the Natural Resources and Environment of the Country”, hosted on Tuesday by the Thailand Research Fund (TRF), panellists on environment-quality management raised commonly espoused recommendations on reforming regulations over waste management and control of water and air pollution.
The session was held to back the work on environmental and healthcare reform, which is one of 11 issues on the reform agenda, based on the 2014 interim constitution.
Asst Prof Pichaya Rachdawong, from the engineering faculty at Chulalongkorn University, said a new law solely regulating waste management should be drafted, while existing laws should be revised and strong regulations imposed to punish wrongdoers.
“Previous charters were vague on the state’s duty to provide a good and healthy environment for the people, so the new constitution should have a section about this. The duty of citizens to preserve the environment and [participate in] waste management should be added into the constitution, as well,” he told the forum.
He said these suggestions should be implemented together with the cultivation of awareness through education, to encourage people to understand the importance of waste management and strengthen public participation in the control of garbage. “Improvement of punishment under the law should also be undertaken, in order to find the polluters and punish them. This would make law enforcement more efficient,” he said.
The proposal to introduce new laws on water- and air-pollution control was also put to the forum. Orathai Chavalparit, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s department of environment engineering, said that as Thailand still did not have a direct law to control water pollution, it should introduce a national wastewater management act.
“Now, we don’t have a law to regulate the wastewater from households and all kinds of farming, excluding wastewater from pig farms, so it is hard to control the wastewater and enforce the law,” she said. “Therefore, I suggest that a new act on wastewater management should be drafted, to make it clear about punishment of polluters and remedies for those affected.”
Wongpun Limpaseni, from the faculty of engineering at Chulalongkorn University, also highlighted the lack of a specific law to regulate air-pollution control.
“I recommend that the government draft a law on air-quality management, so we can have a legitimate process to control air pollution, similar to laws in developed countries, such as the Clean Air Act in the United Kingdom and the United States,” he told the forum.
He said such a law would ensure that future government policies did not conflict with air-pollution control efforts, like the first-car policy of the previous elected government, which had encouraged people to buy cars, and consequently aggravated air pollution in cities.