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

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. 

What we have witnessed is a complete transformation of the whole of the Bangkok-Central Plains delta-floodplain ecosystem, most of which lies barely above sea level.

It is not as if we were not warned. As this construction boom took hold, it occurred against local land use-planning efforts that sought to designate green space. 

These were not merely inspired by conservation concerns, but by a realisation of the risks of flooding, and the potential economic costs that such flooding would bring. 

But land-use plans were ignored in practice and simply updated after-the-fact to keep up with the changes that had already occurred. 

While the Central Plains and Bangkok were the first parts of the country to witness this kind of development, they are no longer alone. 

This same pattern of development – targeting floodplains for construction, putting in road networks in ways that impede natural drainage – is unfolding across the country as urban areas expand. 

But the context is taking a new turn. Climate-change science suggests we are going to see more intense rainy seasons marked by more frequent and heavier storms. Some scientists suggest that the pattern of the monsoon is shifting, bringing rainfall more directly into the Gulf of Thailand, Bangkok and the Central Plains. As our cities grow, we have lost much of the natural drainage capacity. At the same time as cities grow our demand for water will increase. But climate scientists also warn that we will be facing greater water shortages in the dry season. 

While much of the effort of the last year  in response to 2011’s floods has focused on short-term response measures – putting up walls, stockpiling sandbags, dredging canals – all framed as a part of a fight or a war, one of the root causes that my taxi driver so clearly articulated appears to have been forgotten. 

Even though Thailand has been an industrialised country for 25 years, there are still gaps in terms of ensuring effective national urban development strategy, policy or practice. Local authorities struggle to manage an urbanisation trend that everyone appears to want, but no one wants to manage.

But now really is the time to get on top of these problems. Decisions made today, and the concrete poured now, will shape our landscape for decades to come and lock us into a whole set of risks that climate change will only intensify.

The good news is that Thailand has long built in ways that allow life to flourish with flooding. We see this through traditional housing on stilts and the protection of natural floodplain habitats. Several Thai cities have begun to address environmental problems, and are experimenting with rehabilitating urban waterways and flood-retention areas to reduce flood risk. There is also plenty of experience around the world showing how to build urban environments that fit with natural circumstances and which value green space with city farms and public parks, clean and affordable transport, and energy-efficient buildings. 

What we urgently need is some clear vision of the urban future we want for our children, rather than blindly following the path of the last 25 years. This needs to be supported by a greater common understanding of the risks and hazards associated with urbanisation and climate change, and more informed public debate on options for our urban future.

 

Richard Friend is a Bangkok-based senior scientist with the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, a regional partner involved in the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) programme.