Environment and natural resources
Bangkok is sinking fast
For the more or less 10 million people living in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok, flooding is a common and recurring phenomenon. This is partly due to the city’s geographic location at the southern end of the Chao Phraya River Basin, as well as its ...
Smog crisis in North blamed on authorities’ top-down approach
Academics put down the authorities’ failure to control this year’s smog crisis in the North to an inappropriate “command-and-control approach”, adding that this problem will persist if the strategy is not revised.Keep reading ...
Pratch Rujivanarom
A clear path to cleaner air?
Upgrading European emission standards is high on the agenda for policymakers amid hazardous dust pollution and PM2.5 particles in the northern, northeastern and central regions. Thailand adopted the standards in 1996 to tackle pollution, aiming to implement them a year later. At that time, Thailand ...
Piyachart Maikaew & Yuthana Praiwan
Concern grows over lifting ban on elephant exports
Animal-rights activists are up in arms over the Commerce Ministry’s plan to legalise the export of live domesticated elephants, saying the elephants could be harmed during transportation abroad – and wild elephants would likely pay a price too.Keep reading ...
Pratch Rujivanarom
Thai government desperately needs a ‘clean air act’
Environment campaigners are urging the government to approve a clean-air act to solve the country’s chronic smog problem and honour citizens’ right to breathe clean air.Dr Wirun Limsawart, a policy analyst at the Society and Health Institute and member of the Clean Air Network Thailand, ...
Pratch Rujivanarom
Massive corals off Rayong beginning to bleach
Massive and aged corals have started to bleach off the coast of Rayong in the Gulf of Thailand.Thon Thamrongnawasawat, assistant dean of the Faculty of Fisheries at Kasetsart University and a marine biologist, described the change as an “emergency situation”.Keep reading ...
New regulation lifts ban on export of elephants
Elephants and elephant-related products can again be exported from Thailand under a new regulation from the Commerce Ministry, which may provoke controversy and debate over whether it violates the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).Keep reading ...
Pratch Rujivanarom
GITSDA reports on water situation
During the dry season, GISTDA has issued a report on the situation at small water sources and farm areas using satellite images, serving as initial analysis for other agencies related to water management.In the past week, GISTDA has analysed 141,022 small surface-level ponds no larger ...
Tanakorn Sangiam
River sanctuaries help giant fish recover in Southeast Asia
NGAO RIVER, THAILAND – It may run through a region riven by conflict, but western Thailand’s Ngao River, near the troubled border with Myanmar, is a peaceful haven to the more than 50 species of fish living in it. Below Ban Luiy, one of the ...
Giving a dam about the Mekong
Originating in the Tibetan highlands and running through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the Mekong and its tributaries provide water, food and income for 60 million people. The longest river in Southeast Asia is home to the world’s largest inland fishery. It ...
Sheith Khidhir