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The impacts of climate change on Thailand - namely prolonged droughts, decreased agricultural and fishery yields, violent flooding, sea level rise and health-related issues - are already serious and will likely create or exacerbate a number of additional problems during the next few decades. These include water management challenges, heightening of class-related tensions, a flood of new immigrants and refugees, damage to the tourism industry and conflict with China over dam-building. While the government has begun framing policies to both adapt to and mitigate climate change, its response so far has been limited due to shortcomings in both the planning and implementation processes. Thailand's ongoing political crisis also diverts decision-maker's attention away from this issue. In the coming decades, Thailand's institutional structure and political economy will hinder its capacity to address climate change and, while these capacities will improve as the country democratizes, it will still be limited. Consequently, climate change will retard the country's growth and enormously strain the country's political system, state and society.
Keywords: Thailand, climate change, Thai institutional capacity, climate change policy, Thai political economy.
In 2010 Thailand faced its worst drought in 20 years resulting in the water level of the Mekong River falling to its lowest level in 50 years. "According to villagers who live along the river in Thailand ... the Mekong [was] really drying. At some point, people seem [ed] to be able to even walk across the river, which has never happened before", said Srisuwan Kuankajorn, co-director of the Thai environmental non-governmental organization (NGO), Terra.1 According to Thailand's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, the drought negatively affected at least 7.6 million people in 59 of the country's 76 provinces. According to Kuankajorn, Thais who lived in the north, particularly Chiang Rai, were "in big trouble" because they could not fish, a vital source of income and protein. Jeremy Bird, head of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), added, "It is really a question of very low water levels for communities, chinking supplies for agriculture, and for livestock."2
The drought also heightened tensions over water resource management within the region. A coalition of regional NGOs, including Thai NGOs, charged that Chinese dam construction along the upper levels of the Mekong River were causing unnatural water level...