The Thai government is pressing on with a broad agenda to manage water, with the ongoing protection of Bangkok – the country’s overwhelming economic powerhouse region – at its heart.
It has started to implement its “Chao Phraya 9 Plans”, which includes water management investments with an estimated cost of US$9.4 billion. That includes hydraulic infrastructure and expanding water storage capacity.
The scars of the devastation from deadly floods in 2011 still feel raw in many parts. At that time, the capital was ravaged by a combination of powerful rainfall and flood waters flowing from the north, which killed 815 people and caused US$46.5 billion in damages.
Some industry experts say it needs to spend more and build more to contend with the rising challenge, amid the backdrop of northern Thailand experiencing exceptionally destructive flooding this wet season.
The World Bank has been in discussions to support the investments and its senior water resources management specialist, Mr Sanjay Pahuja, says Thailand vastly underspends on flood control, compared with Japan for example, which has consistently spent 1 per cent of its GDP every year on the issue.
“This speaks to a realisation of people who say, wow, we cannot afford those kinds of (damaging) events,” he told a panel discussion this month, noting that Thailand only spent 0.04 per cent of GDP on such flood controls.
“These are nation building exercises, and we have to realise that if we don’t do that, we’re just running on a treadmill.”
Mr Pahuja noted the dangerous nexus that existed for Bangkok at present – a city facing a worsening flood hazard in a highly exposed region with an outsized concentration of people, production, strategic skills and supply chains.
“There are not that many places in the world that have such a worrisome combination”, he said.
“For some areas in Thailand, flood protection is not just another folder or business that you have to do. It is much more fundamental, and if you don’t do it, nothing else that you do would matter.
JAKARTA: WET FEET WITHOUT WARNING
In Jakarta, a similar story is playing out. Here too, grand ideas of engineering swirl around the heads of local residents just trying to keep their feet dry.
Each night, Madam Fatimah listens anxiously to the waves crashing on the 10m tall concrete wall protecting her sinking neighbourhood, Muara Baru, from the rising sea.
During full and new moons when the tides are at their peak or during the monsoon season when the seas are rough, she barely sleeps at all.
The coastal floods sometimes come unexpectedly and without warning.
