Search results

This study aims to explain the existing adaptation practices in an urbanized sub-region in the lower Chao Phraya River basin (CPRB) across different scales and dimensions. It offers an overview of water hazards in urban areas along the river basin to discover ways to deal with and recover from hazards via understanding the implications of existing and potential practice for the mitigation of hydrological hazards.

First, this study collected current adaptation strategies and measures from interview, focus group discussion, workshop organization, etc. to get the current adaptation strategies/measures for the whole CPRB and each specific area. Second, this study identified a set of criteria for evaluation from review of current publications and official reports. Then, the current adaptation strategies/measures were examined through a set of criteria to obtain the current situation of existing practices. Finally, analysis of key challenges and opportunities was done to propose supporting guidelines to reduce hydrological risks and incorporate further adaptation measures needed to boost resilience in the area.

Adaptation methods should focus on mixed adaptation, which integrates structural, social, organizational and natural adaptation, and to develop multi-dimensional collaboration. The adaption strategy has restricted the usage of some technologies and technical know-how, particularly in the area of climate change. As a result, intentional adaptation to become more inventive is required, to reduce hazards and improve disaster-response capacity. The various adaptation measures should be more integrated or more adaptive and to achieve greater cohesion and mutual benefit of individual measures, such as community-based adaptation or community-driven slum upgrading.

Hydrological risks are wreaking havoc on social, economic and environmental elements, particularly river flood, flash flood and drought in the Asia-Pacific region. Twenty-two existing adaptation options were evaluated with evaluation criteria such as scales of risks/impacts reduction, benefits of environmental and socio-economic and institutional aspects. The findings highlight the current situation of existing practices, key challenges and opportunities, which emphasized on natural-based solutions, raising knowledge and awareness and lessons learned on adaptation of hydrological risks. The existing adaptation measures will be suggested as supporting guidelines and master plans to minimize the hydrological risks.

Along the 14th parallel, day and night oscillate exactly between predictable twelve hour divisions and months pass with little change in temperature barely affected by the earth's axial tilt. However between May and October, a shift in atmospheric currents brings monsoon rains from the Indonesian archipelago north to the mountain ranges ringing northern Thailand whose runoff feeds the Mae Nam Chao Phraya River Basin and Bangkok sprawling across its flat, silted tidal delta. Seasonal cycles of precipitation rather than temperature extremes of winter and summer bring rhythm to life just above the equator, putting into motion human cycles of planting, harvest and migration, as well as shaping Thai beliefs and rituals (Fig. 1).

This paper aims to study dams on transboundary rivers. In this study, the case of the Nu–Salween–Thanlwin River is reviewed. This study is an attempt toward developing a conceptual model to explain the unequal hydropower exchange of hydropower dams on transboundary rivers.

This paper reviews big dam project plans on the Salween–Thanlwin River near the Myanmar–Thailand border from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. The evidence is drawn from an extensive review of academic literature, reports, newspapers and websites on this topic. Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power, namely, geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power, are reviewed in the case of the Salween–Thanlwin River and its riparian states.

On the basis of a realist discourse, power relationships between dams and their socio-environmental effects are discussed from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. Multiple levels of power asymmetry regarding geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power are observed. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers. They invest in hydroelectric dams of adjacent developing states and buy back most of the electricity generated to fuel their industrialization and urbanization. Weak states generally do not have high bargaining power. They depend on the investment of high material power states for domestic and economic development and gain from the export of electricity. However, the externalities of hydropower dams are transferred to these weak states. This contributes to an unequal hydropower exchange model.

The model provides an analytical framework for hydropower dam projects through which comprehensive and multidimensional views are extracted. Academia, policymakers, private developers, international development agencies and nongovernment organizations will have a better understanding of hydropower dam projects and the interactions among riparian states.

This conceptual model stems from Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power – geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power. The author limits the framework to hydroelectric dams in transboundary rivers. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers that dominate the dam development projects and exchange process.

In Thailand, as in many other developing countries, a significant and coherent policy response to the challenges posed by climate change is just beginning to emerge. The initial emphasis was on meeting international reporting obligations and building a better understanding of the issues (OEPP, 2000). Most climate policy attention has focused on mitigation, in particular of the difficulties, and occasionally taking advantage of the opportunities, in decoupling growth in greenhouse gas emissions from social and economic development. While early concerns were expressed about impacts on water resources and agriculture, not much attention has been given to implementing specific adaptation measures.

This exploratory study discusses the policy learning process of the development of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy.

The paper discusses how DRR has and has not developed in Thailand through the two major disasters: the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Great Flood. The information was collected by documentary analysis to gain a historical and critical understanding of the development of the system and policy of DRR in Thailand. Additionally, key stakeholders' interviews were undertaken to supplement the analysis.

The paper demonstrates that Thailand's DRR development has been “reactive” rather than “proactive”, being largely directed by global DRR actors.

Being a small-scale study, the sample size was small. The analysis and argument would be consolidated with an increase in the number of interviews.

The model can help deconstruct which dimension of the learning process a government has/has not achieved well.

The application of the “restrictive-expansive policy learning” model, which identifies different dimensions of policy learning, reveals that the Thai government's policy learning was of a mixed nature.

As part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES), a long-term ecological research project that conducts research in metropolitan Baltimore as an ecological system, scientists have measured the effect of urbanization on entire watersheds, such as Gwynns Falls, from headwaters to the Chesapeake Bay. In general, urbanization has buried many seasonal headwater streams and has contributed to the erosion of extant streams due to flashy urban storm runoff in what was a slow moving, beaver-dominated landscape (Elmore & Kaushal, 2008; Brush, 2009). This chapter fuses scientific ecological research in Baltimore with ethnographic evidence of human ecological technologies practiced in Northern Thailand. Anthropologist Shigeharu Tanabe studied one such ecological technology practiced for centuries in Chiang Mai called muang fai. More recently, a royally inspired community project of forest regeneration was successfully completed through small headwater dam building in nearby Lampang. The authors report on a recently conducted survey of the sites Tanabe documented in the 1970s and the results of the community reforestation project in relation to design proposals for three neighborhoods in Baltimore. The ecological research in Baltimore and the ethnographic research in Chiang Mai are integrated in this chapter to argue for new sustainable design practices in urban headwaters that combine ethnography, scientific monitoring, and design.

Respondents from five Asian countries were surveyed in terms of their consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, and attribution towards the USA and Japan in the context of the Asian economic crisis. The results indicated that the more severely hit a country was, the more ethnocentric respondents were. In general, animosity towards the USA was higher than towards Japan with regard to the Asian crisis. Koreans held the greatest stable animosity towards the Japanese because of the atrocities experienced during the Second World War. Respondents attributed the blame of the Asian crisis more to themselves. They also felt that they and the Japanese could have controlled the turn of events during the crisis. Implications arising from the findings are discussed.

This paper aims to present a hydrodynamic river modelling by incorporating river flow and sea‐level rise interactions.

Predicted sea levels from renowned studies are put to test on flow scenarios of the Sarawak River in the deltaic city of Kuching, Malaysia. Three cases are drawn for investigation, including one extreme flood event, one normal flow with low tide, and another normal flow with spring tide.

The model predicts a worst case that nearly 5‐6 km² of urban land along the Lower Sarawak River would be under water due to the rise.

Such an indication would draw a clearer picture for strategy and mitigation planning.

Generally sea level estimation involves ocean‐atmospheric modelling. However, the paper argues here that a river model is credible for practical hydrological site‐specific analysis to include increase of sea levels.