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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

The natural environment has always been unstable – the variable
monsoon, typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis. The increase in extreme
weather is hard to detect or appreciate.

There is still low awareness of the issue in the region (Stokes and Wike,
2018), and limited popular support for any investments. Governments see little

reason to act when there is no popular support, when their action will have little
impact on the world as a whole, and when the big, rich, and powerful countries
are not showing any leadership. Governments in the region will continue to
place a priority on economic growth, under much the same resource-exploiting
strategies.
Southeast Asia must make a significant contribution to reducing global
emissions, simply because it can. The means to increase forest cover and reduce

the use of fossil fuels are simple and well-known. The politics and economics
at present are a barrier to action. How this situation can be changed is complex,
but it must be flagged as a priority.

A priority must be greening the cities. On current trends, the region’s
big cities are going to become bigger, hotter, more congested, and more chaotic.
The decision to relocate Indonesia’s capital away from Jakarta signals that the
best solution would simply be to start again, but only a national capital can
command the resources for such an expensive solution. Investment in improving
public infrastructure and the environment of cities should be priority (UN-IPCC,
2019: 2-74-76). Justifying this investment as adaptation to climate change will
not be politically persuasive, but the investment can be justified on other
grounds—making these cities more livable in the present, increasing employment,
and other short-term goals.

More extreme weather events means more humanitarian crises—deaths,
dislocation, need for rescue and shelter. Security forces will be required to deal
with these events more and more. They need to plan and budget for this
responsibility. As this was being written in August 2019, storm Pudol flooded
Thailand’s northeast. Families were perched on the roofs of flooded houses,
and villages were being swept away by landslides. The security forces need
more boats and helicopters, not more tanks and submarines.

There is already a lot of movement of people around the region, both
within countries and across borders. Mostly this movement is accepted

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Chris Baker

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