From causality to blame: exploring flooding, factories and land conversion in Eastern Thailand

ABSTRACT

It has become common to attribute the growing frequency and severity of floods to climate change. But the factors behind flooding are many, and climate change often disappears from the equation at the local level. This study draws on interviews with key informants and community members and focus group discussions to explore the increasing incidence of flooding in two sub-districts in Eastern Thailand. To our surprise, there was little sense of community anger: flood risk had increased; the causes rooted in maladaptation linked to land conversion were recognised and uncontested; and injustice was palpable. But anger and resistance were muted. The paper seeks to make sense of this situation. Villagers accepted their complicity in creating the conditions for heightened flood risk through their willingness to sell their land for conversion. The disconnection between the identification of causality and the allocation of blame raises questions about how notions of environmental justice play out in places like Ban Thapma and Ban Nhonglalok, where justice and injustice do not fall equally across space and society.

KEYWORDS:

• Flooding
• land conversion
• politics
• maladaptation
• justice
• Eastern Thailand

Acknowledgements

The research was kindly supported by Catalyst Grant, Thai-UK World-Class University Consortium funded by the British Council (Thailand), and the Second Century Fund (C2F) from Chulalongkorn University. Additionally, funding has been provided by the Office of Research Affairs, Chulalongkorn University, for supporting the Centre of Excellence in Geography and Geoinformatics in conducting this study. We also would like to express our gratitude to the participants, the heads, and the residents of Ban Thapma and Ban Nhonglalok, Rayong Province, Thailand. Finally, we thank Bharis Senivongse, our research assistant for the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For relevant collections, see: Holifield, Chakraborty, and Walker 2018 (on environmental justice); Lukasiewicz and Baldwin 2020 (on disaster justice); and Bhavnani et al. 2019 (on climate justice). One handbook on environmental justice, with 51 chapters was said to present only “a snapshot of the field at one particular point in time” (Holifield, Chakraborty, and Walker 2018, 2).

2 The northern and eastern parts of Rayong province are designated as rural areas for agricultural land uses.

3 Agricultural land uses include perennial crops, orchards, paddy fields and field crops.

4 The analysis by the authors was based on data from the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, using the GIS.

5 Although the wider project of which it is a part also has a natural science and modelling element.

6 The research received ethics approval from the Institutional Review Board of Chulalongkorn University (COA No. 098/65 and date of approval 20 April 2022). All respondents, including key informants and community members could decline from being interviewed or withdraw from participation at any time. We also asked for their consent to be recorded.

7 For media reports on these flood events see: (Thai PBS News 2012; Dailynews 2013; Thai PBS News 2013; Bangkok Business News 2015; Thairath Online 2015; Thai PBS News 2017; Naewna News 2020; MGR Online 2020; Kom Chad Luek News 2020; The Nation Thai 2022).

8 For media reports on these flood events see: (MGR Online 2011; MGR Online 2013; Bangkok Business News 2013; Khom Chad Luek Online 2020; Siamrath 2022).

9 Interviewees are indicated as follows: KI = Key Informant; RI = Respondent Interview; and FGD = Focus Group Discussion.

10 The DDPM under the Ministry of the Interior has been tasked with managing floods (and other disasters) in Thailand since 2002.

11 This is linked to the decentralisation of activity from the Bangkok metropolitan region to the Eastern Seaboard dating from the early 1980s and accelerating in the following decades.

12 The DDPM under the Ministry of the Interior has been tasked with managing floods (and other disasters) in Thailand since 2002.

13 See, for example, Fox et al. (2018) where Hanoi has extended into rural areas of Vietnam’s Red River Delta and Leitner and Sheppard (2018) on land grabbing in Jakarta’s (Indonesia) extended metropolitan region.

14 US$55,000 to US$275,000 per rai, or US$344,000 to US$1.718 million per hectare.

15 For example, see (Tran et al. 2022; Liao 2019; Danh and Mushtaq 2011) on living with floods in Vietnam.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Catalyst Grant, Thai-UK World-Class University Consortium funded by British Council (Thailand): [Grant Number]; the Office of Research Affairs, Chulalongkorn University: [Grant Number]; Second Century Fund (C2F) from Chulalongkorn University: [Grant Number].

Notes on contributors

Petchpilai Lattanan

Petchpilai Lattanan is Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She obtained her bachelor's degree in geography from Chulalongkorn University. She graduated with an MSc. in Urban Studies and a PhD in Geography from University College London. Dr. Petchpilai's research focuses on urban studies, urban development, smart cities, and the Thai middle class.

Puttaporn Areeprachakun

Puttaporn Areeprachakun is Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She received a bachelor's degree in geography from Chulalongkorn University and a master's degree in Human Geography: Society and Space from University of Bristol. She also received her doctoral degree in geography from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests are political geography, political space, and cultural geography, including social media for political demonstration, identities, and migrant workers.

Areerut Patnukao

Areerut Patnukao is Researcher with a keen interest in toponym and settlement geography. She obtained her bachelor's degree in Geography and her master's degree in Communication Art from Chulalongkorn University, followed by a Ph.D. in Geography and Anthropology from Louisiana State University. Dr. Patnukao's work focuses on understanding the relationship between place names and human settlements, contributing valuable insights to geographical and anthropological studies.

Pannee Cheewinsiriwat

Pannee Cheewinsiriwat earned her Bachelor's degree in Geography and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. In 2009, she completed her Ph.D. in Geomatics at Newcastle University, UK. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of the Department of Geography at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, where she applies her expertise in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial statistics, population geography, and geographic information technologies.

John Barlow

John Barlow is Senior Lecturer in the Geography Department at the University of Sussex and Director of the Centre for Coastal Research. His research focuses on the use of remote sensing technology to understand geomorphology.

Hyun Bang Shin

Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and was formerly Director of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, LSE. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to Asian cities.

Jonathan Rigg

Jonathan Rigg is Chair of Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol and was formerly Director of the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. He has been working on Thailand and Southeast Asia since the early 1980s and is the author of Rural development in Southeast Asia: dispossession, accumulation and persistence (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and More than rural: textures of Thailand's agrarian transformation (Hawaii University Press, 2019).