Green Documentary: Ban Phai, flood of complex problems

In August 2019, the tropical storm "Podul" pushed across northeastern region of Thailand, causing the flash floods that resulted in intensely loss of approximately 8,000 million baht or 250 million USD. The agricultural sector, commercial sector, and personal property were altogether damaged. Ban Phai District at Khon Kaen Province was one of the most affected area. The flood levels heighted up to 6 meters in urban communities, which the communities located nearby the waterways were the most affected zones. The vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly, the disabled, the urban poor, and the community general laborers were suffered horrifically due to lack of preparation, supports, and inaccurate beforehand impact assess from the responsible agencies.

The studies from of academicians found that the city plan was linked to the past flooding problems. Due to the fact that people in urban communities are housing densely nearby the waterways, causing the flow of water to be stuck and unable to flow normally. This results the water level to be risen totally higher than usual and can be drained slowly because the water path is blocked by various structures instead of the same old past immerse flooding passage. The academicians view the mentioned complication as an important issue that must be solved correlatively by many agencies with different authority. Unsuccessfully, they discovered that the laws of each agency do not coordinate in the same direction. As a consequence, this becomes a huge obstacle in solving problems.

The past flooding in Ban Phai district affected 26 communities and 1,448 households. The urban poor in the waterfront communities received the hardest hits. Hence, the academicians have planned to design the solutions by using Ban Phai area as a study model site in order to reduce the impact of the next crisis and to be able to prepare to deal with the initial problems according to the disaster.  The field studies point out that there are many overlapping complications including social, economic, and urban development in terms of transportation and laws of agencies structures. This research project therefore emphasizes the participation of all relevant agencies and, most importantly, the community stakeholders who are precisely relate to the occurrences and consequences.

Many thanks to all the academicians from the project of Participatory Flood Risk Management: A Case for Policy Implication from Ban Phai Municipality Thailand (2021-2022), the community information providers, and all relevant agencies.

Special thank you to the Sustainable Mekong Research Network (SUMERNET) for the supports of researches and media productions.

This documentary is also featured in Green News Agency; บ้านไผ่ อุทกภัยในความทับซ้อนของปัญหา (greennews.agency)

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SUMERNET provided eight grants worth up to US$2,800 to 8 journalists in the Mekong Region (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar) for partnership with SUMERNET and affiliated researchers to produce multimedia products on environmental topics in the Mekong Region.

During the partnership (from June 2021- June 2022), young journalists and multimedia producers have delivered different stories, blogs, documentaries on the environmental issues in collaboration with SUMERNET affiliated researchers from the different countries in the Mekong region. Media-research partnership grantees also organized a series of different trainings and sharing sessions for the media capacity development of the researchers.