Fed up with seasonal floods on Bangkok streets? Better enjoy the fact that the inundation only lasts for a few months instead of all year round, as scientists are now predicting.

Bangkok is on average just 40 centimetres higher than the mean sea level. With the seas of the Andaman and the Gulf of Thailand continuing to rise slowly every year, the lower part of Thailand's capital could well stay under water permanently.

"People in neighbourhoods along the banks of the Chao Phya River may have to get used to wading through water on their streets all the time," warns Bhichit Rattakul, director of the Asian Disaster Prepared-ness Centre.

"What we need is technology to help us better predict the impact of global warming. We have to get people prepared for the increasingly uncertain future."

Bhichit spoke on the issue last week at a forum organised by the Society of Environment Journalists.

Recent simulation models developed by foreign experts show almost 55 per cent of Bangkok will be flooded if mean sea levels rise by 50 centimetres and 72 per cent if they rise 100 centimetres.

Asia is forecast to have the greatest number of people affected by rising sea levels, especially those populations living in threatened coastal areas such as China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

Some cities such as Bangkok are more vulnerable due to subsidence from massive pumping of underground water.

Bhichit, the former governor of Bangkok, admired his successor Apirak Kosayodhin's campaign for city residents to plant trees and turn off lights to reduce carbon emissions. But he said the effort will do little to reduce the impact of global warming because too much carbon is already in the atmosphere.

Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's director of environment, Nikom Waiya-ratpanich, said the city would never be ready to adapt to climate change as long as Thai urban planners do not consider it a factor in their planning.

"There are only three factors in these planners' minds: land utilisation, expansion of road networks and recreation areas as required by law. Environment and global warming have yet to enter their minds," Nikom lamented.

While international politicians, scientists and engineers talk about a variety of technologies to tackle floods, Dr Louis Label of Chiang Mai University's Unit for Social and Environmental Research suggested a simpler approach.

"Maybe we should just make space for water so that we don't have to keep fighting with nature," he said.

"We have to look far ahead in every aspect. We don't know the economic situation in the next two decades, and maybe the government won't have enough money to invest in building flood prevention structures all the time."

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation