IN THE NEWS: "Don’t ‘Normalise’ Preventable Catastrophes and Disasters"

By Patralekha Chatterjee [The Asian Age, 7 September 2017]

Climate change has made disasters much more severe and likely, and there is really no option but to take preventive measures...

But communities can have a say and make things happen. During a recent visit to neighbouring Thailand, I happened to be speaking to Dr Carl Middleton, who teaches development studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. Dr Middleton spoke about how Thailand was trying to operationalise accountability.

One important way is health impact assessment (HIA), which has gained traction. Dr Middleton — who has co-authored a chapter on this in a forthcoming book, Water Governance and Collective Action: Multi-scale Challenges — says that since the late 1980s, Thai community movements and civil society groups have managed to resist new large power plants, with high-profile protests against projects like the Pak Mun hydropower dam and the Mae Moh coal-fired power station. The civil society groups talk not only about the environmental impact of development projects but also the health consequences of changes in the physical and biological environment. It helps a lot that in Thailand, since 2000, HIA has been legislated into the Constitution and there is a National Health Act (2007). While it is not compulsory, a community-led HIA can be requested under this law...

Read more here.