Environmental Risks and Mitigation Strategies
Environmental Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Thailand’s Tourism Sector
November 12, 2015
Jake MacDonnell – Primary Article Contributor, Team Leader following Thailand
Keywords: Thailand, tourism, environmental risk, marine ecosystem, pollution
Thailand’s beautiful natural environment is one of the foremost reasons for its attractiveness as a tourist destination. However, as the tourism industry has expanded, focus has been placed on economic growth over environmental sustainability.
The construction and operation of resorts located along Thailand’s beaches have resulted in the significant degradation of marine ecosystems. The long-term risks associated with coastal tourism include water pollution, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, and destruction of marine habitats, including coral reefs. For the past 60 years, Thailand has implemented a variety of marine conservation acts. However, these acts have merely encouraged the community and tourism sector to be sustainable when considering marine resource use. These encouragements have only been followed to the legal minimum, and in some cases, completely ignored. These regulations assigned responsibility at the local level, effectively decentralizing environmental protection enforcement. As a result, legislation lacked enforcement capability and was viewed by the sector as conducive to economic growth. In order to ensure that Thailand’s tourism sector is developed sustainably, stricter regulations protecting marine ecosystems from degradation need to be enacted and enforced.
In an effort to improve the outdated 1947 Fisheries Act, Thailand announced the implementation of the 2015 Fisheries Act. This represents a step towards a sustainable future, but the impact of the legislation will depend on the creation and enforcement of detailed laws that have yet to be created. Ideally, Thailand’s new regulations for marine conservation would combine a mixture of existing policies from neighboring countries Malaysia and Vietnam. Malaysia’s federal Department of Fisheries, in collaboration with the Navy Coast Guard and marine police, is extremely skilled at surveillance and enforcement practices. Vietnam’s community resource management technique reduces costs while involving locals that interact with the ocean on a daily basis. Therefore, Thailand should invest the power to monitor and enforce its marine ecosystems in a single federal body, which should adopt community resource management techniques for monitoring purposes. In addition, the current Department of Fisheries is underfunded and would require a greater portion of tax revenue in order to protect the tourism sector that is a pillar of Thailand’s economy. In the past, the government has worked with locals to balance the economic and social impacts of environmental regulation. The degree to which the current junta government will attempt this remains to be seen, but if strict regulations are enforced I anticipate resistance from the tourism sector, which has grown accustomed to ignoring environmental regulations. Nevertheless, Thailand needs to use the 2015 Fisheries Act as an opportunity to protect its tourism industry, otherwise it risks irreparably damaging a sector that makes up 17% of its GDP.
Tourism is expected to increase by 4.4% per year for the next five years and annual growth in total hotel units is expected to be 2.3% over the same time period. Thailand is already dealing with air, water, and solid waste pollution from tourism activities, and increased deforestation and habitat loss is expected as more infrastructure is built over the next five years. Minimizing the environmental impact of further development is essential to ensuring the sustainability of natural resources that are essential to a healthy tourism sector. Thailand currently has plans to reduce the effect of current and future pollution on the environment, but the majority of these plans are limited in terms of budget and personnel. Thailand should follow the aforementioned recommendations to reduce marine pollution, and apply these same practices to the conservation of inland natural resources. If the government does not take action to permanently fix the lax environmental regulations that surround the tourism industry in Thailand, the sector will face serious long-term consequences. It is unacceptable to ignore these threats when Thailand’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism.
