Brown water rushed beneath the feet of Khun Raksanalee as the floodwaters poured into her small roadside noodle shop. The floods are so common in Ramkhamhaeng—a low-income neighborhood in outer Bangkok—that Raksanalee knew exactly what to do. All of her goods were stacked on tables and shelves. She hung what she could from metal hooks. Even her chair was slightly elevated above the floodwaters.
“This is only going to get worse,” she said of the flood.
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Raksanalee is more right than she knows. Bangkok is struggling to combat annual rainy season flooding that is only going to get worse, according to experts. The city is sinking 1.5 to 5 centimeters per year. It’s less than subsidence rates in Jakarta, where the city sinks between 3 and 20 centimeters annually, depending where you’re standing. But it’s enough to affect the lives of nine million people living in Bangkok. Sewers overflow. Traffic comes to a grinding halt. In 15 years, some experts predict that large swaths of this bustling metropolis will be rendered uninhabitable by rising floodwaters.
The Thai capital is just one of the cities worldwide currently suffering from the effects of climate change. Cities in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and even the United States are experiencing worse than usual foods and extreme weather events. Rising ocean temperatures are causing droughts in some regions, and record rainfall in others. It’s a global concern, but few places are feeling the effects as strongly as Southeast Asia.
In Bangkok, the impact of rising sea levels is compounded by the fact that the city is sinking a bit more each year. The entire city is already about 1.5 meters below sea level. Large portions of Bangkok are sitting on a massive bed of clay-like soil that is being compressed by the weight of the rapidly developing city. Some two million people lived in Bangkok in 1960. Today, the population is fast approaching ten million while the city’s outer neighborhoods, places like Ramkhamhaeng, push that number closer to 15 million.
Together, it creates an unenviable problem with few easy solutions.
“There are a variety of issues to consider regarding Thailand and climate change, including sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, and [issues] likely related to severe weather events, such as droughts and heavy rains,” said Benjamin Schulte, an environmental and public health consultant who works in Bangkok. “These impacts are compounded as a result of subsidence in the region. Due to the complexities and interconnected nature of climate change and its impact on society, it is quite difficult to say one such problem is more dangerous than another.”
But it’s pretty easy to determine who is most at threat. Nationwide, the effects of climate change pose a serious threat to Thailand’s agriculture sector. Persistent droughts hobbled the sector during 2014 and 2015—a serious problem in a country where 40 percent of the population works in farming. Experts warn that additional droughts, and a rise in coastal flooding, could trigger an influx of new rural poor to Bangkok.
This is because Thailand failed to develop equitably. Bangkok is responsible for about 30 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. A rise in internal migration could add to an already crowded city, driving additional development, and causing the city to sink even faster. It could create a vicious cycle, one where the very people hoping to escape the effects of climate change contribute to a worsening situation in Bangkok—a city where poor residents are already feeling the impacts of rising global temperatures.
“Natural disasters, such as flooding, have far reaching impacts to all of society,” Schulte said. “However, those of lower socioeconomic status are more vulnerable and susceptible to the impacts of flooding in Bangkok. They have fewer resources to cope with and mitigate their direct impacts.”
A neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangkok inundated by floodwaters during a particularly heavy rainy season.
The government has been working on flood mitigation measures since the 2011 floods inundated neighborhoods in outer Bangkok. But today smaller scale flooding continues to plague the capital during the rainy season. It would take a massive shift in public policy, including measures to limit new construction, new drainage systems, and better management of canals and waterways to make a significant impact on the floods, according to experts.
“There has been a focus on river overflow and inundation scenarios, implementation of advanced predictive modeling, and infrastructure upgrades,” Schulte said.
But in Ramkhamhaeng, residents view the floods with an almost casual annoyance. Women like Raksanalee remain fearful that next year’s floods will be worse, but, today, she needs to push-on with life as normal. Her noodle shop remained open this year, but Raksanalee is unsure if she can cope with another year of floods.
“I hope that the flooding doesn’t keep coming like this,” Raksanalee said. “I can’t just move.”
