Loco

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

Oil palms give way to rice paddies and banana trees, while corrugated-iron huts stand in contrast with magnificent temples. An abundance of tropical fruits (dipped in salt, sugar and chilli), with dogs and Siamese cats roaming the street between vendors. 30 Baht (about $2.80) buys a freshly cooked, nutritious, vegetarian version of the national dish, Pad Thai… Long live the great king of Thailand, and condemnation to the corrupt President Thaksin.

Welcome to Bangkok – a place of abundance, colour, happiness, and the centre of south-east Asian tourist culture.
We were greeted at the station by a fellow young environmental advocate known simply as ‘Big’ (Being about 6 foot tall, he truly is very big for a Thai!) who was to be our guide for the next few days. He showed us how to catch local buses (and therefore removed our need for bartering with the tourist-oriented taxis and tuk-tuks), took us to the best local places to eat, booked us into our hotel, introduced us to his friends, and generally made us feel extremely welcome. Big thanks to Big!
Environmentalism in Thailand takes a different form to in Australia – they are not a high-greenhouse emitting nation, they have amazing natural places now being explored by tourism (to great economic benefit), and fertile earth to grow the abundance of food, which is affordable even for society’s poorest.

The political situation and culture (as across much of south-east Asia) is such that open, public criticism of government decisions is not widespread, and in some cases is even physically dangerous for the person issuing the critique.

Environmental issues in South-East Asia include flooding (resulting from rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers and increased downfalls in the wet season – such as when we arrived), sanitation (the water is nowhere near safe to drink), energy efficiency, future water shortage (when those rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers disappear, which would be in only a few decades under business-as-usual scenarios) and material waste.

On waste:

The Malay-Thai area is the original home of the banana leaf-wrapped rice-cake (Mmmm! Delicious!), but ‘modern’ foods are packaged in amazing amounts of one-use, disposable plastic – especially in the tourist areas. A bottle of freshly-pressed mandarin juice will come in not only a bottle, but in a small plastic bag so you can carry it more easily, and with a straw. With a grasp on the language that is limited to even less than a standard phrasebook (’Sawadi-Ka’ = Hello, ‘Kawp-Khun-Ka’ = Thank You), it is beyond my reach to explain that excess packaging is not necessary.

It is important to remember that every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today. Even if plastics break down into ever-smaller pieces, their chemical composition remains stable for hundreds of thousands of years. Small, algae-sized pieces of plastic are now more abundant in the temperate ocean ecosystems than algae itself (See Alan Weisman’s ‘The World Without Us for a graphic depiction of this), and we have no idea what the effects are.

Long live the banana-leaf wrapped rice cake – a completely sanitary, biodegradable, sustainable, convenient and interesting packaging option, rich with local culture. More of it!

Photos: Allie_Caulfield, avixyz, Vedanta Barooah

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