STRIKING AN ACCEPTABLE BALANCE

       Iknow Barack Hussein Obama is famous, but I never realised he's that famous until I saw some of my childhood friends sipping from a bottle of imported Fiji water and doing something quite bizarre debating whether the US president deserves to be the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.Prize winner has made the general public more aware of the prestigious award. For me, however, something more important has emerged from the list of this year's Nobel prize awardees, something global that is directly related to our local situation. I am talking about the first woman to ever receive the Nobel Prize for Economics, Elinor Ostrom, a US professor at Indiana University who is actively involved in research on the use and conservation of common property and natural resources.
       Ms Ostrom's research interests focus on whether it is better for the access to common property like land and natural resources to be determined by end-users, not by government authorities or the private sector. Her work,according to the Nobel Prize jury, challenges the notion that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatised.
       To me, her work lends weight to the merit of our constitutions - both the already-scrapped 1997 charter and the latest coup-sponsored 2007 version. In articles 56,57 and 58 of the previous charter, and article 67 of the present charter, the right of local people to have a say and to participate in the usage of common property and natural resources is endorsed as a constitutional right.Over the past 10 years, local people - mostly opponents of mega industrial projects or victims of pollutiongenerating industrial projects - have cited these articles in demanding their rights to reclaim their right to use and/or manage common properties. That may explain why we are witnessing a greater number of local villagers protesting against industrial projects that, for them, might damage common property and natural resources like land, water, soil and air - all of which they heavily rely on as sources of their livelihoods. We will continue to see more of these lawsuits by local villagers opposed to the state and private sectors in the wake of their rising awareness of their right to protect their common resources.
       The latest incident involves the village people in Map Ta Phut, who successfully cited Article 67 in the 2007 Constitution to ask the Administrative Court to declare their communities environmentally protected zones.
       When the Administrative Court ordered 76 industrial projects to be put on hold, the private sector and some economists loudly lamented that the halt would lead to the disappearance of about 400 billion baht, a 0.4%reduction in the GDP and the loss of 100,000 jobs.
       I will not argue these figures, and I am certain that these claims must be partially true.
       On the other hand, local residents and environmentalists have long spoken out against industrial pollution, which severely affects villagers' health through rising rates of cancer and respiratory diseases, as well as the loss of economic opportunities due to the degradation of land,soil, water and air. They also voiced their distress over the destruction of coastal areas, over the loss of vital farmland,and over what the fishery and tourism businesses must sacrifice for the sake of heavy industry.
       I believe their arguments are also at least partially true.Personally, I think local economists did not pay much attention to the hidden costs of items like increased health care charges caused by pollution, a drop in tourism revenues due to unsightly seashores, the high cost of cleaning up the pollution from industrial waste, and the elimination of labour-intensive agriculture when fertile land is expropriated or converted for industrial purposes.
       Chartchai Parasuk, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) and now managing director of Thanachart Life Assurance, wrote a very interesting commentary in his weekly column in the Oct 16 edition of Post Today ,the Bangkok Post's Thai-language sister newspaper:
       "Amid the case surrounding the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, I am quite dismayed that our economists cannot find the optimal point between economic growth and environmental quality. All they can offer is the quantum of the SEARCHER: Chartchai adverse effects on the GDP and Parasuk.economic growth. If they are really good, they should move to live in the Map Ta Phut area to weigh the cost of a reduction in the GDP against the result of inhaling pollution into their bodies."
       Mr Chartchai had an interesting view on the subject of economics.
       "It seems [economics] is incapable of appraising the value of happiness of people.
       "That assumption is wrong. Economists can, and must,find the optimal point [between economic growth and the cost of related environmental factors]. Indeed, it is the duty of economists to find the true price of the effects and let the economic system work on that basis."
       Twenty years ago, Mr Chartchai, during his time working at TDRI, undertook research that appraised the value of economic growth versus deforestation - a rather new concept at that time. His work attempted to find the value of trees.
       "Commercial logging has a certain economic value.This should be good for economic growth. Yet deforestation leads to floods, which impact badly on farming activities.So, my research aimed at finding the optimal point."
       He also challenged local economists to find the optimal benefit from economic growth from industry against the cost of environmental damage.
       In his opinion, economists can help to solve the dilemma the country is facing as manifested in the rising opposition against industry.
       "If we leave it to politicians, investors, villagers and NGO (non-governmental organisation) activists to try to find their own equilibrium, we will not be able to resolve this conflict. We must pressure economists to come out and do research on where the optimal point is and how to achieve it."