Global warming is already happening. From 2004 to 2005, Thailand was caught in the grip of a catastrophic drought impacting 63 of the country's 76 provinces, affecting an estimated 9.2 million Thai people and destroying 809,000 hectares of farmland. According to the government, the Thai drought catastrophe has cost as much as US$193.2 million in damages. Thailand's rice crop this year "is expected to fall 11 percent to 14 percent from last year's harvests while sugar cane production is also expected to drop drastically."

Global warming is projected to severely affect one the most beloved crops of Thailand, jasmine rice.  According to a recent study, "the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the lower the yield of jasmine rice," with estimates of yield reduction going down by as much as 20 percent.  Thailand currently produces 22 million tonnes of rice per year, which accounts for about 4 per cent of the world's total production.

"One of the main causes of the current prolonged drought in Thailand is global warming," said Dr. Kansri Boonpragob during the recent intense dry spell.  Dr. Boonprakob is a lecturer of the Faculty of Science of Thailand's Ramkhamhaeng University and is also the vice-chairperson of Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), the foremost global authority on climate change. According to Dr. Boonprakob, "the increasingly hot weather and the change in precipitation pattern in water, in rivers, lakes, dams, and natural reservoirs have made evaporation much faster than normal. In the past 10 years, Thailand has suffered several climate impacts including droughts, water shortage, flooding, and forest fires, which were all interlinked."

So long as the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, remain unabated, impacts from climate change will continue to intensify, hitting developing countries like Thailand with particular ferocity through the increase in intensity of extreme weather events such as drought and storms, the heightened risk of recurring massive coral bleaching as well as rising sea levels. Climate change, the most serious environmental threat facing the planet today, is attributed to human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, which releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Among fossil fuels, coal is the dirtiest, emitting 29 percent more carbon per unit of energy than oil and 80 percent more than gas.

Alarmed coal communities

Communities in Map Ta Phut began to protest against BLCP's coal plant project in 2001.  Local people feared the project, part of Map Ta Phut port expansion, would add to already severe water and air pollution and filed a complaint at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) .  Community dissent, however, have been progressively worn down by a well-funded effort that has resulted in funneling money to disorganize and create dissension among local communities.  In 2004, BLCP allocated 25 million baht for the implementation of its community relations program .

BLCP has done little to ensure public participation in the development process of its coal plant project. The project was selected by EGAT as one of its Independent Power Producers in 1996.  The Office of Natural Resource and Environmental Planning and Policy (ONEP) approved its environmental impact assessment report in 2002.  On September 27, 2002, BLCP's Tripartite Committee was formed in order to replace the public hearing mechanism which has been repeatedly criticized as an ineffective tool having failed to resolve disputes between local communities and proponents of controversial projects.  BLCP outrageously pointed to the experience of the proposed coal plants at Bo Nok and Ban Krut in Prachuab Khiri Khan province as proof that public hearings do not work.  Ironically, the stance of the communities in Prachuab Khiri Khan remains that if the hearings were indeed genuinely public hearings, the proposed coal plants would have taken a far shorter time to be booted out.

BLCP's conception of public hearings clash with JBIC environmental guidelines which require sufficient consultations with stakeholders, such as local residents, with the outcome of these consultations incorporated into the project plan .