An official for the World Bank issued a warning yesterday to Bangkok city officials, saying that unless action is taken, the city runs the risk of losing billions of dollars worth of economic activity to a major natural disaster.
Unsurprisingly, the natural disaster that World Bank official Abhas Jha singled out as having a high potential for devastation was a flood.
Jha said that unless Bangkok bolsters its infrastructure and optimizes the effectiveness of its THB350 billion water management budget, the city could fall afoul of massive floods that will leave it incapacitated.
A lack of urban planning and a lack of disaster management planning run foremost among the World Bank’s concerns for Bangkok. The Nation reports that while some Asian Pacific countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, have sophisticated instruments in place for managing natural disasters, Thailand has not developed any such fail-safes.
