Contemporary Water Management Issues in Thailand in Comparative Perspective

Water management is a complex and multifarious issue that joins together a wide range of different problems and approaches. Since water is essential to human life, governments must make efforts to ensure that everyone receives the water necessary but, at the same time, they have to wrestle with the fact that water is a scarce resource that must be priced for consumption under conditions of constantly increasing demand from cities, industry, agriculture and tourism. Examination of three case studies, Australia, Singapore and Japan, indicates that contemporary water management issue may be considered in a number of categories and analysis has taken place on four such categories. These are global climate change, disaster mitigation, political and legal modernization and allocation of water resources. The case studies inform the discussion of water management practices and prospects for Thailand and it is shown that the country is progressing towards the examples represented by the more developed and advanced countries insofar as it is ever possible to import a water management solution into the very specific geographical, hydrological, social, political and cultural conditions in effect in a specific location.