PhD Mid Term Review 

The Lower Yom river basin of Thailand has experienced multiple episodes of flooding in recent decades. Within Thailand, the state is represented as the influential actor in restructuring water and river basin management. However, it is also acknowledged that there is insufficient participation from non-state micro-level actors. Drawing on personal experiences in policy making at different levels with Participatory Action Research in repeatedly urban and rural flooded communities, this research explores essential gaps of community-based adaptation in both concepts and practices. It seeks to understand how multiple climate-related and development discourses individualise ‘performative social identities’ across groups in perceiving different social ‘vulnerable conditions’ in relation to flooding. I will illustrate key lessons from local policy workshops and comparative case studies, and point out possibilities and obstacles of community-based adaptation in a non-collaborative environment. This research also finds several ways to foster individuals to actively engage with bottom-up transformation for multi-level flood governance of the river basin.

Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels