It seems like the latest flooding in the Northeast still haunts Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. Last week he decided he would make use of his sweeping powers under Section 44 of the interim charter to form a new national water management unit.
To be established under the PM's Office, the unit is assigned to direct government agencies' efforts to tackle flooding and droughts. Being placed under the premier's direct control, the new office aims to shore up the overall management system across different agencies and ministries.
The regime is believed to be drafting a national water management master plan to serve as a long-term strategy.
Anchalee Kongrut writes about the environment in the Life section, Bangkok Post.
Experts and conservationists have long called for a newly integrated water management office. Many claim that red tape, a lack of coherent policies and poor leadership has resulted in ineffective management of floods and droughts.
Water management has been bogged down by a fragmentation of tasks assigned across seven ministries and many other government agencies. The country does not have a specific act on water management. Instead there are around 50 laws and regulations on water management for ministries and state agencies to use. The good news is that a bill on water resources management, now being vetted by the National Legislative Assembly, can become the country's first Water Act.
The question will be whether this new unit will be able to tackle floods and droughts. Of course, many of our leaders will tell us the situation is going to improve.
Yet I wonder how the new unit, with staff transferred over from the Water Resources Department under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, can breathe in new ideas of water management.
It remains to be seen how this new body can shift its focus from the state's obsession with using infrastructure such as dams, dykes and floodgates as a means to tackle floods and droughts.
How can our water management be reformed when all the nuts and bolts and software have not changed?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying all hard concrete structures are useless. All I am saying is we might need to look around and see how other countries handle their flood problems.
Many of us think of the Netherlands when looking around for a role model in flood management.
Underpinned by impressive engineering feats such as dykes, levees and maeslantkering -- a mammoth storm surge barrier the size of two Eiffel towers built at the mouth of a river-- Dutch water management is more than a wonder of engineering.
Having interviewed Dutch architects, experts and diplomats, and having talked to the general public there, I wonder if a secret to the Netherlands' success is the country's ability to build social and environmental resilience as a key part of its water management. The country does not solely rely on technology to do the work.
Two major devastating floods in 1993 and 1995, which led to mass evacuations, served as a wake-up call to the Dutch government to re-examine its water management.
It applied multi-pronged solutions that incorporate nature into its flood management by, for example, letting floods flow into the inland areas instead of pushing the water out to sea.
Over the past decade, the Dutch government's new policy, known as Room for the River (rijkswaterstaat), breaks with its traditional sole reliance on dyke reinforcement in flood-risk management.
In essence, the Dutch policy requires more open space to serve as flood retention areas and reservoirs when water flows through inland areas.
Instead of relying on concrete structures to brace the land against strong tides, Room for the River revokes the use of soil to help absorb water.
For me, that is the ingenuity of the country adjusting its water management philosophy to fit a changing world -- go with the flows, not against them. Looking back at my own country, Thailand, our approaches are still stagnant like the putrid waters stuck in our many landlocked swamps.
I don't mean to be cynical about our government's work. Indeed, recent moves by the junta to form the new water management unit or its policies on the suspension of farming during the annual floods season and the allocation of some areas for flood retention at least show the leadership's commitment to structural solutions.
The question is how fast we can move before we are flooded again.