BOOK INTRODUCTION

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The 1990s were an amazing time to be in Southeast Asia. There was so much growth, so much hope and energy in the air, it felt like the entire region was on fire. Certainly the economies were. The “Asian tigers” were in the midst of a raging boom that was rapidly transforming them into industrial societies. And Thailand was outpacing them all: from 1986 to 1996 its economy expanded by an average of 8 percent every year. With an open and vibrant society, a free press (at least for the written word; television is much less free), and a government actively engaged not only with its neighbors but the world at large, Thailand, in the words of one UN Development Program officer, was “a great success story”. It’s also the country with which I am most familiar, so it takes center stage in A Land On Fire, although I will examine issues in neighboring countries, as well, and survey the response to key issues throughout Southeast Asia.

If you’ve never been to Thailand, but happen to be familiar with Europe, think of it as “the Italy of Asia”. There are some startling similarities between the two countries, both superficial and profound. Like the Italians, Thais are famous for their beauty and elegance, for their delicious cuisine and their insatiable appetite for fun and passion, for the splendor of their ancient traditions and the depths of their corruption, the continual changing of their governments and their disparities in income and power, their religious devotion and reckless debauchery, their grace and glitz, style and squalor, and of course their cities’ ceaseless traffic jams.
During the Southeast Asian boom, it was in the cities where Thailand’s rapid development was concentrated, particularly in the chaotic capital of Bangkok. This sprawling megalopolis grew so fast its skies were filled with cranes--not the avian kind, but the towering metallic sort--which flocked to the country in droves: early in the decade, some civil engineers estimated that around 15-20 percent of all the world’s cranes could be found in Thailand. All that growth, combined with the opening up of neighboring Indochina after decades of strife and isolation, gave the entire region an incredible dynamism. The surge of excitement in Bangkok was almost palpable, as if the roaring economic inferno had ignited a flame of unbridled optimism, as if an entire city had come to feel there were no limits to the possibilities before it.

Inevitably, however, there was also a dark side to this dash for prosperity. For while Bangkok’s skyline soared during the boom, its streets have become choked with cars, its canals turned into sewers and its air transformed into a nasty, steaming soup of dust and toxins. And those are only the most visible manifestation of the environmental catastrophe that is Thailand today. Virtually every resource the country owns has been squandered with too little thought for the future. The forests which 40 years ago covered 60 percent of the country now probably cover only 15 percent, and their amazingly rich biodiversity has become endangered before it could even be fully recorded. Wanton use of pesticides has poisoned the countryside, shrimp farms have ravaged the coasts, and the seas have been plundered of their fish.

These disastrous side effects of industrialization and urbanization are not unprecedented, however. The situation in Bangkok (or Jakarta or Shanghai or Mexico City) today is probably quite similar to that of Dickensian England or turn-of-the-20th-Century New York, and overall the developed countries (the “global North”) have done far more to transform the global environment than those in the developing world (the “global South”). There are even some positive environmental signs in Southeast Asia, for instance a rapid decline in population growth, thanks largely to improved educational opportunities for women and a competent public health service, supported by a thriving community of non-governmental organizations.

But in general, the region’s rampant growth has been unsustainable, and although the financial crisis which rocked Southeast Asia beginning in 1997 was harsher than generally expected, many observers felt that a pause in the rapid pace of development was not only predictable, but probably necessary.

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