Climate change in Thailand

As a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the Thai government has committed a nationally determined contribution to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 20–25% by 2030.

The heat has also driven power consumption to a record peak of 36,477.8 megawatts.in 30 April 2024 20:56 , The Ministry of Public Health has reported approximately 30 heat-related fatalities nationwide due to the extreme temperatures.

The Thai Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning predicts that the sea level will rise one meter in the next 40 to 100 years, impacting at least 3,200 km2 of coastal land, at a potential cost to Thailand of three billion baht.

Subsidence, partially caused by the city's location on an alluvial plain of soft clay, has been exacerbated by industries' excessive pumping of groundwater and by the weight of massive buildings.

[9] According to Thailand's National Reform Council (NRC), without urgent action, Bangkok could be under water by 2030 due to a combination of rising sea levels, groundwater extraction, and the weight of city buildings.

[clarification needed] Negotiators in Paris worked to bring this down to 2 °C, but even this lower number may be "catastrophic for Bangkok," forcing the abandonment of the city by 2200 at the latest and by 2045–2070 at the earliest.

[19] In a paper published on 1 March 2016, climate researchers James Hansen and Makiko Sato state that, "The tropics...in summer are in danger of becoming practically uninhabitable by the end of the century if business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions continue..."[20] In 2015, Bangkok averaged 29.6 °C, 1.6 °C higher than normal.

[21] In November 2019, the Fundación Ecológica Universal (FEU), a global environmental NGO based in Buenos Aires, published an assessment of national climate pledges.

[22] The FEU report stood in sharp contrast to the narrative expressed by Thai premier and ASEAN Chair Prayut Chan-o-cha at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019, where he claimed that the region had reduced its use of energy by 22% compared to 2005.

[26] Extreme heat in Southeast Asia today reduces working hours by 15–20%, and that figure could double by 2050 as climate change progresses, according to a paper published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health.

Locally, the Thai Meteorological Department reported that the temperature in Mae Hong Son Province reached 44.6 °C on 28 April 2016, breaking Thailand's "hottest day" record.

[35] The FAO's The State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 reports that a recent study finds that climate change will affect food security in Asia by the middle of the 21st century.

[39] The Thai government's Climate Change Master Plan, 2012-2050 foresees that "Thailand is able [sic] to continue its economic, social, and environmental developments in accordance with sufficiency economy philosophy and to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, without impeding the country's gross domestic product (GDP) or reducing its growth of developmental capability and competitiveness.