Future Perfect

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Climate change mitigation through

oriental wisdom and human development

Suthawan Sathirathai and Buntoon Sethasiroj,

Good Governance for Social Development and the Environment Institute

he Good Governance for Social Development and the

Environment Institute (GSEI), which was founded in 2009,

is a non-profit organization devoted to environmental and

social policy research, as well as multi-disciplinary knowledge devel-

opment and enhancement. The work of GSEI aims to encourage and

support public policies based on knowledge and good governance.

Most of the current global environmental crises are the result of unsus-

tainable development. Over the past five years, GSEI has conducted

multidimensional research projects on related issues, for instance, the

negotiation of the post-2012 climate change regime, development of

environmental economics tools, environmental laws, climate change

adaptation and a green economy for sustainable development. The

findings of these projects provide recommendations for policy formula-

tion and the drafting of regulations to solve environmental problems

at domestic and international levels. The research, jointly conducted

with academics from different universities functioning as a multi-

disciplinary network of researchers, centres around the concepts of

sustainable development, human development, community strength-

ening and the application of oriental wisdom. Current GSEI research

projects also focus on oriental wisdom including the development of

indicators to apply Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) inmitigating

global warming, using the oriental wisdom concept. Examples include

the development of the Ban Pred Nai Community Learning Centre in

Trat province, which aims to strengthen and apply local wisdom in

combination with scientific knowledge for climate change mitigation.

Research also focuses on climate change issues such as the Multilateral

Environmental Agreements andGlobal Warming Strategies

Platform, as well as a study on economic and legal mecha-

nisms to solve and mitigate global warming problems, and

to provide recommendations for Thailand.

As climate change poses an enormous threat to human-

ity, the global community has begun to adopt mitigation

policies to reduce the cause of the problem, namely the

emission of greenhouse gases. This mainstream approach

tends to focus on technology fixes such as the biofuel solu-

tion, which seeks to resolve environmental problems, but at

the same time continues to support industrial production.

Nevertheless, a solution like biofuel has negative impacts,

such as food insecurity and deforestation. The failures of

mainstream solutions to curb the inevitable negative effects

of industrial production of the past centuries have encour-

aged the search for possible alternative remedies. Indeed,

solutions that emphasize only the production side without

considering sustainable consumption will not be suffi-

cient. With this in mind, GSEI has dedicated its research to

finding alternative solutions to economic and environmen-

tal degradation, with the aim of proposing oriental wisdom

as one alternative solution.

In its Thai manifestation, oriental wisdom is partly

influenced by the tenets of Buddhist philosophy, which

recommend harmonious coexistence with nature by

emphasizingmindfulness andmental cultivation as ameans

of curbing destructive behaviour such as greed. Through

the collaborative work of GSEI and local communities,

Through the collaborative work of GSEI and local commu-

nities, we have shown that GHG emissions can be reduced

by adopting a lifestyle that coexists harmoniously with

nature through oriental wisdom.

Environmental economists often find that the problems

of environmental conservation stem from the characteristics

of common-pool resources (CPRs), which are defined in

common property terms as non-excludable but at the same

time subtractable. Yet most of the world’s productivity relies

on the exploitation of such resources, and as a result we

have entered a state of ‘tragedy of the commons’, where the

environment is destroyed because it is overused. This can be

explained through the metaphor of the ‘prisoner dilemma’

game, where individuals do not optimize their long-term

benefits because personal greed or interests outweigh collec-

tive efforts. However, in the end they all suffer the joint

consequences of their behaviour. A good example of a CPR

nvironment

legal

and

ethical

issues

Mangrove forests in Ban Pred Nai community in Trat province

Image: GSEI