Yesterday we had the amazing opportunity to hear from Surajate Boonya, who works for the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute (HAII) which is a government agency in the Ministry of Science and Technology within the Thai government that processes data on water management in concepts such as flooding and irrigation. It was really cool to see a field like informatics and data processing being used for a public service and to mediate the disasters that impact so many people in Thailand, particularly in rural communities during the rainy season. Something that especially caught my attention was Surajate’s mention of needing to move towards more interdisciplinary work with capacity building for different communities, because dealing with a flash flood, for example, is a place based practice and will obviously impact one community very differently than it might another. It was also really interesting to see all of the organizational politics that go into working in public service in this way, and how communicating and obtaining data across many departments and sectors and stakeholders can be really difficult when achieving such a large scale end goal.
These intersections between government and political economy and environmental conditions and community development practices and land use and data and agriculture are at the heart of both my CED major in the College of Agricultural Sciences and my research within the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at the Center for Economic & Community Development, as well as my research fellowship at the Rock Ethics Institute on the economic implications of cellular agriculture. In each of these positions, approaching a problem in a community or industry with every stakeholder possible in mind is really important, and in fact, I wish I had much more experience and opportunity to partner with data processing or computer science experts in these approaches beyond the economic variable and census data analyses that we do. For example, this semester I had the opportunity to work on and publish content regarding the political economy of managing invasive rabbit species in Australia and the research that my PI lead in the country when working with an agency to mediate the crisis that the rabbits impose on agriculture and biodiversity and community functioning. This has been a really difficult issue because when communicating with and mediating tension between local farmers, indigenous communities and burial sites, government officials, scientists, animal welfare activists, and civilians, it is really difficult to find common ground between all of the stakeholders and the best practices available to reduce the damage from the invasive species, all while backing it up with economic calculations and scientific data. It is interesting that the Thai government, honestly quite similar to the US, seems to be sort of stuck in the purely pragmatic and data based bureaucratic processes when dealing with issues like floods. Perhaps some places with more NGO, community, and university supported efforts such as in the US may have a better pulse on these interdisciplinary approaches and the sociology and politics behind mediating issues in communities to supplement those more objective efforts.
Surajate also mentioned that the issue when adopting new technologies or approaches wasn’t really money or expenses, but rather social acceptance and deviating from a comfortable path of operating. This often seems to be a barrier to any sort of large scale change or societal intervention, and is something I am really interested in in my work in Environmental Economics and community development. For example, using “water recycling” or wastewater reuse after treatment is a really viable and sustainable option for water consumption and is relatively cheap to reuse in agriculture, closed loop systems, and even potable water sources. However, municipalities and communities often don’t allow it simply because of the “ick factor” and social fear of using more sustainable technologies that involve former wastewater methods. We are at a time where we need to pay close attention to both the sociology and politics behind change and the STEM based aspects of them too, particularly when dealing with environmental issues and bridging the gap between stakeholders for a public good.
