“None of this is an argument against development. It is an argument for honest accounting. If we are considering a trillion-baht bet, ecological costs must be assessed with the same seriousness as construction costs — and by the right experts, using transparent baseline data.”

With continued discussions around the potential solicitation of bids for the ‘Land bridge’, Assoc. Prof. Dr Kittichate Sridith argues that ecology and a rigorous ecological understanding of the biodiversity-rich “Kra Ecotone” must be placed at the heart of planning before irreversible changes occur in what could become Thailand’s most ambitious transport megaproject.

Read more about this in Heritage Matters, a column presented by The Siam Society in The Bangkok Post here.

Biologist Kitichate Sridith is a retired fellow of Prince of Songkhla University.