Co-creating low carbon community model for resilient Bangkok in Bangmot canal area with urban Green-Blue culture

Urban Challenge: Lowering carbon emissions from small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs)
Green-blue focus area: South Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand.
In suburban and rural Bangkok, especially the Thonburi area, many complex canal (blue) networks exist that include
natural biodiversity, orchard cultivation, and farming (green) settlements. Historically, these green-blue areas developed a
market for the surrounding community, then the city, and now the Bangkok metropolis as it exists today. Over the past
500 years, ethnic and cultural assimilation has occurred in the Ayutthaya and Thonburi areas.
Background: The production of agricultural SMEs has been disrupted by climate change and urbanization, especially
impacts on water quality and biodiversity.
Immediate adaptation: Stabilize income of agricultural SMEs with the creation of urban green-blue product and service
platforms to rate greenhouse gas emissions and other activities to connect agricultural SMEs to urban markets.
Climate change impacts have already been observed in Bangkok, where flooding and sea-level rise have caused saltwater
intrusion up the river and canal network, disrupting urban agriculture and resulting in decreased green-blue cool spots in
the city. The UN COP26 agreement accelerates net-zero carbon emission targets from different countries to decrease
warming effects. As such, collecting and evaluating greenhouse gas emission data could become a tool we can use to
redesign our unique habitats with a sustainable paradigm pursuing local green-blue economic recovery.
Most of the agricultural areas in Thonburi include fruit orchards (e.g. coconuts & tangerines), vegetable farms, animal
farms, and aquaculture for fish. These farms produce a variety of products, including coconut oils, Thai desserts, goat
milk, dried fruits, etc., serving at least 1.7 million people in Thonburi alone. Local entrepreneurs have developed 58
community agricultural and local tourism enterprises in Thonburi. Bangkok Metropolitan's 2020 report shows 101
agricultural and 45 fishery cultivation areas in South Thonburi.
Agricultural SMEs are an important part of the Thai economy, but as they have been disrupted by the impacts of climate
change, they have adapted to tourism service sectors to survive. Urban agriculture and local SMEs in Thonburi have the
same environmental values as stated in the UN sustainable development goals. They practice a low-carbon lifestyle,
using recycled water and producing less waste. Encouraging these urban green-blue SMEs to translate their values and
environmental practices into ecological services and economic value would create a win-win situation for addressing
urban challenges and sustaining a good quality of life for the local people.
Since 2016, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) has worked with young volunteers and with
Arsomslip on long-term action research through the Bangmod canal survey and community participation. We have
learned about agricultural and green lifestyle community values through these interactions and witnessed the disruption
of the area’s agricultural product’s value and water quality. We developed a new market (Bangmod Festival), which
proved to be a partial solution to local business sustainability. Bangmod Festival and Safetist farm (a SME run by
KMUTT alumni and a young volunteer network) show that environmental value and markets can complement each other.
Facebook and other online tools were used successfully for approximately 10 businesses in the network to gain visibility
and new customers. A platform to consolidate and highlight low-carbon products for hundreds of businesses in the area
will provide access to a bigger market and help customers with shared values to have choices in the marketplace.
The Low carbon urban Green-Blue product and service Platform (LGBP) will be created as a strategic instrument to
differentiate green-blue SME value to the urban environment by showing their level of greenhouse gas emissions
compared to the country and world standards. A collection of carbon emission calculation tools and ratings will help the
SMEs to evaluate themselves for improvement and assist customers and tourists to choose products and services that fit
their values. Other related urban ecosystem services SME scores will be added too, such as water quality/use, mitigation
against flooding, microclimate temperature impacts against urban heat island, and air quality. These environmental
factors will be listed and rated on the platform to collect local data and used to guide urban environmental policy in the
future. Prototype greenhouse gas emission data and ratings will be tested with 20 local green-blue SMEs in the first phase
and for the consumer in the second phase. Self-improvement data from SMEs can also be evaluated at the end of the
second phase to address the urban challenge of a lower carbon economy.