Chiang Rai Municipality - Award

[villagefarang]

The first item on the Thailand Live Tuesday 24 Jun 2014 page lists Chiang Rai as receiving this year's overall ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable Cities Award. What is your opinion on this?

"PHUKET, 24 June 2014 (NNT) – Three cities in Thailand received awards for excellence in environmentally sustainability, with Chiang Rai Municipality receiving this year's overall ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable Cities Award for its notable ability to dispose of waste and for green area management.

Mr. Noppadol Thiyajai, deputy secretary-general of the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) said that ONEP is the main unit in managing the sustainable environmental resources for the country. ONEP also cooperates between ASEAN countries in order to develop indicators for air and water quality, waste, and green areas, so that cities will emit lesser carbon dioxide.

Three awards are given to cities for being able to reach the criteria in the area of Air, Water, Waste and overall environmentally friendliness. The award will set a standard and hopefully stimulate cities within the ASEAN region to follow the regulations and required indicators to meet Environmentally Sustainable City Standard. This year, Thailand hosted the award ceremony in Phuket Province, with 10 cities across the ASEAN Region receiving awards.

Chiang Rai received the ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable Cities Award 2014 for its excellence in Green Area Management, Nakhon Sawan won the award for excellence in water management, while Roi Et received the award for excellence in Waste and Green Area management."


-- NNT 2014-06-24

[scorpio1945]

Must be a "relative to ..." award.

[villagefarang]

With pretty much everything in life being relative, that sound like a fair assessment to me. Perhaps Boomer will chime in later as our resident environmentalist, with a more critical discussion of the issues.

I look at it on a couple of different levels. First it is nice to see Chiang Rai in the news for something other than violence, drugs and human trafficking. The fact they even have such an award, regardless of the motivation, is a reflection of some interest on the part of officialdom and a good sign.

I have no idea what their criteria were but even as seldom as we are in town, I have noticed a lot of infrastructure upgrades this last year.