The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) stands in solidarity with the communities across Bangkok and Central Thailand devastated by unprecedented monsoon downpours and widespread urban flooding. We extend our deepest sympathies to the families who have lost loved ones, those forced to flee inundated neighborhoods, and the hundreds of thousands whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted.
The sheer scale of this crisis reveals an acute disaster across Thailand. Torrential downpours exceeding 300 mm over three days forced authorities to declare all 50 districts of Bangkok disaster zones, while 10 days of severe weather nationwide claimed at least eight lives and impacted over half a million people across 21 provinces. Floodwaters paralyzed major thoroughfares and flight delays at airports forced travelers onto rail systems with hours of delay. With schools closed and canalside communities evacuated to temporary school shelters, Bangkok is pushed to its operational limit.
This disaster is not a mere seasonal misfortune—it is a direct manifestation of the intensifying climate crisis. Asia remains at the frontlines of increasingly graver climate vulnerability. Communities are not simply enduring episodic disruptions, but face continuous and worsening climate destruction as global warming accelerates.
Just days ago, this stark reality echoed through the halls of the UN General Assembly when Prime Minister Balen Shah of Nepal addressed world leaders on the catastrophic Himalayan glacial floods that killed over 1,300 of his people. Calling the disaster a “warning to the world,” Nepal’s leadership articulated what frontline communities across Asia experience every day: those who contributed the least to global emissions are paying the highest price in lives, homes, and futures.
The flooded Bangkok streets come as another stark reminder of the compounding loss and damage that frontline peoples throughout our region endure. They warn us of a grim future of relentless, escalating devastation that looms over Asia, unless we compel the system change needed to safeguard our collective future.
In a few weeks’ time, Thailand hosts the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – two leading international financial institutions whose decades’ long lending and financing have bankrolled projects contributing to the worsening of the climate crisis, and their continued support for the fossil fuel industry. They are complicit in the loss and damage experienced by the Global South and must be held accountable.
Global South peoples demand climate justice, and a rapid and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. Global North governments and major historical polluters must be made to answer for their actions, and pushed to fulfill their obligations by directly delivering adequate, non-debt-creating climate finance and full reparations for loss and damage. The people of Thailand, Nepal, and the rest of Asia must not be forced to bear the economic, financial and human costs of a crisis they did not create.