One of the world's top tourist destination and Thailand's Capital, Bangkok, often referred as "the City of angels",is the place where I grew up. My city enriches its people with Buddhist heritage and culture. Urban residents and I enjoy the city's rapid development that has brought us more jobs, education, housing, entertainment and transportation. However, not only do we fail to acknowledge negative changes by following a European model of modernization, but we also fail to realize that such development served to only lower our living standards rather than helping us. These negative effects results in water deterioration, land subsidence, air pollution and energy shortage. .
Our people are being pulled away from agriculture as they become more drawn to greater monetary returns from other industries. Meanwhile, we could clearly see that our local farmers are gradually replaced by the capital-intensive methods of industrial agriculture to meet the foreign demand of our well-known Thai Jasmine rice. ( attitude towards nature )Our adoption of industrial agriculture methods has proved to be unsustainable, since chemical fertilizers and pesticides cause water pollution and soil erosion. This forebodes future water crisis - not only that we are depleting on limited supply of water, but also contaminating it so seriously that the quality of water has been classified as deteriorated (Hewitt). .
Another major issue is Bangkok's potential to be under water by 2030. The sinking city is an inescapable result of its residents' excessive use of groundwater. During the wake of urbanization and industrialization, we tapped the aquifers and withdrew a plentiful amount of water reducing our independence from deteriorated water. As the city grew, the water supply's heavy reliance on groundwater has proved to be unsustainable. The aquifers have been so seriously depleted that they can no longer support the weight of the soils above them.
