Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all let me thank the organizers and all the
rest of you present for having chosen Chiang Mai as a venue for this very important meeting.
Actually, as we all already know Chiang Mai depends on tourism so the more people we get to
come to Chiang Mai the better the economy will be. Therefore, before I forget let me just say now
that while you are here in Chiang Mai spend a lot of money, buy everything in sight, buy as much
as you can. If you have a problem at all with that let me know I can help you. I am sure you have a
lot more money at home so whatever you have brought with you spend it all at Chiang Mai.
A week ago Chiang Mai celebrated its 700th anniversary so this is a very old town, one
of the oldest cities in the world, I do not know if you realize that. We have a lot of problems. My job
this morning is to welcome you and then present something under the heading of Chiang Mais
Environmental Challenges. As a political administrator, I do not have much time to go into the
details of the various aspects of our environmental challenges. My immediate problem is to
raise the standard of living of the people within my country. Just yesterday the queen was up in
the palace over the hill visiting the very outlying village, a very far away distance from Chiang Mai
and about 1,000 hill tribes came and visited her and received her. Every time she goes out of the
empire a medical unit goes with her to look at the problems of the people. The majority of the
people are living below the accepted level. Only one district in all the 24 districts of Chiang Mai
has proper toilet facilities. We have 23 districts that do not have proper toilet facilities. This is
just one example of the need to bring up the level of living conditions. I personally think that is
more important than the environmental problem of the sector. Not that we do not give attention to
environmental problems, we do. The provincial authority at Chiang Mai has asked the Faculty of
Social Science at Chiang Mai University to study the environmental problems of Chiang Mai and
come up with a plan as to how to go about solving these problems. We asked them to identify the
challenges we have so this morning I would like with your permission to introduce a colleague of
mine who has prepared this environmental plan. He is the Dean of the Social Science Faculty of
Chiang Mai University, Dr. Wongburanawatt.
I have been given ten minutes to give this speech and I have spent about five minutes in
introduction. I think thats the limit of my ability to speak English at the moment. I would like Dr.
Wongburanawatt to come up here and in the ten minutes remaining give you a picture of the
challenges of Chiang Mai as concerns the environment.