ISDSI and its programs are unaffected by the flooding in Bangkok and surrounding areas. While there was some brief flooding here in Chiang Mai last month (late September), it was localized to areas near the river and only lasted a few days.

The flooding in Bangkok and surrounding areas in the Central Plains is much more severe in both duration and extent. While the full extent of the flooding remains to be seen, it will have a long and significant impact on Thailand’s economy and people.

Our current course (Forests) takes place in Northern Thailand, far from the flooding in Bangkok. For our Oceans course in Southern Thailand, we can route around Bangkok if necessary as we travel to the southern villages and islands where the course takes place.

Our hearts go out to the thousands who are displaced from their homes in Bangkok. As people concerned with sustainability, we are not surprised to see flooding like this as the natural drainage systems and flood plains have been paved over and built on over the years.  Even knowing the ecological inevitability of a disaster like this, however, we are saddened to see the human suffering that results.

Not far from Chiang Mai, in the province of Nan, tensions are brewing among some of the strongest animals in the world as they prepare to face off in epic battles. I am referring, of course, to the kwang or rhinoceros beetles.

These small creatures can lift up to 850 times their own weight! Naturally territorial, males will use their horns (females do not have these horns) to claim their rightful space.

The beetles have traditionally provided villagers in Northern Thailand with some entertainment during the rainy season. Villagers in the Pua district of Nan have continued this tradition and hold an annual festival in September honoring the beetles with their duels as the central event.

“Beetle fighting is a part of our unique heritage that we want to preserve. I don’t believe there is anywhere else in the world where people catch them and get them ready for competition like we do,” says Nan Mom, the vice-president of Nan’s Kwang Fighting Club, the festival’s organiser.

Villagers put in a lot of time and energy to make it an exciting event, with some people catching and training beetles for up to a month ahead of the fights. Kids find it exciting, adults enjoy the festivities and are able to capitalize on a unique festival. When it’s all said and done, a good time has been had by all and both the winning and losing male beetles as well as the female beetles are set free to mate for the season.

Check out the story in it’s entirety in the Bangkok Post.

Please note, all photos were taken from the Bangkok Post website: http://www.bangkokpost.com/feature/environment/259263/brawling-beetles-crawl-for-it-all

This week Ajaan Laura is at the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) in Hyderabad, India from January 10th to 14th, 2011. The Conference is being held in South Asia for the first time; and in a departure from the past, will be hosted by a practitioner organization – Foundation for Ecological Security (FES).

Laura is presenting a poster and paper that she and Ajaan Abram prepared discussing how using an institutional arrangements framework can be used to help students make sense of how local communities manage their resources.

Click through for a PDF of the poster!

Pu Pu (our Administrative Coordinator) has a new baby girl!

Nong Kim was born December 28 at 12:13 PM and weighed 2.8 kg (6.3 lbs).  She joins her brother, Nong Que, who is a year and a half old, and still trying to figure out where the baby in mommy’s tummy went.

Pi Pu and baby Kim!

Great editorial from Ajaan Christina, who has worked with and taught at ISDSI for years.  This year she’s moved back to the States, and is still active in teaching, research and writing.

Here are a couple of key parts of the editorial.  Be sure to click through for the full article.

(CNN) — On November 7, Burma will hold elections for the first time in 20 years. Not because the military regime wants to transfer power. Instead, the military leadership hopes that by creating a democratic facade, it can improve its image and still run the country.

Since the military’s 2007 crackdown on monks’ demonstrations, the regime has faced simmering anger inside the country and growing calls for at least some degree of political reform from abroad….

The regime has concluded that as long as it holds elections, domestic and international pressure will subside. Yet the electoral process is so far from being free, fair and inclusive that many countries have already denounced it as a sham.

Read more…

New things are happening at ISDSI.

Good things!

Check it out here.

Students hiking in Mae Hong Son province.

Risk management is an important part of any good program, especially those that are running in an international/developing country setting, and those who are working in wilderness/experiential education.  At ISDSI we have been students of risk management since the beginning, and feel that it is an important component to both our overall program, and part of what we teach our students.

One of the best places to learn about risk management is at the annual Wilderness Risk Management Conference, but on by NOLS, Outward Bound and SCA.  Their focus is “Practical Solutions for Challenging Issues.”  We’ve  attended the WRMC a couple of times, and have published a paper in the WRMC 2004 proceedings, “The Objective Hazards of Culture: Risk Management in an International Setting.”

ISDSI (Ajaan Mark and Pi Ben) will presenting a workshop at the 2010 WRMC at Colorado Springs: “Crossing the Border Matters: Practical Risk Management in Developing Countries.”  Here is the description:

International wilderness trips are growing in popularity, especially to “non-traditional” settings in developing countries. However, even experienced wilderness leaders and risk managers may be caught unprepared by differences in legal systems, cultural expectations, and a sometimes radically changed risk management terrain. This practical hands-on session will examine in detail key issues and concerns for working in developing countries, appropriate for trip leaders, risk managers and expedition members.

We’ve put together a web page for folks attending the workshop, and will use the page to collect ISDSI specific information on risk management.  This won’t be a comprehensive list of papers on risk management (that’s even hard if you’re doing a google search), but rather supporting documentation and specific information related to the WRMC workshop and how we approach risk management at ISDSI.

Jump over to the new Risk Management page to see what we’re starting…

Great news out of Bangkok.  On very short notice, the governor of Bangkok pulled together a “Together We Can” day on Sunday, and thousands of people — Thai and foreign both — came out to sweep, scrub, pick up trash, and clean up the city.  It was an amazingly diverse crowd, and a sign of hope in the midst of the recent crisis.

Whoops. Thinking too much in the surf zone, Trang, Thailand.

When you are in a quickly changing situation like the political unrest in Thailand over the last few days and weeks, it pays to be flexible and responsive. We know from sea kayaking, paddle surfing and whitewater canoeing during our Expedition Field Courses at ISDSI that you need to be flexible, relaxed and aware to respond the best. When you get stiff, or freeze as you try and remember your checklist and details, is when you fail — flipping your boat, falling off, or failing to run the rapids.

Study abroad is no different.

When beginners learn a skill, they are focused on the lists — trying to remember the sequences, items, and events. With practice comes unconscious skill — you’re thinking about the movement and responding to the environment. In risk management and assessment, you need both — a list of principles that guide what you do, and the skill to apply them to fluid environments.

We’ve seen that a lot in the last few days and weeks in Thailand.

At ISDSI’s study abroad semesters in Thailand, we focus on training our American students to be culturally competent — not memorizing lists of do’s and don’ts, but rather learning Thai culture and language well enough to understand the “why” behind actions. Lists are only good for the situations you know about, but don’t necessarily guide you in what to do in new and unique situations.

At ISDSI our instructors work through lists, plans and contingencies — keeping daily course logs, training as Wilderness First Responders, working through scenarios and discussing what to do “if” — “if” being a very big, and ultimately unbounded category. However, rather than inflexible checklists or formulas, our focus is on learning how to appropriately combine three things: principles + resources + judgment.

Working on the flow chart and decision tree -- it doesn't work without good judgment.

Joe Brockington, associate provost for international programs at Kalamazoo College, one of our key partners, says in “Effective Crisis Management” that a crisis is an emergency without a plan. We would add that without good judgment, skill, and experience, a plan alone is worthless — and will quickly turn into a crisis.

Faced with a situation like the protests and later riots in Bangkok, the principles of how to ensure student well-being is paramount.  What resources do we have?  How can we combine them in the most appropriate way?  For example, the final capstone course (Coastal Ecology and Culture) had planned on having the students transit through Bangkok by train, and spend a day at the huge Chatujak Market doing a survey of coastal resources available at the market (from tropical fish to seashells). With the escalating tensions in Bangkok, we felt it would be better to avoid the city, and travel direct to the field site by bus — a decision that was easy to make, since we had the resources and experience to contact a reliable bus company, charter our own bus, and ensure that the students would arrive safely.  Likewise, during the tsunami that hit Thailand, we were able to contact our students since we have lists of their mobile phone numbers, and knew where they were.

We’re hoping that things continue to calm down in Bangkok, and it looks like that is what is happening. But we don’t expect that it will be the last emergency we’ll face at ISDSI.  In the meantime, we’ll continue to practice so we can be flexible and respond to the normal turbulence of living and working in Southeast Asia.

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For more information, see:

Effective Crisis Management by Joe Brockington.

Health, Safety, & Crisis Response by NAFSA.

The Objective Hazards of Culture outlining more of the ISDSI approach to risk management, including a list of questions for people involved in leading and managing study abroad programs.

If you follow the news, you will have heard that the on-going protests in Bangkok have been broken up, but not without extensive loss of life and damage to the city — and damage  to the country as a whole.  Many of the grievances expressed during the protests point out deep divisions in this highly unequal society.

Right now, the protests have ended, and most things have calmed down outside of Bangkok.  In Bangkok they are still dealing with arson, bombs left by the protesters, and protesters firing on residents, soldiers, and others. (The protests were not all as peaceful as you would think by listening to CNN — the protesters had automatic weapons, grenades, RPGs, etc., beyond the petrol bombs and arson.  But they used them at night, and journalists had a difficult time getting good photos. And like with a lot of media, if there’s no photo, it doesn’t exist.)

On Wednesday, the day the government overran the protest site, there were scattered protests throughout the country, including Chiang Mai. Small groups burned tires on one of the bridges, burned two fire trucks, and started a fire at the nearby governor’s residence.   Two of our instructors, Pi Ben and Pi Pui, went out to gather some first hand information, see what was going on, talk with some of the people there, and to take a few photos.

Looking south, with tires burning near Narawat Bridge. Not a lot of people around, and the fires didn't last long. Just down the road is where they burned two fire trucks.

The next day, Thursday, that was all cleaned up, and the small protest stages near the railroad station and in the center of the old city were being dismantled.  By Thursday afternoon, in Chiang Mai there was little evidence of the fires and unrest at all.

The same intersection on Friday. Pretty much back to normal.

What is next?  I’ve included several articles and one video report below that start to answer the questions about how a country known for being sanuk and sabai (fun and relaxed) could have such violent social unrest.

There are real and deep division in Thailand between the haves and have-nots. One of the things that is so powerful about study abroad with ISDSI is seeing first hand how marginalized communities are building a sustainable future, even in the face of such great inequality. Thailand has done very well, and reduced absolute poverty greatly over the last few decades.  But not everyone has benefited equally. The social structures and power relationships of hierarchy and patronage are starting to fray, as people want a voice and a real say in their future, and don’t want to just do what they are told, or carry out their assigned role, anymore.

Real participation is powerful, but working out the limits to that, what is appropriate, how it works, how to express grievances, etc. is still not yet settled. And like many places, the powerful don’t want to listen to the powerless.

As for what is next, we will continue to monitor the situation, and keep aware through our networks of NGOs and activists and others in the communities where we work. We have contingency plans for each course, and are willing to change course locations or curriculum if we need to.  We’re certainly going to spend a lot of time in our seminars next semester examining how these most recent events impact the society and communities where our students are learning.

As for Thailand, things are never really going to be the same.  An on-going insurgency isn’t likely, but social upheaval will continue for a long time. The divisions are out in the open, and our hope is that those rifts can be bridged and healing can happen. Part of the attraction of study abroad in a country like Thailand is that it is such a dynamic place.  Sometimes it is chaotic.

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Here are some sources for further analysis and news:

Protest leaders surrender as soldiers storm barricades (BBC video, including armed protesters)

Wounds will take a long time to heal (Bangkok Post editorial)

Sacrifices in Bangkok (Analysis in the Wall Street Journal by Pasuk and Baker, authors, historians and political analysts.)

Thailand’s Farmers Have Stood Up (Wall Street Journal by Andrew Walker, from Australia National University)

Bangkok: how did it come to this? (Andrew Walker, Nicholas Farrelly from ANU)

Thai PM committed to reconciliation but no poll offer (Reuters)

Uneasy peace in Thailand, uncertainties lie ahead (Reuters)

Breaking News! (An excellent analysis of the flaws in CNN’s coverage)