Water Access and Resilience to Climate-Induced Droughts in the Thai Secondary City of Khon Kaen: Unequal and Unjust Vulnerability

Abstract

Much of the research conducted on urban climate vulnerability has not explored drought in cities but instead the impacts of flooding. Studies that examine vulnerability to climate-induced urban water shortages have primarily focused on the entire city or regional scale, and less on the community scale. Using two slum communities in Northeast Thailand as a case study, I address this gap using a political ecology framework to study climate-induced droughts in 2015 and 2016. In keeping with recent scholarship, I view droughts as not only natural but also as a result of social and political processes. To investigate the residents of the two communities’ vulnerability to these droughts, I explore the governance processes affecting vulnerability and potential strategies that might reduce vulnerability. In addition to applying a historical and multiscalar approach to the drought, the research relies on a two-tiered methodology that combines community-based case studies with actor- and discourse-based analysis. Slum communities in Khon Kaen have been doubly marginalized by both the national and municipal governments, which weakened their resilience to the two most recent droughts.