Phuket Landslide: Development Valued Over Lives After Deadly Big Buddha Tragedy
How much is a life worth? We rarely ask it directly, but every policy decision, every corporate calculation, every personal choice tacitly answers it. And in the aftermath of the tragic landslide near Phuket’s Big Buddha, the answer emerging is chillingly clear: far less than the perceived cost of slowing development.
The story, as reported by The Phuket News, isn’t just a local tragedy; it’s a precise indictment of a global system that consistently externalizes the true costs of growth onto the most vulnerable. Eleven months after the landslide claimed 13 lives and devastated property, the debate around reopening the Big Buddha viewpoint exposes a disturbing calculus. The Royal Forest Department’s conditions for reopening, ostensibly designed to prevent future disasters, read less like genuine safeguards and more like a legalistic attempt to deflect blame.
These conditions — demands for adherence to existing laws against “expansion of structures” and “environmental degradation” — are almost farcical in their simplicity. They tacitly admit that the initial construction occurred in a regulatory void. The truly breathtaking detail? The requirement to follow environmental protection measures from a review committee meeting that "did not mention or present any environmental impact report at all.' It’s a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, but with real-world consequences.
“There is no responsibility from the Phra Ming Mongkol Sattha Foundation at this time. They can donate millions to the hospital but they won’t even take responsibility for this matter.”
This isn’t just about a single landslide in Thailand. It’s a manifestation of a system where the incentives are dangerously misaligned. The rapid expansion of tourism infrastructure in countries like Thailand, driven by a potent cocktail of local ambition and foreign capital, often outstrips the capacity of regulatory bodies to keep pace. We’ve seen this movie before: the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, where corners were cut to chase lower production costs, or the Brumadinho dam disaster in Brazil, a consequence of prioritizing mining output over safety inspections. Thailand’s tragedy is part of this broader pattern. The pressure to attract tourists, to generate revenue, creates a perverse incentive to overlook potential dangers, especially when those dangers disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
Look closer, and you’ll find that the residents of Phuket are now fighting to ensure that compensation is actually delivered to the injured and the families of the deceased. The same foundation can donate millions to the hospital but not deliver compensation to victims of the disaster it caused. But even financial compensation, while necessary, doesn’t address the root of the problem: a profound power imbalance. It’s a disconnect between those who reap the rewards of development and those who bear the burden of its risks. The foundation seemingly facing minimal consequences underscores this imbalance.
The promise of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) is precisely to address this imbalance by forcing developers to account for the environmental and social consequences of their projects. But as Professor Philip Hirsch at the University of Sydney has documented, the EIA process in Thailand, established in 1981, has been historically undermined by insufficient resources, a lack of public participation, and even outright political interference. Regulatory capture, where the regulators become beholden to the interests they are supposed to oversee, is not just a theoretical risk; it’s a recurring reality in many Southeast Asian countries, where environmental and social safeguards are too often seen as impediments to economic growth.
What’s missing is genuine consequence. The Karon Police dropped their investigation citing insufficient evidence. The civil suit led by Rungnapa Phutkaew against the Phra Phuttha Ming Mongkhol Sattha 45 Foundation is a necessary step, but ultimately insufficient. Without the credible threat of criminal charges, without accountability that extends beyond monetary settlements, the underlying incentives remain unchanged. The implicit message is clear: risking lives for profit is a calculated gamble with limited downside.
The tragedy in Phuket is a potent reminder that development without robust environmental and social safeguards isn’t progress; it’s a Faustian bargain. It’s a system that prioritizes short-term gains over long-term sustainability, that values economic growth over human lives. Until we fundamentally redesign those systems, until we create mechanisms that incentivize responsibility and prioritize ecological integrity, we will continue to witness these avoidable disasters, again and again. We are incentivizing the extraction of everything until nothing remains. The poorest communities pay the cost.
