Like many cities in Southeast Asia, Bangkok is a city of sharp and colorful contrasts that can both confuse and elevate the senses. On a warm morning walking down Sukhumvit avenue, a busy street hosting spicy sausage hawkers and high-end shopping malls, I am overwhelmed by a cacophony of noises and smells. A monorail train whistles overhead. A tuk-tuk drives by blaring like an angry trombone. But just a few kilometers away, I board a thin canoe with an outboard motor, and suddenly find myself in the shadows of giant Tualang trees and Nipa, Raja and Bismarckia palms.

Here on Bang Krachao Island, across the Chao Phraya River, one finds an extraordinary place of quiet repose. Referred to by locals as Bangkok’s “green lung,” Bang Krachao is a small bit of wilderness offsetting the drum of machinery in the city and hinting at Bangkok’s past as a biodiversity hotspot. In Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park, we gather to shoot an interview with Doley Tshering, Senior Advisor for Ecosystems and Biodiversity at UNDP. Doley is one of the guests for our latest webcast programme called Asia in Focus, covering corporate sustainability issues in the region. In partnership with the European Union, Asia in Focus hosts regional experts who articulate the connection between business, the environment, and human rights.

The cameramen are setting up their tripods now, beneath a bird-watching tower. As an amateur filmmaker in an earlier stage of my life, I admire their extensive collection of video cameras, lenses, headphones, and audio equipment. They train their cameras on the waters and trees around them for “cutaway” and “B-roll” shots.

Bang Krachao is an appropriate place to shoot this segment of our webcast with its primordial ferns, swampy alcoves and leathered monitor lizards serving as a backdrop. But is it a setting worth celebrating or a sad reminder of what has been sacrificed in the name of unrestrained economic growth?

Southeast Asia is losing its biodiversity assets at break-neck speed to satisfy unrelenting consumer demand for vegetable oils, beauty products, chocolate candies, and electronic consumer items, including the camera equipment I so covet. As Doley explains with the cameras rolling,“starting from 1970, wildlife has declined by 55 percent in Asia. In just one lifetime, Asia has lost 40 percent of its coral reefs and 60 percent of its mangroves.” 

Southeast Asia also has some of the highest deforestation rates in the world, with an estimated 15 percent of regional forest cover lost over the last 2 decades. Deforestation has mostly been driven by the operations of underregulated agribusiness, extractives, and charcoal production companies.

The human rights implications of deforestation have been significant. Biodiversity loss puts at risk the right to livelihoods, the right to clean air and water, the right to culture and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Sometimes land is cleared after dodgy land acquisition deals are finalized. These agreements result in “land grabs” and the forced displacement of Indigenous Peoples and communities. The relocation of villages has its own impacts, as traditional knowledge and cultural connections to the land is lost, and the hunting of wildlife and other activities increases.

As Doley does a second take for the camera, I start contemplating the environmental impact of the many pieces of video gear we brought here to make this shoot. How much raw material—tin, tantalum, tungsten, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and manganese—was needed to make these cameras, their batteries, and the servers that host our webcasts? How much carbon did we burn transporting all these people and equipment here?