GREEN AND LOCAL
The pandemic made countries around the world rethink their supply chains and reliance on foreign goods, especially from China, where the virus originated.
China responded to the outbreak by shutting down factories, some of which other countries relied on for medical equipment needed to fight the virus.
Thailand did not suffer significant shortages during the lockdown and curfew, which made it marginally more difficult for factories to operate because of new health and safety regulations and having to shut down early to allow employees to return home before the curfew.
However, Thailand is heavily dependent on imported pharmaceuticals, which could be a major problem moving forward into 2021.
While the country has a deal to produce 13 million vaccine doses next year with British drug firm AstraZeneca, about 56 million more are needed to vaccinate the entire population of 69 million.
It may take a few years before there are enough vaccines to inoculate the entire population, complicating the eventual reopening of the county’s tourism sector.
The external threat of the pandemic also saw the government and businesses put more thought into environmental initiatives, as unfettered wildlife trade in China is thought to have contributed to the outbreak.
Policymakers want to limit disastrous environmental decisions before they snowball into economic damage.
The Thai government started 2020 by partnering with businesses to stop the use of plastic bags at major retailers, however this ended up being offset by a large spike in plastic packaging waste from the rise of e-commerce and food delivery.
However, emerging businesses such as SCG Packaging Plc seek to address this problem with a line of biodegradable packaging.
The firm had the second largest initial public
offering of the year, raising nearly 40 billion baht on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
While fossil fuel and petrol use fell during the lockdown, some environmentalists worry about “revenge emissions”, as happened after the 2008 financial crisis when countries such as China produced more emissions to “catch up” on lost development time.