PhD Colloquium for March 2018

The Department of Development and Sustainability organized a PhD colloquium for PhD students on Feb 28th, 2018 as a monthly regular event of the Department. The objectives of the PhD Colloquium are to share the learning experiences of their research and study outcome on live discussion forum.

Over than 23 doctoral students from different academic programs of SERD attended this colloquium. Mr. Jiang Congcong welcomed all participants and introduced the Presenter Ms. Surutwadee Pak-Uthai, PhD student/NRM and briefed her two published papers and work experience in Ministry of Agricultural and Cooperatives.

Surutwadee Pak-Uthai, presenter of the event, briefly explained the concept of his PhD research on the topic “Strategies to Cope with Drought: Public Policies and Farmers’ Actions in Suphanburi Province, Thailand”. This study has investigated how farmers dealt with the drought in 2015 – 2016 which hit many regions of Thailand. It distinguishes measures of farmers into first-best and second-best. Then through the field household survey and semi-structured interview with key informants, different resources farmers leveraged have also been listed as various kinds of capitals, e.g. social capital, human capital, financial capital, national capital and physical capital. Surutwadee Pak-Uthai examines the effect of adaptive measures on farmers’ household’ capacity to obtain income during drought and on households’ financial situation at the end of the drought, then analysis the coordination between public organizations, public organizations and farmers.

The findings indicated that the government supported many measures to help farmers during the drought while the farmers adapted different ones. The lack of linkage between two parts urged a better coordination between public organizations (provincial, and local level) and farmers on planning to deal with any kind of disaster.

With the pressed time, many interactive discussions were conducted by the moderator. Mr. was interactive. Ms. Ngoc Thi Nhu Tran, Mr. Ko Ko Lwin and other participants ask many questions on terms definition, methodology, and even the structures of Thai public organizations. The participants also offered some effective measures from their homelands. Ms. Surutwadee Pak-Uthai responded to all points and glad to absorb different views from other doctoral students.