By Paw Siriluk Sriprasit
As a global citizen and an environmental journalist, I am always watching out and waiting to get more information to write about the bees’ colony collapse disorder (CCD) – the world is now facing. The CCD is an extremely important problem that can put the human kind to an end. As Maurice Maeterlinck wrote in ‘The Life of the Bee (1901)’ “if the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.” No bees mean no food, “as bees are the most important pollinator of our fruit, flowers, vegetables, and crop. About a third of the world’s food supply depends on bees” said Marla Spivak, a well-known American entomologist.
For anyone who is not familiar with this subject – the bees’ colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from beehives abruptly disappear. The CCD occurred in late 2006 and also began to happen afterwards, mostly in Western colonies in North America and Western Europe. The cause of CCD is somewhat unclear, but the possible factors have been studied by many institutions and universities. Key causes that distributed for CCD are overuse of pesticides, fungicides, diseases, bee mites, and electromagnetic radiation from electronic communication devices (wifi, mobile phones, etc.).
Happen to be that I’m not only a global citizen and journalist, but was also born and raised in Thailand. So enough caring for bees and talking about CCD for now. I’m proposing that what Thai politics and society are currently facing can be called “Democracy Collapse Disorder” (DCD). Why DCD? I’ll try to comprehend this phenomenon for you, however your final consideration and judgment are with you, the readers. But let me try.