From 9 to 11 of June 2026, Thailand took part in the second edition of the Bilbao Bootcamp, a three-day forum dedicated to build transformative local solutions that can attract investment.  Co-hosted by the Joint SDG Fund, the Spain, the Basque Government, and the Local2030 Coalition at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, the event brought together around 200 global leaders from the United Nations, national and local governments, and private sector around a shared question: how to unlock the investments that towns, cities, and provinces need to accelerate sustainable development and improve people’s lives at the local level.Thailand was represented by the Ministry of Interior, Khon Kaen Province, UN-Habitat, and UNDP. Together, the delegation advanced the design of the Local Finance Accelerator for Climate Resilience, an initiative aimed at strengthening climate adaptation and resilience through subnational finance.The objective is to protect people, homes, and livelihoods from climate risks while creating new opportunities for future generations to thrive despite climate shocks.The Bootcamp provided an intensive working environment to sharpen the project concept, test its financing logic, engage with international experts and build the partnerships needed to bring it forward. A Thailand-led initiativeThe Bootcamp reinforced a key idea behind the initiative: climate resilience starts locally.Across Thailand, provinces and municipalities have identified priority investments to address flooding, droughts, and other climate-related risks. However, many of these priorities struggle to move from planning to implementation due to limited access to financing, project preparation support, and investment partnerships.The Local Finance Accelerator is being designed to help address this challenge. It will support provinces and municipalities in transforming locally identified priorities into investment-ready opportunities by strengthening project preparation, connecting territories with financing partners, and creating pathways to mobilize public, private, and climate finance.The initiative is grounded in local ownership and responds directly to priorities identified by national and subnational authorities, ensuring that investments reflect the needs of communities most exposed to climate risks. Strengthening the proposal through partnershipThroughout the Bootcamp, the Thai delegation worked closely with international experts, development finance institutions, investors, and peer countries to refine the programme's design and financing approach.The proposal was presented to an independent review panel, which responded positively to both its development impact vision and financing approach. One of the key outcomes of the Bootcamp was a sharper focus on water-related climate resilience investments, including flood management and drought resilience. By concentrating initially on this common challenge across Bangkok, Surat Thani, and Khon Kaen, these priorities provide an entry point to put the Local Finance Accelerator in motion while establishing the financing engine and partnerships needed to scale future climate-resilience investments.The initiative is guided by a broader vision: a future where communities are not merely surviving climate shocks but are resilient enough to thrive despite them. In this sense, the programme seeks to contribute to the regeneration of Thailand's territories, restoring what has been lost, preventing future losses, and creating new opportunities for people and communities.Looking ahead: regional leadership and new partnershipsLooking ahead, the programme design will continue in close collaboration with the UN system including UNDP, UN-Habitat, UNDRR, UNCDF, and UNESCO alongside the UN Resident Coordinator's Office in Thailand. Building on the momentum generated in Bilbao, the programme will continue connecting local climate resilience priorities with global expertise, strategic partnerships, and financing opportunities. Through this process, Thailand is helping demonstrate how locally led solutions, supported by strong partnerships and innovative financing approaches, can accelerate climate resilience and sustainable development at scale.

Every year on World Environment Day, we are reminded that protecting nature is not simply an environmental responsibility. It is an economic imperative.Nature is business -- and it is everyone's business.Every meal we eat, every drop of water we drink and countless jobs and industries depend on healthy ecosystems, from the forests that regulate water supplies to the mangroves and coral reefs that protect coastlines.Agriculture, forestry and tourism contribute almost 30% of Thailand's GDP, and more than 70% of the country's economy-wide value depends directly on nature.Yet that living system is under growing strain.Thailand is already among the top 20 hardest-hit countries in the world by climate change. The El Niño weather patterns currently forming, which may hit from as early as this month, are expected to supercharge extreme weather events in ways that are hard to predict. The combined impacts of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution today threaten 1,600 animal, bird and plant species across Thailand.The animals, birds and plants that call Thailand home are more than symbols of national heritage; they are iconic. They stabilise nature and the economic and social systems that depend on it. They bring tourists to Thailand's shores. They stir school children to care for the environment.For a time in 2024, the tiny "Moo Deng", a pygmy hippopotamus named after a Thai dish that means "bouncy pork", became one of the most recognisable animals on the planet.Such species remind us to get emotional about nature. They help us to connect with the beautiful places that we care about. They give us hope.But these animals, birds and plants cannot advocate for themselves, and the communities that protect them -- by protecting their environment -- need your help.That is why, on World Environment Day, UNDP and Thai apparel brand YUEDPAO launched the Icons of Hope campaign in partnership with Central Pattana.Designed in partnership with Thailand's Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning and the youth community artist group Dek Rak Thoong from Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, the Icons of Hope campaign draws inspiration from three ecosystems that Thailand's most iconic species call home -- forests, wetlands and marine and coastal ecosystems.In forests, the Indochinese tiger helps to maintain ecological balance while the great hornbill disperses seeds that regenerate the forest.In wetlands, the fishing cat, purple swamphen and lotus connect land and water, supporting rich biodiversity while helping to reduce floods and sustain fisheries.Along Thailand's coasts, dugongs and green sea turtles depend on healthy seagrass meadows for food, while seagrass helps store carbon and protect shorelines.There is hope that all these species can survive and thrive: Thailand is one of the only countries in the world with a growing tiger population.The Western Forest Complex, home to 12 national parks, has seen its tiger population more than triple over the past two decades thanks to sustained conservation efforts.The challenge is not a lack of solutions. It is a lack of investment at the scale required.According to research by UNDP's Biodiversity Finance Initiative, the world faces an annual biodiversity finance gap exceeding US$700 billion (22.8 trillion baht). In Thailand alone, the gap is estimated at about copy billion per year.Closing that gap would enable full implementation of Thailand's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2023–2027), helping secure the ecosystems on which future prosperity depends. The government's Biodiversity Finance Plan outlines practical pathways for doing so.Public-private partnerships are a key ingredient, demonstrating how businesses of all sizes can be part of championing and channelling resources to nature, driving sustainability and positive impact.All profits from the YUEDPAO x UNDP Icons of Hope collection, for example, will go to support community-led initiatives that protect ecosystems, conserve threatened species and advance nature-positive development in some of Thailand's most important biodiversity landscapes through the UNDP Global Environment Facility's Small Grants Programme.YUEDPAO joins with UNDP partners Krungthai Bank in supporting the Small Grants Programme in Thailand. Krungthai Bank also provides the donation platform for the NEXTOPIA gaming application with Siam Piwat -- another public-private innovation illustrating that investing in nature is not just philanthropy; it is a business choice.Biodiversity is not something distant, hidden deep in forests or beneath the sea. From the forests that regulate water supplies to the mangroves and coral reefs that protect coastlines, it is the living system that makes life possible.Thailand has shown that conservation can succeed. The return of tiger populations in the Western Forest Complex demonstrates this.This World Environment Day, which occurs today, remember that nature is business -- and it's everyone's business. There is no better investment that we can make.Written by Niamh Collier-SmithOriginally published by Bangkok Post

A Thai woman who spent more than 20 years in prison after being found guilty of drugs trafficking – including eight on death row – has told the UN how learning to sew helped her find meaning in life behind bars, and a job when she was released.Mariyam Tadein was 21 years old when she was sentenced to death.Police found over half a million tablets of “yaba”, an illegal cocktail of methamphetamine and caffeine popular in many parts of Southeast Asia, in the house she was renting in southern Thailand.“I spent 20 years, five months, and 15 days in prison. I was sentenced to death, along with a person who was executed by lethal injection.I knew I was next, that I was going to die.There were enough yaba tablets in that house to fill an entire truck. They weren’t mine; but it did not matter.I got to prison and everything happened fast: I was charged with drug trafficking and sentenced to death. Back then, I was ready to die.Death penalty stigmaFor the next two years, I had to wear a sign at all times that said Death Penalty. I faced death for eight years. But it was during the last two that I accepted it as I was put on a special training course on how to face the countdown to death.That same year, there was a big flood and I was transferred to another prison. It was there I was told I had been granted a royal pardon over the death. My Nigerian friends also received a pardon. We were nine people. We baked a cake. We were relieved to be alive, although I felt I was already dead, as I was facing the rest of my life in prison.However, I told myself: this is going to be a long wait, so I might as well focus on something.I learned how to sew in prison classes, and then I was put to work. The more I worked, the more meaning I felt.I concentrated on the pattern of the fabric and the thread. Thread by thread. Every day.I also earned privileges in a prison I shared with 4,000 other women, like showering later in the day. Life got easier.The most difficult time for me was when I was transferred to Songkhla prison in southern Thailand. The other inmates were very poor. It was tough for me because at some point my family stopped coming to visit. They thought that I would stay in prison forever. What was the point of visiting? My husband moved on; he remarried. That was very hard, finding out.I am very proud of how I was able to focus on work. I would focus on the different patterns.I would not allow myself to focus on my story, on what led me to prison. Or on my husband’s new life. I could not change that. It was done. I needed to move forward.When I felt the bad thoughts coming, I would go back to the fabric, back to the pattern.Patterns of life and deathEverything changed during the 2004 tsunami. I was told to sew cloth bags for the bodies. I kept cutting lots of fabric because there were many deaths.That’s how I got distracted about my own life. I would focus on the pattern.”In 2021, Mariyam at age 52 received a second royal pardon for good conduct and was released from prison. The owner of a sewing business who had trained previously prisoners offered her a job. Today, age 56, she works and sews, and lives with her children and husband, with whom she is reunited.The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has provided vocational training equipment to almost 60 prisons in Thailand, enabling access to practical skills such as woodworking and sewing, enhancing opportunities for prisoners during and after incarceration.Originally published by UN News

Bangkok, Thailand, 8 May 2026 — Thailand unveiled its commemorative logo marking 80 years of UN membership at a ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The logo was selected from more than 200 entries submitted to the national design competition jointly organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations in Thailand.The winning design blends an elephant, the Thai flag, an olive branch, and the UN emblem, reflecting a partnership dating back to 1946, when Thailand was among the first nations in Asia to join the organisation. First place went to Chamarthorn Ongsampop, 17, of Princess Chulabhorn Science High School, Pathum Thani. First runner-up was Thanawin Maneewong, and second runner-up was Raksak Nawapornpakdee.The Launch Ceremony for the Commemorative Logo of the 80th Anniversary of Thailand's Membership to the UN was presided over by Vijavat Isarabhakdi, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Michaela Friberg-Storey, UN Resident Coordinator in Thailand. Also in attendance were Sudruetai Lertkasem, Director-General of the Public Relations Department, Pinsuda Jayanama, Director-General of the Department of International Organizations, and representatives from the Thai Government.[Click to view more photos]