With the benefit of hindsight, the devastating floods that killed more than 300 people, caused extreme hardship to millions more and laid waste to huge swathes of farmland in 47 provinces in the central, northern and northeastern regions, could have been avoided - but only if the ministries and other relevant authorities had coordinated their work efforts, taken proper preventative measures and issued early warnings to people in low-lying areas.

If the Agriculture Ministry's Irrigation Department had channelled more water through its system of dams and drained it into the Gulf of Thailand earlier in the year, the Chao Phraya and other major rivers in the North and the Central regions would not have swollen so much with rainwater runoff during the wet season.

If the Natural Resource and Environment Ministry's Water Resource Department had built new reservoirs or basins to contain excess water during the rainy months, many more towns and villages would have been saved from the deluge and thousands would not have had to abandon their homes and farms at such great cost.

If the Agriculture Ministry had been able to convince farmers to avoid planting crops in flood-prone areas, damage to farmland could have been avoided completely, or at least much reduced.

There were a lot of preventative measures that could have been taken, but weren't because of incompetence, complacency and poor coordination on the part of relevant government agencies.

It's like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. But it is now obvious that a painful lesson has been learned.

A long-term comprehensive water resource management plan will now have to be drawn up to better control seasonal flooding and minimise potential damage. But before the relevant government agencies come up with a water resource, land-use and flood management system, government planners and local residents will have to deal with the difficult issue of what to do with flood-prone areas that cannot be protected, or where flood prevention is not a viable option.

It must be made clear to farmers and fruit growers that there are certain areas that should be declared unsuitable for human settlement or agriculture during the rainy season because of the risk of potentially catastrophic events like landslides or ravaging floods.

Successive governments have consistently failed to come up with a comprehensive water-resource, land-use and flood-management system partly because it would require them to take unpopular political decisions, such as moving existing communities out of disaster-prone areas or expropriating private properties and farmland to build reservoirs or flood-prevention systems.

That's why the interim Surayud government, which is a non-partisan regime, must put in place the comprehensive water resource, land-use and flood management system based on the river-basin management approach. The government must ensure coherent planning and policy-making with wide public participation and good coordination in policy implementation.

The other alternative to the river-basin management approach is for each village, each town, each city and each government agency that works in their respective jurisdiction to build and manage its own flood prevention system, regulate its own land use and manage its own water resources. But this fractious approach was and has been proven unworkable. It was the reason why this year's catastrophic flooding caused so much suffering and damage.

It is good to know that the Surayud government is making this plan a matter of priority. The National Economic and Social Development Board has been assigned to get all relevant government agencies to produce a comprehensive water resource, land-use and flood control system by January so that effective measures can be taken to make sure such devastating flooding does not happen when the next rainy season comes around.