Multimedia

“Air pollution in Thailand ranks amongst the worst in the world, especially in major cities, industrial and agricultural areas. The spillover effects of air pollution, which flow across sub-national borders or boundaries within Thailand in addition to transgressing its national borders, have led to recent increases in public health problems, environmental and economic damage, and threatened the country’s tourism industry. Using a transboundary political ecology framework, I examine the drivers of the three major sources of air pollution in Thailand: vehicular emissions, agricultural emissions and industrial emissions. Transboundary political ecology directs attention toward the role of borders in the political ecology of scale to highlight barriers to environmental cooperation and cross-border opportunities for collaborative governance. My analysis not only focuses on the drivers of transboundary air pollution within Thailand, but extends to examine the effects of emissions on, and responses from, Thailand’s neighbours, namely, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. I argue that Thailand's incomplete decentralization, administrative fragmentation, prioritisation of economic growth and protection of vested business interests have created numerous barriers to improved transboundary governance of the air. I argue that new legislation is needed to overcome these barriers and to address this problem and protect socio-economically marginalised citizens who are disproportionately vulnerable to the adverse effects of transboundary air pollution."