POLICY BRIEF: PM2.5 and Right to Clean Air

Thailand especially its northern region early last year faced one of the worst PM2.5 haze incidents in decade. As facts were revealed, forest and field burnings to sustain rural farm-based livelihoods were singled out as the most critical contributions to the pollution there. Their underlying causes; an endless loop of farm life poverty and inequalities, the unregulated free market and expansion of monocropping, and the dysfunction of the aged bureaucratic system, were also uncovered. Policymakers and concerned officials have been trying to come up with more progressive measures as well as a new policy and law to address this multi-faceted issue

The forest fire season has passed once again, but concerned officials and policymakers have not stopped working on addressing the PM2.5 haze. The lessons from the past few years have reminded them of sluggish action that could take a toll on people’s health and the economy. The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) has recently organised an After Action Review (AAR) to review their officers’ performances after exploring new measures taken from the lessons learned from last year’s haze. Meanwhile, policymakers and lawmakers have been vetting the new law and policy to address the phenomenon.

Since the complexity of the incident was exposed last year, discussions were held in the public to explore the best way out of the challenge, including the Dialogue Forum: The Lessons Learned from PM2.5 and Right to Clean Air, where leading policymakers, concerned officials, and public members discussed the underlying causes of the haze as well as exploring the new policy and law around the idea of “right to clean air” together.

According to the experts at the forum, PM2.5 haze occurs in almost all regions of the country during the dry season with different sources of origin reported. In Bangkok, the causes of the haze are mostly traffic and industrial activities as well as transborder pollution. But in the North, the causes of the haze are far more complicated as they are involved with rural livelihoods and the roles of the free market that drive unsound agricultural production in the area, thus posing a greater challenge.

The incident in the northern region could be traced back almost 20 years ago when there were reports of mass monocropping of maize from one mountain to another, but the public started to recognise it just during the past decade when there was serious monitoring and reporting of the air pollution in place, including via the introduction of the government’s Air 4 Thai application, from which people can check the levels of PM2.5 haze concentrations hourly and daily. 

People in the North had learned more about the phenomenon, but it was not until over the past few years that its severity and complexity were exposed as people could no longer stand the impacts. They demanded more action from the government, including taking the case to court.

Last year’s PM2.5 haze was considered “severe” with the concentration levels skyrocketed to over 100 to 500 µg/m³, one to ten times the safe limit set at 50 µg/m³. The highest concentration level of the pollution was registered at 537 µg/m³ on March 27 in Chiang Rai. This is more than 35 times the WHO’s recommended level of 15 µg/m³. By April, over two million people were reported to have been sent to hospital, with records of respiratory symptoms varying from mild to severe degrees.

At the same time, over 172,000 hotspots were registered nationwide_over 100,000 occurred in the North (109,035 hotspots, or a 356% increase from 2022, according to the Pollution Control Department). Of this, over 86% of the hotspots in the region were found in the forests, leading to a serious question of what caused them. 

The country’s protected forests alone (national parks and wildlife sanctuaries) were burned down beyond 12.7 million rai (out of 73 million rai) by around 70,000 hotspots. 8.9 million rai were in the North, where over 50,000 hotspots were detected.

Through reported cases within communities and arrest records, the officials learned about the causes of the fires in their responsible forests. Rural people in the North had largely relied on fires in the forests to make a living; from farmland expansion, clearing of farm residues in the fields, grazing, wildlife hunting, to collecting of forest products_all are typical to seasonal fire burning elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The government assigned some leading policymakers to analyse the situation to find out their underlying causes. They called them, “structural problems”. They summed up into three prime causes; an endless loop of farm life poverty and inequalities, the unregulated free market and expansion of monocropping, and last but not least, the dysfunction of the aged bureaucratic system.

The cumulative hotspots in the Mekong sub-region, meanwhile, stood at almost a million, or 992,718, posing an additional challenge to the policymakers.

Policy challenges

As earlier shared by the PCD’s chief, Dr.Pinsak Suraswadi, tasked to analyse the situation as well, he said at the end of the season; “We are not talking about the problem of PM2.5 or forest fires here. It’s actually about the unsustainable use of natural resources here and elsewhere. It’s a social and economic problem that occurs almost everywhere now and will continue on and on if we cannot address its causes or drivers. Or even if we can do so, these can still pose a very challenge to us.”

Nakharin Suthatto, a director of DNP’s Forest Fire Control Division, who shared the information at the forum agreed that last year’s forest burnings were severe and measures implemented to handle the situation were unsuccessful.

Normally, the DNP will mobilise their officers to manage forest fuels ahead of the burning season and firebreaks will be created to help break forest fires. In the middle of the season, zero-burning may be issued to suppress the burnings when the air pollution gets severe, and closure of protected forests may be executed if necessary along with law enforcement. However, they struggled with the tasks at hand considering the vast area of the forests and the shortage of staff and budget. 

As the burnings got severe, governors in several provinces decided to execute the zero burning. This just contradicted the need of the locals to use fires, and it prompted many of them to violate the regulation, resulting in uncontrolled forest fires in several areas. 

Despite the troop of forest fire control officers and volunteers, the situation had gone from bad to worse and the DNP eventually decided to execute the closure of 104 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in the region as its last resort_all resonating their past actions and challenges.

“It did not quite work well as the situation became severe by then. It’s clear that once the situation gets out of control, it outpaces us. The challenge is how we can get it under control as earliest as possible,” said Mr. Nakharin at the forum.

• 

• 

Policy recommendations

Last year’s incident has brought leading policymakers and concerned officials as well as communities to work together to address the challenge brought by the haze. They first analysed the problem and came up with its underlying causes that needed to be tackled seriously. The work was then divided into phases; from immediate to long-term, with various legal tools and measures proposed.

In the immediate term, a clear target was set on the most critical protected forests and forest reserves in the region, 10 each. They were called “Big Fish”. The DNP shifted from regressive measures of area-based management to more human-centric management, putting more effort into intervening in people’s activities and fire reliance in the forests. These included putting more checkpoints, sending officials to camp around potentially burned spots, and forest fire control patrolling. (Following the latest AAR, this dry season it has managed to cut the number of hotspots in the target forests by half.)

The middle and long-term measures including the government’s support of land security and proper uses of forests have been proposed to support the transition of people’s livelihoods to a more sustainable path. Mass monocropping and unregulated free market mechanisms have also been brought to the focus with measures to divert the practices into more sustainable solutions for both agro-business firms and farmers such as Haze-free farm practices, tracibility, ESG reporting, and others.

Last but not least is the aged bureaucratic system that is focused. The disintegration of the work and responsibility among concerned agencies will be integrated as well as their laws and regulations and administration structures.

To accomplish all, these proposals will be addressed in the prime policy and law, simply known as the Clean Air Act. The only challenge at the moment when the lawmakers are vetting on it is; how they can synergise varied interests of interest groups together. The critical difference, as also discussed at the forum, lies with the fact that whether the new policy and law would still be business-as-usual or government-based, or it will shift to be more people-centric, or right-based.

Also read: ถอดบทเรียนวิกฤติ PM2.5 และอนาคตอากาศสะอาดของประเทศไทย I The Lessons Learned from PM2.5 and Right to Clean Air