Project Overview

Civil society voices and narratives are missing from public conversations on air pollution. Currently, while the science behind air pollution is unequivocal, its public representation is not, with official accounts perpetuating existing inequities by narrowly determining how crises are defined and selectively narrating who is impacted by them. To decenter this inequity, the pilot study proposes to use innovative participatory futures methods to gather civil society perspectives, particularly individuals working in the nonprofit and NGO spaces, on the plausible, possible, and probable future solutions to air pollution and its impact on people’s health as well as social and economic implications on wellbeing. This is to ensure that 1) civil society perspectives inform future policy and programmatic recommendations for addressing air pollution, and 2) that civil society perspectives are centered to combat the continued misinformation propagated by private industries.

The air pollution crisis in Thailand is remediable, though the onus on addressing it cannot be pinned to road commuters or low-wealth farmers. Futures methods will serve as a useful approach to center civil society voices to identify innovative solutions and reshape the public narrative around air pollution.