Mr. Athapol Charoenshunsa, Director General of Pollution Control Department (PCD), Head of Thai delegation, and relevant agencies attended The Twenty Second Meeting of Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution (22nd MSC) with other 5 countries, including Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore through Video Teleconferencing (VTC) to conclude and discuss on the current situation and implementation on prevention and resolution of transboundary haze in the lower ASEAN region. ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) has announced the weather forecast for La Niña conditions in November 2021 and has expected to persist until early 2022, which may cause rain during that time.
Mr. Athapol said that H.E Varawut Silpa-archa, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE), has assigned PCD to coordinate with neighboring countries to seriously improve its operations in preventing and solving the transboundary haze. In this regard, Thailand has focused on air quality prediction and forecasting with the current capacity of PM2.5 concentration forecasting for 7 days in advance as well as has planned to coordinate with neighboring countries to upgrade regional weather forecasting capabilities in order to prevent and cope effectively with the problems on haze pollution in the region. Moreover, Thailand has expressed the appreciation to the countries in supporting Thailand’s proposals at the Sixteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (COP-16) regarding the consideration of target setting to reduce the number of hot spots in ASEAN to 20% and use the target as a development goal in next Roadmap in order to provide and solve haze problems in the region extremely and substantially.
The ASEAN Member States also agreed that implementation under the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution was significant and relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate change, particularly reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions according to the goals of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Mr. Athapol said.
