• OPINION

  Only compassion can douse the fires

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 11/05/2019

  » The bushfires that have ravaged parts of northern Thailand this year have been unusually fierce.

• OPINION

  Smoggy North: Not only capital suffers

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 30/03/2019

  » A friend of mine in Chiang Mai recently lamented the double standards regarding the way in which the government and society has responded to the haze problem in the North.

• OPINION

  Asean eco-issues need more than feel-good talks

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 16/03/2019

  » As this year's chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Thailand has recently done impressive work in tackling environmental problems in the region.

• OPINION

  Bangkok faces its very own 'airpocalypse'

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 02/02/2019

  » City schools have been closed. Soldiers have been deployed to check and shut down factories that pollute the air we breathe (but we never find out which factories have been closed!) And our prime minister is acting tough in a desperate bid to combat the PM2.5 haze-causing particles.

• OPINION

  Khon Kaen leads way in haze battle

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 18/02/2019

  » As provinces battle with hazardous haze, Khon Kaen shows it knows how to tackle the problem at its root. If successful, the northeastern province can be a role model when it comes to solving PM2.5 -- particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less.

• OPINION

  No silver lining on smog clouds, yet

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 18/01/2019

  » As a Bangkok resident, I have also been badly affected this week by the hazardous smog. As such, the first thing I do each morning now is check the Air4Thai app on my phone.

• OPINION

  BMA blowing hot air about toxic city haze

  News, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 23/02/2018

  » I had never believed air pollution can kill, until I spent a year living in Beijing. The year was 2013. Notably, it was a time the city was known for its "airpocalypse", a moniker used by foreign media to describe severe air pollution in China.

• BUSINESS

  Greening the palm oil supply chain

  Asia focus, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 08/05/2017

  » 2016 will be remembered as the year of clear blue skies and clean air in the southern peninsula of Southeast Asia. For the first time in nearly two decades, choking haze from fires set to clear land for oil palm plantations was reduced significantly, in keeping with a promise made by Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

• THAILAND

  Razing 'cane

  Life, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 30/03/2016

  » March and April are months of haze. The white-grey smoke may be just a seasonal nuisance that exists only in the northern and southern regions in Thailand, but in a sugar plantation in Dan Chang of Suphan Buri province, haze has long been a part of the people's daily lives and of the worrisome harvesting cycle. Villagers in Dan Chang get used to dry-coughing. Smoke hangs over the roofs of their houses and seeps indoors.

• LIFE

  A chance of less haze?

  Life, Anchalee Kongrut, Published on 20/01/2016

  » Despite the cool weather, the period between late January to March is not a pleasant time for villagers in Lampang and the other northern provinces. It is the time that haze -- caused by the swathes of smoke from forest fires and the burning of agricultural waste -- blankets the region. The man-made smog has been an inevitable seasonal event. Every year, farmers need to clear agricultural leftovers on their farms before sowing new seeds in May. In the old days, haze was tolerable. But mono-cultivation, especially large scale corn plantation, has recently forced farmers to clear large plots of land quickly for re-harvesting.

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