Understanding the Socio-Ecological Drivers and Consequences of Seasonal Air Pollution

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

Air pollution affects an astounding 92 percent of the world population, including numerous U.S. cities, and is responsible for one out of nine deaths globally. While environmental scientists have documented the sources of air pollution and social scientists have demonstrated how the effects of air pollution are unevenly distributed, scholars still know markedly little about the socio-ecological drivers and consequences of seasonal air pollution and by what mechanisms such pollution comes to be constituted as a crisis or triggers a political response. An adequate explanatory framework accounting for these social dimensions of seasonal air pollution - particularly when its causes are recurring yet uncertain - is needed to improve environmental governance practices, and avert social conflict. Findings will be disseminated to organizations and individuals that influence policy debates related to air pollution. The project also provides training for graduate students in methods of rigorous, scientific data collection and analysis; broadens participation in the sciences through the training of students and a postdoctoral researcher from underrepresented groups; and it improves scientific infrastructure through international scientific collaboration. Dr. Mary Mostafanezhad of the University of Hawaii at Manoa will examine the socio-ecological drivers of air pollution, and the ways that air pollution, or haze, becomes constituted as a crisis in national and international circles. The research will take place in northern Thailand provides, which is an illustrative case since airborne particulate matter levels have themselves remained relatively constant over the past two decades; it is only the framing of air pollution as a crisis that has changed. In Asia, a thick shroud of pollution, dubbed the "brown cloud of Asia", blankets many countries for half of the year. And its impacts reach far beyond the region, since particulate matter can travel long distances: research has shown that Asian pollution has even affected the west coast of the United States. The once quotidian, annual occurrence of what is commonly called the "smoky season" (February-April) in this region, now registers as a crisis for many (but not all) residents, some of whom demand an urgent political response. Additionally, while uncertainty exists surrounding the socio-ecological drivers of air pollution, multiple narratives of its causes and effects circulate throughout the region, and blame is frequently placed on smallholder farmers who have recently entered into new market relations. These circumstances make the region an ideal site to examine the ways in which crises are contingent on cultural and political factors, rather than fixed metric thresholds. This project will collect discursive, ethnographic and geospatial data to understand its specific socio-ecological drivers (e.g. social inequality, fire use, worldviews) and consequences (e.g. crisis and blame narratives, regulatory regimes). The mixed methods approach of this study will contribute both to policy understandings of environmental change and to political ecology debates over the ways such change becomes a crisis and a political field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.