Bangkok captures a perfect picture of a city in transition – a traditional city blending into an urban landscape. It is a near-perfect microcosm of global diversity and provides a compelling setting for an international convening like the Better Air Quality Week.
In March, as the city welcomed spring, Bangkok opened its doors to policymakers, bureaucrats, researchers, public policy practitioners, and catalytic supporters to debate and deliberate on a challenge of urgent relevance – identifying scalable, cost-effective, and evidence-based solutions to combat air pollution. Yet, beyond the convening itself, a deeper question emerged- how can proven solutions travel across geographies?
The Better Air Quality Week convened thought leaders from around the world, fostering alignment across regional efforts to combat air pollution. With its focus on cleaner air and clearer skies through accelerated, targeted investment, BAQ 2026 not only delivered on its promise but exceeded expectations.
Air pollution does not respect territorial boundaries, making it a challenge best addressed through transnational collaboration. While national initiatives have achieved meaningful progress across many countries, BAQ highlighted a critical gap in the use of evidence that limits greater impact. Regional approaches often remain fragmented and are rarely translated across geographies with potential applicability. This lack of transferability impedes coordinated action and leads to inefficiencies, with time and resources repeatedly spent reinventing the wheel.
Scalability, as traditionally understood, often underplays the importance of political will and policy prioritization within specific geographies. BAQ helped bridge this gap – creating space to build bureaucratic alignment internationally, while also building a space for these partners to engage meaningfully to learn more about policy solutions that have proven to achieve greater impact at lower cost to the government.
EMA’s evidence on a global stage
This year, I had the privilege of speaking at the Clean Air Fund‘s session on ‘Solutions for Clean Air from Asia to the World.’ On the panel, I discussed a scalable approach to tackling air pollution – the world’s first market-based Emission Trading Scheme for particulate matter (PM-ETS), designed and evaluated in Surat, Gujarat by Emissions Market Accelerator’s affiliated researchers.
During the session, I highlighted how Surat’s emissions market has reduced pollution while lowering compliance costs, demonstrating a model with strong potential for replication across South Asia as the region balances rapid economic growth with increasingly ambitious environmental targets.
Unpacking the science behind effective market design, I illustrated how well-calibrated, market-based mechanisms can drive meaningful abatement without compromising industrial productivity. Building on this, I made the case for scaling ETS across South Asia and other high-growth regions, where such approaches can help align economic expansion with the imperative of cleaner air.”
BAQ was instrumental in helping me appreciate the true scale and impact of our everyday work to combat air pollution. Over three days, its halls buzzed with critical data and insights on pollution and its far-reaching consequences – but one statistic stood out – the sobering reality that an estimated 7.9 million deaths worldwide were attributed to air pollution in 2023 alone.
For me, the question is no longer why existing clean air programs fall short or who is to blame, but how quickly we can scale proven interventions to reduce this staggering toll on human life meaningfully.
From Surat to the Global South
Even when bureaucratic will and political priorities align in support of clean air, effective policy action requires trained and resourceful personnel at government institutions with the capacity to design and implement targeted, technically robust programs.
Building on the success achieved in Gujarat, the Emissions Market Accelerator (EMA) was launched as a global initiative during New York Climate Week 2025 to advance scale-up efforts. My engagements at BAQ helped me see that countries across the Global South are setting increasingly ambitious targets, with governments, industries, and communities striving to balance economic growth with environmental quality. In these contexts, EMA has the potential to serve as a critical conduit – translating diverse priorities into informed policy design and supporting governments in developing Emissions Trading Systems tailored to specific jurisdictional needs.
Being at the United Nations Convention Centre, it was difficult not to connect the dots across the solutions being discussed – the many solutions that have been evidence-tested, governments with policy priorities that align perfectly with the solution being offered, and implementation partners with the capacity to ensure effective implementation. In an increasingly digitally connected world, there is still a dormant disconnect which in-person convenings like BAQ help break. BAQ delivered on its promise – unlocking pathways to amplify the impact of rigorous, on-ground research emerging from a concentrated cluster of textile industries in Surat.
As I strolled through the beautiful city, taking in its skyline and seemingly clear skies, I was reminded that Bangkok has also, in recent years, ranked among cities facing significant air quality challenges. This was a quiet but powerful reminder that air pollution does not always appear visibly dangerous, enveloping the skies in thick smog – it can look ordinary, misleadingly clear and deceptively benign while carrying particulate matter that silently harms human health.