Thailand has a provision for civil society organisations (CSOs) to submit legislative proposals to the House of Representatives if they gather a minimum of 10,000 signatures from eligible voters. This is this provision that was used to put forward a bill to address air pollution, known as the Clean Air Act, almost unanimously accepted by the House of Representatives in January 2024. 

Following this, a 39-member ad hoc committee was set up to review the seven drafts submitted, including the civil society draft, and consolidate them into a single, cohesive bill that will then be presented to Senate early 2025. Join us for a conversation that explores a very concrete example of public engagement through the citizen initiative mechanism designed to allow public participation in the legislative process.

Chair: Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira, University of Leeds and Chair of the International Parliament Engagement Network (IPEN)

Speakers:

• Associate Prof. Dr. Kanongnij Sribuaiam, 1st Vice Chair of the Clean Air Act Ad-hoc Committee

• Weenarin Lulitanonda, Co-founder of the Thailand Clean Air Network (Thailand CAN) and Member of the Clean Air Act Ad-hoc Committee

Language(s): English, French

The event is part of the series of webinars hosted by the IPU-IPEN Public engagement hub  in follow-up to the 2022 IPU-UNDP Global Parliamentary Report on Public engagement in the work of parliament. 

Recordings of all the webinars are on IPU’s YouTube Public engagement playlist. For more information, please contact gpripu [dot] org (gpr[at]ipu[dot]org).

Find out how to join the International Parliament Engagement Network: ipen-network.org.

To engage with participants before and after the event, join the Public engagement LinkedIn page.