The Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT RRC.AP) participated in the Better Air Quality (BAQ) Conference 2026, held from 11-13 March 2026 at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Bangkok, Thailand. The conference was organized by Clean Air Asia in collaboration with partners including Asian Development Bank (ADB), Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Pre-event sessions were also conducted from 9-10 March 2026, where AIT RRC.AP actively contributed.

On 12 March 2026, during the second day of the main conference, Dr. Vanisa Surapipith, Head of the Air Pollution Cluster at AIT RRC.AP, was a speaker at the session titled “Clean Air Across Borders: Advancing Regional Action in the Indo-Gangetic Plains and Himalayan Foothills”. The session was organized by the Asian Development Bank, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), and the World Bank.

During her presentation, Dr. Vanisa supported South Asia Co-operative Environment Program (SACEP) by sharing updates on the Malé Declaration on Control and Prevention of Air Pollution and Its Likely Transboundary Effects for South Asia (Malé Declaration), which is the only Intergovernmental Agreement on Air Pollution in the region, highlighting key progress and recent developments. She presented key findings from the completed scoping study, including 

• The need to develop a regional emissio​​n inventory and data-sharing platform, not only in the 5 countries with IGP-HF projects, but also to cover the whole region including Maldives and Sri Lanka.
• The need to strengthen technical and institutional capacity for air quality modeling and long-term monitoring to support policy making in a similar way with LRTAP or EANET​ with Model-Intercomparison Study.
• The impor​​​​tance of integrating air quality management with climate and public health policies, emphasizing co-benefits in tackling the Super Pollutants (formerly SLCP), and possibly working towards Carbon Neutrality and Net Zero, as committed by the Governments.
• The necessity to establish financing mechanisms for clean technology adoption, as being supported in the IGP-HF countries by the World Bank and ADB, that should be extended to cover the whole Male Declaration region to ensure sustainability and effectiveness.

She also launched the Air Pollution Factsheet Series developed by AIT RRC.AP with findings from the Scoping Study, of which the QR code can be downloaded during the BAQ2026, and more later.

AIT RRC.AP’s participation reflects its continued commitment to supporting regional collaboration and knowledge exchange to address transboundary air pollution challenges across Asia.