Thailand - Urban Ecology in Bangkok

This paper describes a community-based urban environmental management project in Bangkok, Thailand. In this  project, representatives from two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worked with two poor communities in Bangkok to establish citizen working groups to address local environmental problems. Once these working groups had identified problems, they established and enacted plans to address them. During this process, NGO staff also worked with local governments, building bridges between community groups and elected officials. In addition to improving the local environment, this project developed a framework that other communities could follow to establish their own urban green programmes. This framework was adopted and replicated in fifty communities by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. Using this process we demonstrate that both environmental goals and social development goals can be met at the same time.