Impacts of community science to environmental monitoring and enforcement: case studies of mining pollution in Thailand

Science is important in environmental regulatory systems for providing an authoritative source of environmental information and bringing legitimacy to decision-making processes. Public participation in scientific research (PPSR) can make science more transparent and accountable. This research analyses development of community science, as one of the PPSR models, and how this concept has been applied in Thailand through two case studies of mining pollution. It focuses on the implications of community science for environmental regulatory enforcement and addressing the legal barriers to more widespread use of community science. Based on the case studies, this dissertation found that ineffective compliance assurance mechanisms and limited space for community engagement in those mechanisms pushed the affected community to begin community science initiatives. However, one legal barrier to the effective use of community science, for example, is the lack of public participation mechanisms in mining-related project designs. Local communities thus have limited channels for gathering or providing information into the process, and must heavily rely on external sources of information, particularly from NGOs and activists. Communities faced challenges at all stages, including information collection, availability and accessibility of related information, community scientists’ ability to identify types of information they needed, and how to organize the information they obtained from authorities. In one of the case studies, the mining company brought a number of SLAPP lawsuits to try to block community-based data collection and dissemination. The case studies also revealed that the degrees of public participation in scientific studies/environmental monitoring led by the government or government-hired experts are lower than the degree in the research collaboratively done by the community scientists and NGOs/public-interest scholars. The results of the studies between the former and the latter are also usually much different. The selection process for hiring professional scientists to conduct either government-led scientific studies or studies of non-profit groups is as significant as the level of public participation. Although the professional experts’ studies that influenced the government decision-making in the case studies were challenged and found to have significant flaws by community scientists, use of the community-generated data is limited due to the existing enforcement system where the government officials have a high level of discretionary authority. Community scientists thus had to rely on alternative grievance mechanisms and court, rather than conventional legal mechanisms, in order to demand stronger enforcement actions. The study proposes six key recommendations to address these obstacles and improve quality of environmental compliance and enforcement: (1) incorporating human right to science into Thai Constitution as a stepping stone to establish the concept of community science in the legal system; (2) developing a law that requires the government to clarify the ownership of scientific information that involves community members in the research process; (3) issuing guidelines on legal standard for scientific information proposed in environmental decision-making process and how a community science project will achieve the information quality requirements; (4) encouraging increasing roles of research institutions in providing technical supports to affected communities; (5) passing the Anti-SLAAP bill; and (6) increasing community involvement in compliance monitoring, enforcement decision-making process and implementation of court judgement.