PATHUM WAN — Bangkok Climate Action Week closed Sunday evening at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center with a conversation about impact.

Program directors, founders and international NGO officers discussed how to carry the week’s ideas forward and how Bangkok’s edition differed from London’s or New York’s.

“It’s not just another space where the same experts talk about the same problems and the same solutions,” said Leo Horn-Phathanothai, BKKCAW’s convener and founder. “We really wanted to pivot to the potential space — what is waiting and wanting to emerge?”

Speakers repeatedly used words like “grassroots,” “community-led” and “inclusiveness.”

But neither the onstage discussion nor a testimonial video shown that night — both delivered in a mix of Thai and English — featured minimum-wage or informal workers. The latter make up 27.9% of Bangkok’s workforce.

“Thai was the minority language for this week,” Horn-Phathanothai told Soiciety when asked what surprised him most. “I think what blew me away … is just the extent to which it’s become an international moment with people coming from all over the place.”

As the second Climate Action Week wrapped, steering committee members said it aimed to bring more people into climate discussions and acknowledged a gap between national policy and daily life.

Asked how the week reached and benefited street vendors, minimum-wage earners and low-income workers, Horn-Phathanothai said events were open to anyone with “an interest, a curiosity or a stake” in climate.

“So, that’s basically pretty much everyone, right?” he said.

Pressed on specific strategies the team used to include street-level voices in the program, Horn-Phathanothai pointed to the week’s decentralized structure: Anyone could nominate themselves as speakers, offer venues or volunteer.

Participating organizations, not the central team, proposed and ran most of the week’s more than 330 events. More than 220 groups across Southeast Asia took part.

Groups used arts, culture and entertainment to reach people who don’t consider themselves part of the climate movement, Horn-Phathanothai explained.

Events ranged from academic-focused visits, like a look at Kasetsart University’s air-monitoring facilities, to a workshop-based “Climate Playground” and a community walking tour in Ban Bat.

When an event addressed a group that wasn’t represented, organizers would ask the host to include it, he said.

Asked for examples, he cited sessions on what a “just transition” means for the energy system, how Indigenous people manage their land and how extreme heat affects garbage collectors and service workers in Bangkok.

“We have air con, we don’t feel that as much, but if you work for the BMA (Bangkok Metropolitan Administration) … you feel the heat and of course, it’s very relevant,” he said.

Soiciety attended the heat panel Horn-Phathanothai mentioned, held Oct. 6, at Xavier Hall Church in Phaya Thai.

Speaking before about 50 people, Somporn Ngowli, a junk collector from the On Nut 14 Rai Community in Prawet, described how she copes with the heat and how it has affected her income and health. She makes 200 to 300 baht a day, she told Soiciety.

“It’s too hot. At night, I don’t get a full night’s sleep after work. It’s like I can only sleep for five minutes at a time,” Somporn said. “We have a fan that we share. And there’s flooding too. I’m even sleeping on a pile of garbage right now.”

In an interview, Somporn, who took part in BKKCAW through Yunus Thailand, said: “I’m proud that our message about global warming is being heard. I want to spread it throughout the country and the world.”

BKKCAW measures impact beyond event and attendance counts, said Krisana Pieper, its monitoring and evaluation specialist. Organizers track whether participants connected, found common ground and collaborated, she said.

“We gather feedback, we reflect, we listen to the voices of the people," she said at the closing ceremony, noting they will use the feedback to adjust next year’s program.

For Horn-Phathanothai, the gap between climate policy and daily life comes down to ownership. Public participation in climate action is “still very much seen as a technocratic agenda that the government and corporates are basically responsible for,” he said.

“There isn’t yet a sense of co-responsibility,” he added.

Dr. Boripat Siriaroonrat, a co-chair of the BKKCAW steering committee, said grassroots communities are especially vulnerable.

“We need to really recognize all these people … even though we don’t know who they are,” he said of people who produce food and care for the environment. He said they face climate impacts “even though they’ve contributed so little.”

Boripat cited an Oct. 10 workshop in Bang Kachao, a side event to the IMF-World Bank meetings in Bangkok, on financing communities that protect nature.

“We heard loud and clear from the local people in Bang Kachao that the good intentions that people in Bangkok (had) for them (are) actually hurting them in the process,” he said.

After the closing ceremony, the BKKCAW published an open letter urging delegates at the IMF-World Bank meetings to adopt an economic model that invests in people and nature.

The letter proposes directing financing to Indigenous peoples and local communities and giving women, young people and vulnerable groups a larger role in policymaking, among others.

“Last year, we emerged for the first time,” Boripat said. “This year, we finished the second round, just to show the public that we’re here to stay.”

Venerable Napan Santibhaddo Thawornbanjob, an assistant abbot at Wat Saket, said he wanted the week to be “more inclusive,” so he pushed organizers to hold his Oct. 7 panel on religion and climate action in Thai.

“I force, beg (the organizer) that if we speak English the whole time, sometimes it leaves someone behind,” he said. “Otherwise, people are going to feel, ‘Oh, hiso people only.’”

He said holding that panel in Thai helped panelists open up.

At the heat panel, Thai-language discussion with real-time English interpretation also gave workers a chance to speak, though some hesitated.

“I’m so nervous because I don’t know how to speak,” said Pukam Thamthimsai, a motorcycle taxi driver from Nonthaburi whom HomeNet Thailand invited to speak. “Because I’m from Isan. I’m not good at it. I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing.”

She spoke anyway.

After sharing how heat has forced her to cut her working hours and listening to other workers, Pukam said she now knows how to help a colleague who faints from the heat.

“It’s hot, but you’d have to endure it,” she said. “I still have to drive the same as before.”

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