Challenges and Recommendations

This chapter summarizes the challenges that Southeast Asia’s air quality managementAir qualitymanagement faces nowadays. It discusses how the region’s eleven nations could work together to achieve clean air by improving air quality monitoringAir quality monitoring, building emission inventories to run air quality models, developing air quality models for both research and regulatory purposes, using available global air quality models to develop forecast modeling systems tailored to local conditions at operational scales for precautionary purposes, taking advantage of advances in satellite remote sensingSatelliteremote sensing to fill data gaps in regions not yet monitored at ground level, better understanding the connections between air quality and climate change, and promoting research and collaborative intensive field campaigns as a means of improving scientific knowledge. The authors do not intend to propose a roadmap to improve air quality management. Such a task corresponds to local decision-makers, air quality managers, practitioners, and citizens. The recommendations presented here are based on the findings that emerged from the literature review conducted for this monograph, lessons learned in other parts of the world, proposals developed to improve air quality management in low- and middle-income countries, and the authors’ own experience.