In 2025, Chiang Mai University provided local education programmes and campaigns on climate change risks, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning, as part of its work towards Sustainable Development Goal 13 (Climate Action). The programmes were run for the people outside the university: secondary-school students, hill communities, and village leaders and local journalists in northern Thailand, where smoke haze, drought, flash floods, and landslides are growing climate-related risks.
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Young Seedlings Take On the Haze (Ton Kla Ta Mok Kwan), 29 March 2025 - risk, impacts and mitigation. Smoke from forest fires and open burning is the north’s most visible climate-related hazard each dry season. The Faculty of Science runs this campaign so that young people can explain its risk and impacts to their own communities. Vice President Assoc.Prof.Dr.Winita Punyodom opened the 2025 around at the Communication Innovation Center (CIC),Faculty of Mass Communication.Upper-secondary students from across the north each made a one-minute video on how to prevent or reduce PM2.5, and the project, led by Asst.Prof.Dr.Wan Wiriya,links their schools into a network that monitors haze. The campaign is a part of Air for All, a CMU research programme funded by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) in fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Its two research pants set out to reduce forest fires in Doi Suthep-Pui National Park and burning in the northern forests, by linking big data, community-based policy and public cimmunication on PM2.5. Assoc. Prof.Dr.Somporn Chantara directs the programme.
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Clean air data forum for Chiang Mai journalists, 10 October 2025 - risk, impacts and impact reduction. Wildfire smoke is a hazard that climate change is making longer and more serve. At a media forum held by the Big Data Institute (BDI) at the Centara Riverside Hotel in Chiang Mai, three CMU researchers explained to localjournalists what the 2025 Air for All research had found, and how open data can help people understand the risk and reduce expose. They were Assoc. Prof.Dr. Somporn Chantara, chair of CMU's academic working group on the northern haze problem and head of the Environmental Science Research Center, Faculty of Science; Paisit Panichkul, who leads the plan to reduce forest fires; and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rattasit Sukahut , who leads the plan to link big data. NRCT and the Thailand Science Research and Innovation Office (TSRI) also spoke on research support for clean air.
Watershed forest restoration at Nong Hoi Royal Project, from 12 June 2025 - adaptation. Abandoned upland farms in the watershed turn hot and dry, and their soil washes away in heavy rain. The Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU-CMU) is restoring 10 rai of such land on two sites about 1,240 m in Mae Raem Subdistrict, Mae Rim District, with the Nong Hoi Royal Project Development Centre, Doi Duthep-Pui National Park and CMU’s Doi Suthep Nature Study Centre. The project is designed to involve local communities, students and the public in planting 4,000 native seedlings and caring for them for at least two years. One plot is a field trial of 500 seedlings with cardboard mulch and 500 without, testing a low-cost way to keep seedlings alive through the dry season. The site serves as an open learning place on how restoring forests protects water supply and reduces erosion.
Sources:
- Corporate Communication and Alumni Relations Center, Chiang Mai University "Young Seedlings Take On the Haze: Communicate to Fight Dust, 2025", CMU News, 29 March 2025.
- Forest Restoration Research Unit, Chiang Mai University, "Restoration of Watershed Forest in Abandoned Agriculture Areas, Nong Hoi Royal Project," FoRRU websire, June 2025 - December 2026.
- Office of Academic Service (UNISERV CMU), "UNISERV CMU and Chiang Mai PAO prepare communities for floods, flash floods and landslides", Facebook, 31 August 2025.
- Academic Center for Supporting the Solution of the Northern Haze Problem, Chiang Mai University, "Joining the BDI media forum; data for clean air in Chiang Mai", Facebook, 10 October 2025.
- Corporate Communication and Alumni Relations Center, Chiang Mai University, "Air for All: Research & Innovation to Impact", CMU News, 5 July 2026.