Closing the 12-percent gap: enhancing the effectiveness of environmental management by local administrative organizations in Thailand through collaborative governance and the circular economy

Abstract

Solid waste management is a statutory core mission of Thai local administrative organizations (LAOs) and a visible measure of how well the public sector performs at the local level. The Thirteenth National Economic and Social Development Plan sets a national waste utilization target of at least 40 percent by 2027, yet in 2024 Thailand generated 27.20 million tons of municipal solid waste while only about 28 percent was returned to use, leaving a gap of roughly 12 percentage points to be closed within three years. This academic article argues that the gap is not primarily technical but institutional. Drawing on documentary analysis of policy instruments, government situation reports and peer-reviewed literature published mainly within the past five years, the article develops a five-dimensional analytical framework for operational effectiveness, comprising the managerial process, the waste hierarchy and the 5R principle, resources and organizational capacity, collaborative governance, and the policy and legal dimension. Applying this framework, four structural constraints are identified: fiscal and capacity asymmetry between large and small LAOs; the legal allocation of the entire post-consumption burden to local government without producer accountability; participation that remains activity-based rather than institutionalized; and the absence of standardized effectiveness indicators. The article proposes the PACE model (Policy coherence, Accountable resources and capacity, Collaborative governance, and Ecological circularity) as an integrated pathway for raising local effectiveness, together with policy and academic recommendations for extended producer responsibility, inter-municipal clustering, cost-reflective fee reform, and benchmark-based performance monitoring.