Climate Risks and Long-Term Well-Being in Thailand: A Comparative Regional Environmental Geography Analysis Through the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy

Climate change amplifies both chronic and episodic environmental risks, intensifying long-term exposure patterns that are unevenly distributed across space. This paper examines how differentiated regional climate and environmental risks in Thailand shape long-term well-being, and how the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP)—a Thai-origin framework grounded in three core principles of moderation, reasonableness/prudence, and self-immunity—may function as a diagnostic and adaptive sustainability framework within environmental and hazard geography. Using a comparative empirical environmental-risk analysis of secondary longitudinal datasets, the study examines four purposively selected regions—Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Rayong, and the southern Andaman and Gulf coasts (Phuket, Phang Nga, Songkhla)—chosen to maximise variation in exposure type and hazard. We also apply SEP’s three principles analytically within each regional case. Th findings show that chronic, low-intensity exposure—such as Chiang Mai’s seasonal PM2.5 haze and Bangkok’s combined air pollution and flooding—generates cumulative well-being costs that differ qualitatively from those associated with episodic, catastrophic hazards such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Tropical Cyclone Pabuk. Deaths attributable to air pollution in Thailand rose from 47,709 in 2016 to 55,877 in 2022, underscoring that chronic exposure imposes a health and economic burden comparable in scale to discrete disaster events. Adaptive capacity, not exposure alone, differentiates regional outcomes: Rayong’s industrially concentrated coastal corridor exhibits a spatial monitoring scale mismatch, with city-level averages substantially underrepresenting industrial-core peak exposure in Maptaphut district. The paper concludes that durable adaptation requires shifting from reactive normality toward anticipatory, spatially differentiated resilience, and that this paper is best understood as methodological groundwork for a larger research programme requiring primary household-level well-being surveys and finer-resolution geospatial exposure mapping.