Posted on 21-7-2004
Protecting
Thailand’s Forests
Exploring the Village to Ministry Connection
by Mark Detsky
More than a half million hill tribe members, nomadic for centuries,
live without regard to modern political boundaries in scattered
villages throughout the broadleaf forest mountains of northern
Thailand, Myanmar, and the famous Golden Triangle region of
South East Asia. Historically, they moved across the mountains
methodically by slashing and burning, planting mountain rice,
and staying while the soil remained fertile. In recent years
the Thai government has told them to stop moving.
In hill tribe country, roads have produced benefits such as
access to hospitals and schools, making many villagers want
to stay put. Guide Noom Mongkol of the Karen tribe, a teacher’s
college graduate who operates a trekking business, still lives
in his hill tribe village. Although he fears that tribal hunting
has hurt the ecosystem as much as slash and burn agriculture,
he believes that “things are getting better” in
the region.
Thailand’s forests were logged without mercy following
World War II, losing nearly 75 percent of their virgin stands.
Logging operations cleared roads far into hill tribe territory,
roads that today bring produce to market, as well as tourists
to the mountains. Today, paved roads and towns bisect once remote
hill tribe areas, many of which have become national parks.
The valley floors in northwest Thailand are lined with soybeans
and rice paddies. In the dry season, the air grows thick with
smoke from burning hillsides. Throughout these steep-walled
green hills, government-sponsored consultants now roam between
villages, imparting techniques for maintaining healthy soils.
Most tribes have never practiced organized composting or fertilizing.
The Project for Ecological Recovery (PER) is a 20-year-old
organization whose focus is to become a conduit of information
between government and poor, unaffiliated hill tribes, as well
as remote Thai villages. PER works on energy, land and fresh
water issues in Thailand, monitoring law and policy in Bangkok
and lobbying for change.
PER currently is promoting the idea of community forestry.
The concept relies on local empowerment as a means for preservation,
and is based on the premise that given a hand in managing their
land locally, slowly, and with minimal government oversight,
villages can better balance ecological and economic needs than
bureaucratic agencies.
In the U.S., this idea is generally not supported by environmental
groups. But the Thai bureaucracy is notoriously convoluted and
corrupt. Tilleke and Gibbons, a prominent Bangkok business law
firm, describes Thailand’s environmental governance situation
as a “nightmare.” The system suffers under “redundant
laws and overlapping responsibilities,” and deeper problems
lie with monitoring regulatory compliance and prosecuting violators,
enforcement that is “greatly reduced” by budgetary
constraints.
Sayamol Kaiyoorawong, PER’s director, objects to ministry
conclusions that “Karen slash and burning is the cause
of forest deterioration, when there is permanent agriculture
in the lowlands.” To sustain Thailand’s forests
and remote villages, PER espouses development of agricultural
forestry plots mixed with rotation cultivation around villages,
enabling surrounding forestland to be preserved.
PER’s biggest success thus far has been leading a coalition
to block an ill-advised dam in the Katchanaburi province. The
group backs decentralization of forestry, in part because of
its experience with local groups in that venture.
Kaiyoorawong would like to see locals who want to participate
be given long-sought authority to manage their own lands. “I
think now people in Thailand are interested to participate and
manage the forest because they know they have limitations in
moving,” she says.
Part of this conflict involves the national park system. In
many cases, the Thai government placed park boundaries over
existing villages, creating present-day illegal living and hunting
conflicts. In the south a national park boundary was actually
placed over a lumber plantation, Kaiyoorawong says with a grin.
There was little inspection of the land. The government “saw
green on the satellite maps; they said the park is the green
area.”
In many cases, the government also never made clear which land
is public and which is private. In Phuket province there was
one major homicide in 2003, the shooting of a land official
who uncovered scams. He discovered that approximately 300 acres
sold to Bangkok developers was actually Thai government forestland.
His death is under investigation.
The only legal tool at the disposal of advocates is the 1992
Enhancement and Conservation of the National Environmental Quality
Act. Thailand’s seminal piece of environmental legislation,
the act created environmental reviews with public participation,
incentives and standards to mitigate pollution, and included
civil and penal penalties for violators. “A modest law,”
comments Kaiyoorawong. “In tradition, Thai people don’t
want to work with the court.” Tilleke and Gibbons describe
the act as “in its infancy” after 10 years.
Not just the 1992 environmental law, but environmental advocacy
in general is in its infancy in Thailand. Yet PER is a group
that has stopped devastating projects and has the ear of at
least one government agency, the newly launched Ministry of
Natural Resources and Environment.
There are still resources worth protecting in Thailand. Khao
Suk is a national park in the south of the country where a flourishing
wildlife ecosystem remains. Here the park smells of a healthy
mix of decomposition and rebirth. Trails penetrate only a small
portion of its vast area. Gibbons jump across the treetops of
tall, thick canopies and unmistakable elephant footprints lay
across the trail to the river.
Thailand has had 10 coup attempts since 1932. It’s been
less than six years since the present constitution was written.
As the economy recovers from the deep recession of only a half-decade
ago, there is hope that enforcement and sustainable development
in a country with much still to protect will unite in a system
of forest management.
To that end, the community forestry approach needs central
government backing before it can succeed. The solution may be
painstaking, but building a bridge between villages and ministries
may provide the opportunity for change.
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