Thailand:
Diversity and community forest use versus monocultures and parks
The road linking Trang
and Krabi in southern Thailand is an example of what economists
call development. What used to be lush tropical forest has been
converted into endless rows of either oil palm or rubber trees.
The monotony is only broken here and there by a few houses and shops
surrounded by a sea of tree monocultures. At the end of the road,
shrimp farms occupy the place of mangrove forests, and only a thin
row of mangrove trees bordering the river have been spared from
destruction. The monoculture model appears to have defeated the
rich diversity of the region.
When faced with criticism to such model, government officials will
quickly respond that biodiversity has been taken care of within
a number of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, that ensure
the conservation of native species of flora and fauna.
However, many local people are unhappy, both in relation to monocultures
and to official forest conservation policies and have set up organizations
to make things change. One such organization is the "Network
of People Organisation for Bantad Mountain Range", which has
brought together people facing similar problems.
The problems arose some 30 years ago, when the government began
to establish different types of protected areas in forests where
local communities have lived for centuries, such as in the case
of the Sakai ethnic group. In order to be able to remain in the
area they had to prove that they had lived there before the forest
law was enacted. More importantly, they would be authorized to carry
out their traditional activities in the forest if: 1) the area is
not considered to be “at risk” or to be “sensitive” by the government
2) the slope is less than 30%. The result of the application of
those two conditions make most activities illegal, given that any
area can be classified as being “at risk” or “sensitive” and that
local communities traditionally use all the different altitudes
for different purposes.
What the above conservation model hides is the historical role of
the government in forest destruction, both by the promotion of monocultures
and through logging concessions.
In the case of monocultures, members of the Bantad Mountain Range
Network explain that “the Rubber Tree Fund is part of government.
Officials from the Fund come to the area to promote rubber plantations.
The local farmers are provided with funds to plant monoculture as
a contract on individual land. People are initially happy, but problems
later arise. Before, they had integrated garden with rubber, but
now it is a monoculture and there are landslides. People lose their
traditional means of livelihoods. Other impacts include increased
government control, whereby local people’s activities are declared
illegal and punished. People are controlled by rangers and even
with helicopters. People are facing many legal procedures (13 court
cases at the moment) and also fines, ranging from 100,000 to 5 million
bahts. The community has to pay guarantees to get people out of
jail.”
The government is also responsible for forest destruction resulting
from past logging concessions. Representatives of a member community
of the Bantad Mountain Range Network explain that they came in with
the logging company and later stayed in the area. They have now
established a system of integrated traditional gardens, where rubber
trees are intermixed with fruit trees, bethel, pepper, beans and
a long list of other plants that provide for their needs. The community
is therefore improving an environment previously degraded by the
government-awarded logging concession.
In spite of the positive role they are playing, the communities
are having problems with the government. They explain that they
have little land area for agriculture (1-5 hectares per family)
and that they use the forest as part of their means of livelihoods.
Most people live from the gardens, supplemented with hunting (without
firearms), fishing, collecting snails, mushrooms, bamboo shoots
and other gathering activities. But according to the government,
most of this is illegal. “Everything is in fact illegal”, they claim.
The government tried to relocate them, but they didn’t accept and
resisted in every way possible. Their struggle is for food security,
for the right to choose, for “the right to set the future for ourselves”.
One aspect that deserves being highlighted is the access road to
the abovementioned community. One of the arguments used by governments
for opening roads into the forest is that they will enable people
to link with the outside world. However, most roads are truly built
to serve the interests of companies wishing to access natural resources
(wood, minerals). They are therefore sufficiently wide so that big
trucks can extract those resources, but in the case of this community,
the road is a peoples’ road, adapted to the local situation, where
most families own a motorbike. The road is therefore less than 1
metre wide and paved only in some parts having steep slopes. People
have easy access, companies don’t.
Another interesting process that is developing in the region is
the Alternative Agriculture Network. Given the current high prices
of oil palm and rubber, local farmers are earning high incomes from
these crops. At the same time, high oil prices have resulted in
chemical fertilizers becoming very expensive. Added to the health
and environmental problems linked to the use of agrotoxics, this
has resulted in a situation where more farmers are willing to embrace
a more diversified and organic type of agriculture. Chemical fertilizers
are being replaced with organic inputs to the soil and many other
plants (for food, timber, medicines, fibres) are being introduced
under the monoculture plantations. Although the output of the main
crop is slightly reduced, this is compensated with the lesser cost
and with the large number of other products for self consumption
and marketing. This is also seen as a safeguard for possible falls
in the international price of rubber and palm oil, as has happened
in the past, particularly with rubber.
In sum, local people and communities have organized themselves to
protect their environment, livelihoods and rights. The government-promoted
package of monocultures, agrotoxics and anti-people protected areas
is being changed into a diversified, community based and ecologically
respectful system. As local people say, “we want to be proud of
what we are and what we are doing.” They certainly can.
Article based on local testimonies from a field trip carried out
by WRM in July 2008
