New Mandala

11 responses so far ↓

• 1 polo // Jan 2, 2007 at 9:04 pm

  I saw that Sorayuth claimed that he had papers showing he and previous owners had paid taxes on the land. If I recall from earlier years, that is one of the first steps in turning paperless land to deeded private property. Both out and out thieves of state land, and peasants who had occupied deedless land with government permission for decades, seek official papers showing them in possession of the property. For the crooks, if you can’t bribe the MinInterior official to create ownership deeds (NSKXXX papers if I recall), you get revenue officials to acknowledge possession by accepting tax payments. Once you have that kind of proof, you can sell the land at a higher value than that with no papers whatsoever.
  The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims — and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.

• 2 patiwat // Jan 3, 2007 at 11:56 am

  2Bangkok.com locates the resort home at 14°47′39.83″N 101°33′2.37″E.

  Google Earth doesn’t give enough resolution to see the individual train compartments that appeared on the front page of Khaosod.

• 3 nganadeeleg // Jan 3, 2007 at 2:51 pm

  Polo said: \’The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims — and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.\’

  I thought it would be the other way round (convert conservation forest to forest reserve) - assuming conservation forest was subject to more controls than forest reserve (?)

  Anyway, Surayud\’s land case appears to be different in that Surayud has acknowledged that he does not own the land and is leasing it from a local villager (although some other reports say Surayud owns the land).

  Looking on Google Earth, even though there are no major roads visible, it is clear that the land is not pristine forest anymore and there seems to be quite a lot of land development in the surrounding area.
  If the land is illegal, then Surayud will have a lot of worried neighbours.

  It also looks like it would be quite a task to move train carriages on to the property.
  It would be interesting to know what Chavalit knows about the region.

  Overall, in the Thai context, it does not seem to be much of a scandal - it would have played better if it was very opulent with lavish mansions, golf courses etc

• 4 polo // Jan 4, 2007 at 10:04 pm

  Ngana might be right, I can’t recall which is more strenuously protected (in the law at least), conservation or reserve forest. But I thought conservation forest was the lesser of the two, areas where on certain types of land (vertical, often), clearing the area of tree cover it is essentailly discouraged to protect the watershed, but lesser uses are allowed. (That can permit, though, cutting all the trees to plant eucalyptus or orange trees .)

  Anyway, if I take all the directions to Surayuth’s place right, it is just east of the Pakchong reservoir and barely off the Friendship highway to Korat. That’s a heavily farmed and resort-deveoped region but, in my understanding, also has lots of land where certificates are in question because a lot of the land was supposed to be protected watershed zone. (As is much land around reservoirs). From there to the borders of Khao Yai, most of the vertical land, the rock outcroppings etc, is still claimed by the Royal Forestry Dept and the National Parks, but they have long ceded control of flat lands to the influential, for farms, resorts, horse racers (is Sorayuth cavalry?) and golf courses, like the famous Jack Nicklaus course that got too close to Khao Yai proper.

• 5 Andrew Walker // Jan 4, 2007 at 10:35 pm

  On the definition of “reserve forest” and “conservation forest” this extract (apologies for the length) from something I have written may offer some clarification. Note that what I have written here relates primarily to northern Thailand, though the classifications are national classifications and the issues are similar in other regions. As you will see, if Surayud’s resort is in conservation forest he is far from being alone! The interesting question is - how will such a senior forest encroacher be treated?

  Through a series of legislative measures in the early 1900s, the central government asserted and consolidated its power over the collection of royalties and the issuing of concessions to foreign logging firms who were active in the region up until the 1960s. In 1941 the Forest Act declared 40 percent of the land area of Thailand as “forest,” though the primary objective of the act was to manage forest exploitation rather than conservation. The 1964 Forest Reserve Act, however, emphasized conservation by gazetting so-called permanent forests as forest reserve land by royal decree. And in 1985, the National Forest Policy reinforced the aim of maintaining at least 40 percent national forest cover by setting aside 25 percent of Thailand’s land mass as economic forest and 15 percent as conservation forest. This policy was modified after the national logging ban imposed in 1989, following disastrous floods and landslides in the south of the country. The effect of this change, formally adopted in 1992, was to reduce the area of economic forest to 15 percent and increase the conservation forest to 25 percent. Given the relatively high level of remaining forest cover, this policy has a particularly heavy impact in the north, with about 50 percent of the total northern region classified as conservation forest. In some highly forested provinces the disproportionate impact is even greater. In Nan, for example, conservation forest covers 80 percent of the provincial area (Ewers 2003).

  “Conservation forest” is a broad administrative category that refers to a wide range of areas where land-use restrictions are applied. One of the main ways the state has sought to control land use in these areas is through the declaration of national parks. Since the National Park Act of 1964 over 110 national parks have been declared in Thailand, with over twenty located in the nine far northern provinces where they take up over 15 percent of the total land area (RFD 2004c; and see figure 2.6). There are also some substantial areas of the north classified as wildlife conservation areas. Another crucially important regulatory tool is the declaration of upland areas as Class 1 watershed. In the mid-1980s a nationwide system of watershed classification was adopted–on the basis of physical and biological criteria–to provide a framework for the management and protection of forested upland areas. In this classic system of “state simplification” (Scott 1998), five watershed “classes” were introduced throughout Thailand, ranging from Class 1 headwater areas that are identified as the highest priority for protection, to Class 5 areas on gently sloping or flat land where intensive agriculture is considered appropriate. These formal categories have been criticized by other researchers who have used different data sources (including data at much finer resolution) and who have attempted to include locally relevant socioeconomic variables (for example Pandee and Maathuis 1990).

  Protected Class 1 areas cover approximately 18 percent of the entire country (RFD 2004e) and perhaps as much as 30 percent of the total area of the upper northern provinces (derived from Yanuar 2004: table 5). In fact in some districts the impact is even greater. In Mae Chaem district–the largest district in Chiang Mai province–the Class 1 protection category applies to about 60 percent of the total land area. The Royal Forest Department’s Watershed Management Division states that Class 1 areas must be “strictly kept permanently as head water sources” and “immediate reforestation programs must be undertaken on the abundant shifting [cultivation] area” (RFD 2004e). An array of watershed management units assist in the regulation of these environmentally sensitive upland zones, and the majority of the country’s 189 watershed units are located in the northern region (RFD 2005). Watershed management units have been active in various forms of land-use regulation and, in particular, forest planting. It is estimated that up until 1996 over 1,500 square kilometers of forest had been “restored” in northern watersheds, primarily through reforestation. This represented over 70 percent of the national effort in forest rehabilitation undertaken by the Watershed Management Division (Prasong and Gilmour 1999).

  A crucially important point to note–and this is an ever-present issue in much of the discussion of environmental management in northern Thailand–is that “conservation forest,” “national park,” and “Class 1 watershed” are administrative categories that do not necessarily equate with forest cover. This ongoing problem has bedeviled various systems of forest classification throughout Thailand. While there is, of course, a broad correspondence between areas with substantial forest cover and areas with high proportions of “conservation forest,” there is certainly not a perfect match between actual land cover and administrative classification. This is evident even from the most general data where the area of conservation forest in northern Thailand exceeds the area of actual forest cover by almost 800,000 hectares (Yanuar 2004: table 5). The “grossly unrealistic” (Ammar et al. 1991:12) administrative goal of 25 percent conservation forest has generated a massive mismatch between official land classification and actual land use, creating large swathes of “ambiguous lands” (Sato 2000) in which agricultural activities are rendered illegal.

  This ambiguity of land classification, coupled with the illegality of certain land uses, has had long-term implications for many settlers within these regions. The impact is particularly intense in the far northern provinces where, in 1990, one-third of villages were found to be located inside forest reserves (Sopin et al. 1990:11). The Land Development Department’s land-use plan for upland areas in Chiang Mai province indicates that of 1,400 villages surveyed almost 1,300 were located in some form of forest reserve (Bandith et al. 1993). Farmers living in these areas have uncertain rights over their land and many lack formal tenure documents. Many upland farmers have found their agricultural or fallow fields taken over for plantation forestry or other activities designed to protect watersheds. The Land Development Department’s plan for Chiang Mai province classified almost 600 upland villages as “communities which do not have the potential to become permanent villages and which should be evacuated to more suitable areas” (Bandith et al. 1993).

• 6 nganadeeleg // Jan 4, 2007 at 11:56 pm

  Polo: I just thought conservation forest was higher protected than forest reserve, based on Andrews first post (and I also thought the name conservation implied a higher conservation value)

  Thanks for the extra information, Andrew - I’m all for some land reform, but who would run it?
  Can Politicians or Bureaucrats be trusted to act fairly, without somehow seeking a gain for themselves or their associates?

• 7 New Mandala » Sufficiency going forward, diversity going backward // Jan 16, 2007 at 9:15 pm

  [...] Comment: In some cases this may be reasonable but it is important to remember that land is no longer the basis for rural livelihoods, security or prosperity that it may have been in the past. Many of the landless households I know are not particularly interested in acquiring land, partly because they simply lack the capital to invest in the types of agricultural production that will provide them with a reasonable return. They are more interested in good jobs. In some cases underutilised land may be symptomatic of maldistribution. More often, I suspect, it reflects the economic reality that returns in other sectors are much more attractive. Of course, this is not to deny that there are many farmers with uncertain land tenure, especially those who live (like Prime Minister Surayud) in conservation forest areas. I wonder if this recommendation is suggesting that forest regulation should be relaxed somewhat to provide for more secure tenure for these farmers. I suspect not. [...]

• 8 New Mandala » Surayud’s retreat // Apr 18, 2007 at 12:04 am

  [...] of puppet-PM Surayud, has reminded me of the earlier controversy about his forest retreat. In a post from early this year, I wrote: Matichon is carrying a report suggesting that Surayud’s rural [...]

• 9 New Mandala » One rule for the rich … // Jun 11, 2007 at 8:45 am

  [...] far as I know there is still no word on investigations into the case of Thailand’s most famous conservation forest encroacher - Prime Minister Surayud. But some of his less rich and powerful co-accused will be appearing in [...]

• 10 Andrew Walker // Oct 9, 2007 at 10:38 pm

  Here is an extract from a story in today’s Nation about the dispute between Prasong and Surayud:

  Prasong accused Surayud of practising double standards by breaking laws while running the administration. He vowed to grill Surayud in the NLA today over his statements he is “a bandit who repents and turns to be a good guy”. If Surayud repents, he has to return what he robbed from the country, he added. He said some NLA members would also probe Surayud over the allegation that he encroached on reserve forest at Khao Yai Thieng in Nakhon Ratchasima. The NLA’s standing committee on the police will meet today over the encroachment allegation. Prasong also distributed maps of Surayud’s house allegedly located on reserve forest.

• 11 Thailand’s (second?) highest profile forest encroacher? // Oct 11, 2007 at 5:34 pm

  [...] todays Nation, further developments in a story New Mandala has been following for some time: Prasong Soonsiri attacked Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont on Wednesday night, [...]

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