“Fixing” the Forest: The Spatiality of Conservation Conflict in Thailand

Abstract

This article argues for the reconceptualization of park–people conflict, not as a process whereby state space erases or destroys local space, but as a moment of spatial reorganization resulting from the continual process of state and local spatial production. Such an approach allows for an examination both of the social and ecological outcomes of ongoing spatial reorganization associated with protected area establishment, and of moments of spatial complementarity and convergence, as well as conflict, between state and local spatialities. The utility of such an approach is demonstrated through an examination of two communities in Mae Tho National Park in northern Thailand. The article argues that an understanding of the role that the production of space plays in conservation conflicts can help to inform the ongoing development of new spatial strategies for conservation in inhabited landscapes.

En este artículo se discute la reconceptualización del conflicto entre personas y parques, no como un proceso mediante el cual el espacio estatal borra o destruye el espacio local, sino como un momento de reorganización espacial resultante del proceso continuo de la producción espacial estatal y local. Tal planteamiento permite el examen de los resultados tanto sociales como ecológicos de la reorganización espacial en curso, asociada con el establecimiento de áreas protegidas, y de momentos de complementación y convergencia espacial, así como el conflicto, entre las espacialidades estatales y locales. La utilidad de tal planteamiento se demuestra a través del análisis de dos comunidades en el Parque Nacional de Mae Tho en el norte de Tailandia. En el artículo se discute que el entendimiento del papel que la producción de espacios desempeña en los conflictos de conservación puede ayudar a dar información sobre el desarrollo en curso de nuevas estrategias espaciales para la conservación de paisajes habitados.

Key Words:

• conservation
• political ecology
• protected areas
• space
• Thailand

关键词:

• 保护
• 政治生态
• 保护区
• 地域
• 泰国

Palabras claves:

• conservación
• ecología política
• áreas protegidas
• espacio
• Tailandia

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Dissertation Research Grant and a Fulbright IIE Fellowship. I would like to thank six anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts and the editor for his invaluable advice and guidance. I am indebted to the generosity, good humor, and intelligence of the residents of Nira and Insom Villages. All errors and oversights remain my own.

Notes

1. The new paradigm for protected areas became the rallying cry of the 2003 World Parks Congress and, among other things, promotes the use of less strict protected area classifications.

2. This demand has not gone unopposed and there is considerable prolonged debate in Thailand as to whether communities should be given forest rights.

3. At the time of writing the military government, installed after the September 2006 coup, was redrafting the constitution. The new version will have unknown implications for the clauses most relevant for civil society, resource management, and conservation.

4. The officials explained that the RFD defines a rai of land with eight trees or less with a diameter at breast height (DBH) of fifty to one hundred centimeters and two trees or less with a DBH of one hundred centimeters as degraded forest. This forest structure is produced with short fallow cultivation, explaining in part why the RFD is pressuring village households to eliminate shifting cultivation in favor of permanent cultivation.

5. The district contains a high percentage of ethnic minority groups whose loyalty to the Thai state has been in question since the insurgencies of the 1970s.

6. In accordance with confidentiality agreements, I have altered the names of the villages and any individuals subsequently mentioned.

7. The exception to this are logging and hunting activities, which the village residents clearly understood to not be permitted in the conservation forest. These zone-based rules were adopted thirteen years ago under the guidance of an NGO.

8. This is consistent with the “journey to work” literature found in urban geography.

9. Unless stated otherwise Insom Village refers to all three subvillages.

10. Paak Waan, translated means sweet vegetable; it is a highly valued tree shoot available in the hot season.

11. Although Insom Village has been administered as a village unit for more than fifteen years, the physical demarcation of boundaries has only occurred in conjunction with park demarcation in the past four years.

12. Park officials do not have the authority to grant property ownership, as legal property can only be designated by the Ministry of the Interior. Thus, this represents more of a conceptual than a legal transition.

13. Further examination reveals an even larger gap. In Ban Nira, land used for cash crop production as indicated on the land-use map (Figure 5) is not permanently cultivated but only intermittently depending on a family's needs. A quick field visit in 2003 showed only two families engaged in cash crop production, compared to the previous year's eighteen. In Ban Insom, cash cropping has stabilized with families participating every year, although they might change the crop planted. Furthermore most cash crop production takes place in the southern subvillage, which is the primary contact into the village for outside NGO workers and RFD officials.

14. A tang is the local measure and is equivalent to approximately twenty liters.

15. The reason the difference in rice yields between Insom Village and Nira Village is not more pronounced is in part due to the inadequacy of a one-year sample. A field visit in 2003 showed that whereas rice yields in Insom Village were similar to 2002, rice yields in Nira Village were almost double those that I recorded during research because the following year they planted in a fourteen-year fallow (a result of their not yet having fixed household agricultural fields). In addition, the villagers in Insom Village have begun applying fertilizers and pesticides to counteract the decreasing fertility of the soil. Villagers in Nira Village only use fertilizers on fields used for cash crops.