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Abstract
At the turn of the millennium, inhabitants of a small Karen village situated in one of Thailand’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites sought access to environmental justice in the Thai courts over industrial pollution that had contaminated their local stream with lead and caused them years of degraded health and social misery. The Karen villagers were only able to gain access to justice with the help of NGOs that served them as a support group during a period when Thailand was experiencing active civil and democratic awakening. The NGOs, which had a common cause with the Karen villagers, helped them enter the ‘environmental justice frame’ and its discourse. Their experience of lead pollution was framed within a moral ‘rhetoric of exposure’, which came to guide their activism against intransigent agencies and policies, as well as their mobilization for access to justice.
Notes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper was sponsored by the Research Unit (Chiang Mai University) and supported by the Centre for Ethnic and Social Development (CESD, Chiang Mai University).
1. The above lyrics were originally translated from the Karen to Thai language by Tiva Kong-nga-dee, Pwo Karen of Si Sa-wat District, Kanchanaburi Province.
2. Rotational swidden-farming.
3. The concept of environmental justice is a contested one and subject to multi-definitional interpretations emphasizing diverse forms of justice in relation to the human/environment and ecological nexus, but scholars see this as its evolving strength (CitationNadel, 2008: 28; CitationPederson, 2010: 29).
4. Civil society has been generally defined as the space existing between the state and the individual or household, which consists of voluntary associations of people from different social and ideological backgrounds (CitationGellner, 1994; CitationGuan, 2004).
5. ASTDR. See also CitationMillstone (1997: 17).
6. Chelation drugs can cause severe side effects and therefore should only be administered under supervision. The MOPH did not want to treat the villagers with chelation therapy but were forced to concede to the public outcry.
7. We take this expression from CitationWilliams’ (2001) writing on another riverine environmental justice case.