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Public Land for the People: The Institutional Basis of Community Forestryin Thailand
Jin Sato
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 34 / Issue 02 / June 2003, pp 329 - 346
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463403000286, Published online: 06 June 2003

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022463403000286
How to cite this article:
Jin Sato (2003). Public Land for the People: The Institutional Basis of Community Forestry in Thailand. Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies, 34, pp 329-346 doi:10.1017/S0022463403000286
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329
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34 (2), pp 329-346 June 2003. Printed in the United Kingdom.
DOI: S0022463403000286 © 2003 The National University of Singapore

Public Land for the People:
The Institutional Basis of Community Forestryin Thailand
Jin Sato

This article begins by summarising the recent debate over the Community Forestry Billin Thailand and traces the history of competition over public and communal land in thatcountry. It is argued that community forestry that is truly beneficial for the locals must
be based on an understanding of where common land is located within the multi-layered
politics of power.

Thailand is one of the few countries where communal rights to productive forests
have no formal recognition. This does not mean that they are non-existent, however; in
reality, we see many examples of communal forest use throughout the country, especiallyin the northern region.1 This paradox, and the newly proposed Community Forestry Bill
which is supposed to fill in the gap, are the subjects of this article.
The specific issue addressed here is the institutional basis of community forestry inThailand with a focus on ‘public land’, which local people can access collectively tosupport their livelihood. With a majority of people living in the countryside, policies
related to land use certainly have a significant impact on quality of life. Yet because stateintervention regarding land use has been carried out by various government agencies
without much coordination among them, repeated confusion and conflicts haveoccurred, not only between farmers and the state but also among the agencies
themselves. The key agencies include the Royal Forest Department (RFD) andAgricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) in the Ministry of Agriculture andCooperatives and the Department of Lands under the Ministry of Interior.2
It is an interesting coincidence that the promulgation of the new constitution in
September 1997, known as the ‘democratic constitution’, came right after a major
economic crisis in July the same year. Popular participation in resource use andmanagement, once considered merely as an instrument for rural development, is now
viewed as a central force to help overcome the economic crisis. However, the official
Jin Sato is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo. His email address is satoj@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp
1 See, for example, Anan Ganjanapan, Local control of land and forest: Cultural dimensions of resource
management in Northern Thailand (Chiang Mai: Chiang Mai University Faculty of Social Sciences RCSD
Monograph Series, 2000).
2 The Thai government is undergoing a major reform, and the RFD was scheduled to move to the new
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment during the year 2002, while the ALRO will remain in the
Ministry of Agriculture.

330  recognition of the people’s right to participate does not necessarily correspond with theactual practice of resource control. In fact, the new constitution may have increased
incidents of land conflict now that people stand a better chance of gaining at least
something; the number of reported disputes over land control is increasing, notably withthe massive and sustained protests in front of the Parliament by the ‘Assembly of the
Poor’, formed in December 1995. In March 1997, an NGO supporting thisdemonstration identified 121 sites in the country where potentially violent conflicts
between government and farmers were taking place. Among those sites, about 75 per centinvolved the use and ownership of land and forests and 12 per cent were related to dam
construction.3
Many observers of resource developments have come to realise that forest and landissues do not relate merely to the physical environment but are essentially social andpolitical problems. Socio-political problems require socio-political solutions; top-down
technical treatment such as reforestation or zoning has so far proven ineffective. Forest
plantations, for example, have made little progress and domestic timber is constantly inshort supply. (Oddly enough, in 1985 the amount of illegally logged timber confiscatedby the court exceeded that of the legally produced product.)4 The alternative bottom-up
approach of strengthening the community’s organisational capacity, on the other hand,
may also fall short in the face of state power where the competition for land-based
resources is concerned. In Phattalung province, for example, villagers intimidated by the
extractive activities of outsiders attempted to call the RFD for help, only to find out laterthat their local forest had been declared a national park. Ironically, the villagers whowanted to protect the forest were the first to be expelled.5 It is futile to debate whether
villagers have the capacity to manage or conserve a forest once they have been deprivedof their incentive to do so.
In light of these considerations, it is not enough to seek sustainable forest use withan exclusive focus on the village-level mechanics of collective action, as has beeneffectively demonstrated by Elinor Ostrom and others. As will be discussed below, allforests are by definition legally under the ownership of the state; the relationship between
resources and people must therefore be properly examined in the context of a broader
political economy.6 A much-debated political solution to resource problems, especiallysince the 1990s, has been the transfer of resource management responsibilities from the
3 Samacha Khon Chon [Assembly of the Poor], Samacha khon chon (Bangkok: Samacha Khon Chon,
1997). On this movement see Chris Baker, ‘Thailand’s Assembly of the Poor: Background, drama, reaction’,South East Asia Research 8, 1 (2000): 5-29. An overview of popular participation is in Shigetomi Shinichi,‘Noson kaihatsu seisaku’ [Rural development policy], in Tai no keizai seisaku: Seido, soshiki, akuta[Economic policy in Thailand: The role of institutions and actors], ed. Suehiro Akira and Shigeki Higashi(Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 2000), pp. 215-58.
4 Royal Forest Department, Forestry statistics of Thailand (Bangkok: Royal Forest Department, 1996).
General discussions of this issue include Piers Blaikie, The political economy of soil erosion in developing
countries (Harlow: Longman, 1985); William Ascher, Why governments waste natural resources: Policy
failures in developing countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); and Michael L. Ross,
Timber booms and institutional breakdown in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
5 Chakrit Ridmontri, ‘The pros and cons of the Bill’, Bangkok Post, 19 June 1997.
6 Elinor Ostrom, Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). For similar examples elsewhere in Thailand, see Jin
Sato, ‘People in between: Conversion and conservation of forest lands in Thailand’, Development andChange, 31, 1 (2000): 155-77.

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331

state to the hands of local communities. In Thailand, the enactment of a ‘Community
Forestry Bill’ is considered as one such solution to the problems of deforestation andsocial justice.7
Of course, it would be naïve to expect that another new piece of legislation will
result in a radical shift in power relations, particularly between the people and the state.
However, since the Community Forestry Bill can potentially help thousands of people
living in and around the forests, the current debate and the history behind it deserve
closer attention. This article will discuss the development of the concept of ‘public land’and its implementation to serve the people living near state-owned resources.
Community forests can be seen as one example of a struggle for resources taking placeon public land. To fully grasp the implications of the Bill, it is necessary to understandthe history and the place of these forests within the broader context of public land.
The discussion will first summarise the recent debate over the Community Forestry
Bill, and then trace the history of competition over land and forests with a focus onpolicies that have affected public and communal lands. The final section examines theinstitutional foundation and the prospects for the development of community forestryin Thailand.
Debates over the Community Forestry Bill

The opinions of scholars, activists and those involved with the formulation andimplementation of policy in Thailand regarding the link between forests and local people
appear to be divided into two groups. The first views local people as a threat to forestsand gives overall priority to ecological preservation in the interest of the state as a whole.
Thus, from this perspective, forests should be ‘protected’ from local people. The second
view emphasises the rights of local people to stay where they are and attempts to find abalance between meeting local needs and achieving conservation objectives. These two
opposing points of view even create divisions among various government agencies andNGOs. This contrast became more salient in the long process of drafting the Community
Forestry Bill, which has yet to be enacted. Since the completion of a first draft by the RFD
in 1992 and the subsequent counter-proposal of a ‘People’s Version’ by a coalition ofactivists and NGOs in the following year, there have been six versions all together.8
The Bill contains rules and regulations regarding the use of state-owned forests by
local community members, and it is the first piece of legislation to be proposed by apetition of more than 50,000 voter signatures as allowed by the most recent Thai
constitution. Under this bill, local communities interested in establishing community
forests are required to organise a committee which will be responsible for overseeing
forest-related activities for the purpose of conservation and sustainable utilisation in aparticipatory fashion.
7 G. Johnson and T. Forsyth, ‘In the eyes of the state: Negotiating a “rights-based approach” to forest
conservation in Thailand’, World Development, 30, 9 (2002): 1589-603. For a discussion in a regional
context see Owen J. Lynch and Kirk Talbott, Balancing acts: Community-based forest management andnational law in Asia and the Pacific (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1995).
8 For the history of debates related to community forestry, see Johnson and Forsyth, ‘In the eyes of thestate’ and M. Pearmsak, ‘Forestland policy revisited: Opportunities for policy reform of Thailand’, paper
prepared during the International Writing Workshop on Community Management of Forestlands: Policy
Frameworks for Enabling Successful Community Based Resource Management Initiatives, East-WestCenter, Honolulu, 2001.

332  In October 2001, the Lower House passed the Bill, including the controversial
Article 18 allowing the establishment of community forestry inside protected forest
areas, thus incorporating the spirit of the ‘People’s Version’. It is likely to face further
modification, but it may still be helpful to highlight the major points of dispute bylooking at the recent revision process of the Senate.9
TABLE 1
Modification of the House version by the Senate
Contentious Articles in the
Draft CF Bill

House Version

Panel Version Proposed to
the Senate

Article 18 Who can apply
for a community forest?

50 people over 18 years old

100 people over 18 years old

Establishment of community
forest in protected forests

Eligible communities must
consist of indigenous people
who have been protecting
the forest for at least five
years before filing anapplication

Eligible communities must
be indigenous people whohave been protecting theforest for at least five years
before the bill takes effect

Article 29 Expansion ofcommunity forest area

Each community forest
board may allow expansionof community forest area if
the need can bedemonstrated

Expansion of community
forest is prohibited

Article 31 Gathering of trees
and wild products in thecommunity forests

Not restricted, nor subject toexisting forestry-related laws

Restricted under existing
forestry-related laws
(permission needed from
RFD)

Source: Secretariat of the Senate, Raingan.

On 15 March 2002, the Senate made a vote to approve the panel version with anadditional crucial clause to the modification on Article 18, stipulating that ‘community
forests should not be allowed inside the protected forests’.10 From the perspective of those
9 The scrutinising panel was composed of twenty-seven members including representatives from
NGOs; Secretariat of the Senate, Raingan khong Khanakammathikan Wisaman Phicharana rang
Phraratchabanyat Pa Chumchon Pho.So. … Wutisapa (Bangkok: Secretariat of the Senate, 2002). The
House and Senate panels had different members. Some say the hard lobbying at the Senate by opponentsof the bill brought panel members who were basically against the idea of allowing community forest insideprotected forests.
10 Kultida Samabuddhi, ‘Senators add crucial clause before giving passage to bill’, Bangkok Post, 16 March
2002.

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333

who supported the Lower House version, this was a disappointing result, even worse than
the stricter modification made by the Panel for the Senate. The bill has now beenreturned to the House to be considered again. If the House changes its resolution andsupports the Senate’s version, the bill will be promulgated; if not, a joint Senate-House
panel must be set up to reconsider the bill.
Critiques of the Senate version highlight four problems with regard to Article 18: (1)small communities having less than 100 adult members would be excluded from theapplication; (2) a significant number of community forests are operating mainly inside
the protected areas and excluding them would take the teeth out of the bill; (3) newgroups who wish to apply after the promulgation of the bill, no matter how capable andsuitable, would automatically be disqualified to establish community forests; and (4)restricting people’s rights goes directly against the spirit of the new constitution,
especially Article 46, which explicitly encourages the participation of indigenous people
for natural resource management. Moreover, the reality is that there are still thousandsof people living inside the protected areas, as can be seen from Table 2 below.
TABLE 2
Number of farmers cultivating and residing inside and around wildlife sanctuaries(as of 1998)

RegionResidence outside but farmland
Both residence and farmland inside
insidethe protected area
Number of
No. ofPopulation
Area*
No. ofPopulation
Area*
protected
households
households
areas

Central

9

2,832

10,31394,029

1,163

4,483

39,686

North

16

8,352

42,300103,930

538

1,754

11,845

South

13

2,368

21,181

157,359

7,503

28,366

113,835

Northeast

-

1,359

5,851

49,223

3,180

15,156

95,564

Total

38

14,91179,645404,545

17,10978,902

295,340* Area given in rai (1 rai = 0.16 ha)
Source: Kaisarung Phunphon, Kanbukruk phua khrong phuenthi khong ratsadon nai khet raksaphan satpa(Bangkok: RFD Report, 2542/1999), p. 40.

Given the Senate’s refusal to allow the establishment of community forest insideprotected areas, the definition of such an area is particularly important. If ‘protected area’ only
refers to national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, this will amount to approximately 15 percent of the country. On the other hand, if it includes ‘conservation zones’ as defined by the
Cabinet resolution, the total figure is 27 per cent, which would affect a far larger number ofpeople than those represented in Table Two.
The Panel version proposed to the Senate included the definition of protected areas as:
national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, non-hunting areas and other lands suitable for protection
such as watersheds and places with environmental value stipulated by the Ministry regulations.11
11 Secretariat of the Senate, Raingan.

334  The words ‘suitable for protection’ were added to the Lower House version, implying thepossibility of future expansion of the term ‘potential area’ and thus limiting the area
available for community forests given the stipulations in the approved version.
Defining ‘protected area’ is as important as allowing the establishment ofcommunity forests inside it. To understand what is worth ‘protecting’ from the view ofthe state is to understand the state’s view of what is worth leaving aside for the ordinary
people. In reality, the ‘state’ is composed of various agencies with different mandates andobjectives. In order to understand the context behind the emergence of such often
conflicting policies, let us move on to examine the evolution of their programmes.
History of state control of ‘public land’Thailand has increased its agricultural production through territorial expansion
with very little reliance on intensification.12 The land area allocated for agriculture
doubled between 1910-40 and tripled again between 1940-70. Reduction of forest areas
has been clearly detected by satellite images, particularly since the 1970s. Official
statistics reveal that the 38 per cent forest cover in 1970 had shrunk to 25 per cent by
1998. Even the often underestimated official figures show that Thailand has lost 50 per
cent of its forest in the past 30 years.13
Scarcity of land has introduced changes in tenure patterns in Thailand. In mostplaces the traditional right to land was limited to usufruct (): rights were
given to the current user of the land, and the concept of ownership in a modern sense
was absent. Locally known as ‘squatter’s rights’ (), this system continued to bepractised in many places until a clear private ownership system was introduced. Even
today, many of the cultivators possess no legal documents of ownership despite their defacto private use.14 This ambiguity of ownership in rural society, particularly in collective
lands such as communal forests, religious forests, and fallow farmland, has made it
possible for the government to confiscate these lands as state territory with ease.
During the rapid privatisation of agricultural lands, the Thai government paid little
attention to unoccupied areas except for those that contained valuable resources such as
teak. Management of public land became an issue only when there were conflicts
between illegal encroachers and the regional forestry officials trying to maintain theboundaries of forest reserves.15 This tended to evolve into a political agenda, particularly
12 Rodolphe De Konick and Steve Déry, ‘Agricultural expansion as a tool of population redistribution inSoutheast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 28, 1 (1997): 15.
13 Royal Forest Department, Forestry statistics of Thailand (Bangkok: Royal Forest Department, 2000).
On the technical and political biases of these government statistics, see Lynch and Talbott, Balancing acts.
14 General discussions of legal issues relating to land tenure are in David Feeny, ‘The decline of property
rights in man in Thailand, 1800-1913’, The Journal of Economic History, 49, 2 (1989): 285-96; JeremyKemp, ‘Legal and informal land tenures in Thailand’, Modern Asian Studies, 15 (1981): 1-23. Based on thelatest available data on private land holdings, land with full ownership title () amounted to 54
million rai, which is only about 30 per cent of all cultivated area. For the historical separation of usufructand ownership rights, see Kitahara Atsushi, ‘Kindai Tai no tochihosei: Senzen no tochi hotaikei ni kansuru
ichishiron/Land registration in modern Thailand: A sketch to [sic] the prewar system of land policy’(Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies internal document, dated 1971). It is important to note thateven full title to land does not include ownership of certain valuable trees on that land. According to theForestry Act (1941), one is required to obtain permission from the local forestry official before cutting
certain species such as teak and yang (Dipterocarpus), even those growing on one’s registered land.
15 Donald Gienty, Thailand’s forest development and its effect on rural peoples (Bangkok: United States
Operations Mission, 1967).

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335

when the government became more sensitive about farmers’ occupation of its land.
Conflicts between farmers and officials have stimulated successive governments tostrengthen their protection measures, and areas with valuable natural resources havebeen the first places to be ‘protected’ in this way.
The purpose of the 1964 National Forest Reserve Act was to legalise ‘permanent
forests’ () mapped on paper and to accelerate demarcation by the state. This law
allowed forests to be designated as ‘reserves’ without a royal decree. The latest statistics
show that forest reserves (45 per cent of total land) represent almost twice the area
covered by actual forest, making it clear that the word ‘reserves’ is void of meaning.16
Particularly since 1989, when the government declared a ban on commercial logging,rights to areas formerly designated for concessions have become ambiguous; thisdevelopment has encouraged widespread encroachment on those lands by landlessfarmers. The government is now confronted with the critical task of curtailing further‘environmental refugees’ from moving into the protected forests or settling in urban
slums.
Diminishing forest resources and the expansion of protected areas have altered thenature of forest administration in Thailand. Forest reserves in the traditional sense werepatches of forest waiting to be harvested. The mandate of the RFD was therefore to
manage these reserves in an economically profitable way by allocating concession rights
and receiving royalties. However, the depletion of forest lands and the banning ofcommercial logging in 1989 created both a financial and an identity crisis for the
Department, as it was forced to transform its mandate from one of production to one ofprotection.17
It is interesting to observe, however, that the RFD has been able to increase its budget
and staff dramatically, particularly since the ban in 1989. For example, its total budget
more than doubled between 1990 and 1994. The rapid expansion of protected areas has
been crucial for the Department’s sustainability as a bureaucratic institution; scatteredaround the country, these areas are virtually its regional colonies.18 With exclusive
autonomy inside the protected forests and backed by the power of the law, chief officials
in these areas often obtain enough power to profit on the side, as seen in the notorious
illegal logging case in Salween National Park in Mae Hong Son province. In these areas,an increase in budget was justifiably requested to supply and strengthen local forest
guards and to enhance monitoring capabilities. Protection of forests was advocated not
only on the basis of environmental objectives, but also as a way to attract foreignassistance. An increase in the availability of economic assistance and the expected income
16 Royal Forest Department, Forestry statistics (2000). The National Forest Reserve Act does stipulate(Article 16) that those who had lived there before demarcation can apply for permission to use land inside
the reserve. However, the Act allows only 90 days after the demarcation to file an application, and it isunlikely that villagers in remote areas could meet this deadline.
17 Royal Forest Department, Forestry statistics (1996).
18 Chiefs of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks as well as regional forest offices covering multiple
provinces are not required to report to the governor of their respective province. Provincial forestry
offices, on the other hand, are officially under the authority of the governor, who is in turn under the
Ministry of Interior. See also the discussion in Peter Vandergeest, ‘Mapping nature: Territorialization offorest rights in Thailand’, Society and Natural Resources, 9 (1996): 159-75 and idem., ‘Property rights inprotected areas: Obstacles to community involvement as a solution in Thailand’, Environmental
Conservation, 23, 3 (1996): 259-68.

336  from tourism have been some of the basic motivations behind the expansion ofprotected areas.19
As long as control over land rests with the RFD, another increasingly significant
source of income has been the process of granting land use permits. Since 45 per cent ofThailand’s total landmass is classified as reserves, companies and state agencies cannot
initiate any project without seeking RFD permission. Table 3 shows the distribution of
permissions given to various projects inside the forest reserves.20
TABLE 3
List of permits for the use of land inside the forest reserves
Objectives
Blasting and crushing of rocks
MiningRoad construction
Electricity generation
Irrigation
Educational projects
Religious facilities
Agriculture and recreational areas (1)Government facilities
Research
Trespassing, grazing, watering
Conservation of forest reserves
Tree plantations
Others (e.g., waste disposal)
Total

No. of Cases
305
1,839
963
376
1,662
1,167
698
1,408
430
59
97
70
340
921
10,335Rai
2,908
303,939
297,537
81,253
841,486
91,62529,5172,187,181
215,418
69,1281,085
85,609265,011951,235
5,422,938(1)This does not include land reform areas.
Source: Data provided by the RFD Permit Division, August 2002.

Competition for land has intensified due not only to population increase but also tolarge-scale projects by state and private agencies. This explains why the RFD has not lostits standing despite the rapid decrease of forest cover, and has even expanded its budget
and manpower after the logging ban. Understanding how the Department sustains itself
provides important insight into its opposition to handing over the control of land to
local people.

19 Krishna Ghimire, ‘Parks and people: Livelihood issues in national parks management in Thailand andMadagascar’, Development and Change, 25 (1994): 195-229. Achara Rakyutitham, ‘Forest fire: A history ofrepression and resistance’, Watershed, 6, 2 (2001): 35-42 gives an insightful analysis of how firefighting has
served to justify the RFD’s suppression of shifting cultivators who use fire.
20 Under new regulations implemented since 2000, those who are granted the permits have to pay aroyalty of 7,220 baht per rai as compensation for the damage to the land and the cost of restoration. For
mining projects the royalty will be three times as much; Royal Forest Department, Banthuek khokhwam
Ko. So 0704.5w 16374, 3 July 2002.

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337

Degraded forests for the people: land reform and forest conservation

As struggles for control of land intensified, land ownership became highly
competitive among the different departments in the government, particularly whereproperty demarcation was still vague. These areas, typically called degraded forest(), were formerly covered with forest but have now been transformed into
agricultural land. Most of this land is legally owned by the state and has been designatedby the RFD for future plantation sites or handed over to the Agricultural Land Reform
Office to be distributed to the landless poor. The status of this land is therefore
ambiguous and controversial in many ways. The precise number of farmers actuallyliving on these lands is uncertain, and estimates vary between 1.5 and 8 million (fromabout 2 to 13 per cent of the total population respectively).21
There are numerous examples of acute conflicts between farmers and thegovernment over these degraded forests, the most publicised being the land allotment
project for poor farmers living in forest reserves under the Kho. Cho. Kho (National Rural
Development Committee) scheme in 1991. This project, carried out by the military,
aimed to evict farmers from forest reserves by compensating them with a small piece ofland elsewhere. According to the original plan, more than 250,000 households – about 1
million people – were to be relocated by the end of 1996. However, strong protests by thefarmers at the early stage of the plan forced the government to cancel it. The end of
Thailand’s Communist insurgency and the lure of potential profits from eucalyptus
plantations led the RFD to align itself with paper pulp companies supported by the
military, and many farmers were displaced from their dwellings to make way for
eucalyptus trees. These developments are said to have helped the military to reclaim its
presence after the fading of the Communist threat in the 1980s.22
In an attempt to protect the remaining forest area from further encroachment, thegovernment implemented certain ‘participatory’ projects that gave various degrees of land
rights to farmers illegally residing on state-owned land. Projects that took place in theforest reserves were implemented by the following governmental agencies without muchcoordination among each other: (1) plantation and forest village () projects by
the RFD; (2) plantation programmes by the Forest Industry Organisation (FIO); (3) theland reform programme by the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO); (4) self-help
settlement projects by the Department of Public Welfare (DPW); (5) and cooperative
land allotment projects by the Department of Cooperative Promotion (DCP).23
21 Scott R. Christensen, and Akin Rabibhadana, ‘Exit, voice and the depletion of open access resources:
The political bases of property rights in Thailand’, Law and Society Review, 28, 3 (1994): 639-55. Owen
Lynch and Janis B. Alcorn, Empowering local forest managers: Towards more effective recognition of tenurial
rights, claims and management capacities among people occupying ‘public’ forest reserves in the Kingdom ofThailand (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1991). Larry Lohmann estimates the area of thiscategory of land at about 5,600 km2, which is approximately 10 per cent of the total land area; Larry
Lohmann, ‘Freedom to plant: Indonesia and Thailand in a globalizing pulp and paper industry’, inEnvironmental change in South-East Asia: People, politics and sustainable development, ed. Michael Parnwell
and Raymond Bryant (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 23-48.
22 Pasuk Phongpaichit, The army's land redistribution programme in forest reserves: Case study of the active
exclusion of poor villagers in Northeast Thailand (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Faculty of
Economics, 1995). The main cause of resistance was not the environmentally harmful nature of fastgrowing eucalyptus plantations, but rather the locations which the government chose for planting. Even
those lands long cultivated by local villagers were assigned as plantation areas, and in many cases naturalforests were destroyed to make room for the mono-crop plantation sites.
23 Many of these projects took place inside or next to forest reserve areas. Forest villages, self-help

338  Among the projects that took place in the forest reserves, the most significant is theland reform programme implemented by the ALRO, a scheme whereby the government
obtains unused land from landlords or state-owned areas and distributes it to landlessfarmers.24 In addition, the ALRO will support the development of infrastructure (e.g.,pond digging, road construction) along with the provision of land certificates. The land
to be obtained was originally sought from large-scale landlords. However, it soon became
apparent that obtaining land from powerful landlords would be politically difficult, andeven if it were possible, this group could not supply as much land as was needed. Since
the mid-1980s, the government has shifted its attention to forest reserves as a potential
source of land to be given to the landless. This move has naturally motivated some capital
investors to encroach further onto forest land; as a result, the attempted ‘reform’ has insome cases intensified the concentration of land in the hands of the elite.25
Most of the other projects mentioned above are no longer being funded, even thoseby the RFD. The cabinet resolution of 4 May 1993 ordered the ALRO to be primarily
responsible for land allocation projects related to forest reserves. Because these are stateowned lands, the RFD projects inside the reserves could only give farmers usufruct rights
and not full ownership title. Land reform, on the other hand, allowed farmers to obtain
their own land with certain restrictions; in other words, it was a mechanism for farmers
to reclaim rights over ambiguous public lands. Table 4 shows the increase in the numberof landless farmers in Thailand. With the decline in economic growth from the late
1990s, and the increasing difficulty of finding jobs in the cities, the problem of rural
landlessness is re-emerging as one of the key items on the development agenda.

settlements, and land allotment projects that began during the late 1960s and 1970s were often tied tonational security concerns, particularly Communist insurgency. Conservation and restoration of forests
merely served as pretexts for mobilising local villagers to counter insurgents who were often hiding inremote forest areas. As a result, many of the forest village projects took place along the borders of Laos andCambodia; James Hafner and Yaowalak Apichatvullop, ‘Farming the forest: Managing people and trees inreserved forests in Thailand’, Geoforum, 21, 3 (1990): 331-46. In short, these projects were derived from thepolitical agendas of various state departments to enhance their bureaucratic status in the government andlacked coordination, which in many cases actually induced further forest clearance, despite the purported
objective of environmental conservation; see Harald Uhlig, ‘Spontaneous and planned agricultural
settlement: A general view of the present clearing-colonisation in the ASEAN Countries of Southeast Asia’,in Spontaneous and planned settlement in Southeast Asia: Forest clearing and recent pioneer colonization in
the ASEAN countries and two case-studies in Thailand, ed. Harald Uhlig (Hamburg: Institute of Asian
Affairs, 1984), pp. 6-118.
24 Under this scheme, farmers can obtain the usufruct rights for up to 50 rai of land and the certificate
can be used as a collateral to obtain credit from banks. In 1994, about 200,000 households received the
ALRO certificate; Prasong Charasdamrong, ‘The land of no return’, Bangkok Post, 16 Feb. 1997. To be
eligible for land reform, an area must (1) be state land (i.e., forest reserve); (2) not be covered by forest;(3) be generally suitable for agriculture; (4) not be vulnerable to soil erosion; and (5) contain a highproportion of landless farmers (including smallholders and farmers without any certificate); Thai
Development Resource Institute, Identification of potential land reform areas in Chantaburi Province, final
results, main report (Bangkok: TDRI, 1989), vol. I, p. 1414.
25 Prasong, ‘Land of no return’.

      

339

The connections between forest conservation policies and land reform merit a closer
look. Strengthening conservation (to cover up to 25 per cent of the total land) andaccelerating land reform have been central objectives of the government for the past
several decades. To reconcile these possibly conflicting objectives, the RFD has conducteda detailed zoning operation inside the forest reserve areas since the late 1980s. The zones
are classified into three categories: (1) conservation (C) zones for protection; (2)economic (E) zones for plantation and utilisation; and (3) agricultural (A) zones to betransferred to the ALRO for distribution (see Table 5). The results of this zoning exercise
were used as a guideline to be followed in the Seventh National Social and Economic
Development Plan (1992-6) in which a specific target of 25 per cent was given forconservation zones.
TABLE 4
The number and proportion of landless farmers in Thailand (1987-91)
Holdings

1987

1991

Landless (0 rai)463,635(8.2%)

500,398(7.8%)

Nearly landless (less than 5 rai)

576,019(10.1%)

828,265(13.1%)

Smallholdings (5–10 rai)

670,015(11.8%)

818,194(12.8%)

More than 10 rai

3,982,197(70%)

4,246,212(66.4%)

Total

5,691,866(100%)

6,393,069(100%)

Note: 1 rai=0.16 ha
Source: S. Chirapanda, The Thai land reform programme (Bangkok: ALRO, 1996).

340  TABLE 5Zoning by the RFD
Categories

Conservation(C) Zone

Economic(E) Zone

Land Reform(A) Zone

Criteria

The land in this zone
is covered with forest
trees that are healthyand suitable forpreservation. If RFD
follows its customary
practice, these areas
will be listed as
appropriate fordesignation as nationalparks or wildlife
sanctuaries.

The forests on land inthese zones have been
degraded, but the soil’s
capability assessment
indicates that theseareas are not suitablefor cultivation of riceor upland crops. The
areas are suitable forthe cultivation of tree
crops, particularly
forest tree plantation
crops.

The lands in this zone
have been deforested
and are occupied bypermanent settlers.
The communities arepermanent and people
are cultivating a
combination of rice,
upland cash crops andpermanent tree crops.
These areas have been
designated to be
degazetted following
normal procedures
and will be taken outof the forestry sector.

Source: MIDAS Agronomics, Study of conservation forest area demarcation, protection, and occupancy inThailand (Bangkok: prepared for the World Bank, 1991), Vol I, Appendix II, p. 1.

TABLE 6
Distribution of Lands based on RDF Zoning
Category of Land

Area (millions of rai)

Percentage

National Forest Reserves

147.3445.9

Conservation forests (C zone)
Good forests
Forests for rehabilitation
Other land uses

88.23
71.56
7.85
8.82

27.5
22.3
2.4
2.8

Economic forests (E zone)
Good forests
Forests for rehabilitation
Other land uses

51.89
8.82
15.46
27.61

16.2
2.8
4.8 (to ALRO)
8.6 (to ALRO)Land reform areas (A zone)
Good forests
Forests for rehabilitation
Other land uses

7.22
0.16
0.4
7.2

2.2
0.0
0.0
2.2

Land outside forest reserves
Good forests
Forests for rehabilitation
Other land uses

173.354.89
1.44
167.02

54.0
1.5
0.4
52.1

Source: Ministry of Agricultural Cooperatives and Royal Forestry Department, Thailand forestry sector
master plan, vol. 5: Subsectoral plan for people and forestry environment (Bangkok: RFD, 1993), p. 29.

      

341

These tables clearly show the problems that arise from this zoning method. The
most important issue is what will happen to farmers living inside C and E zones. The
growing political power of NGOs working against forced relocation together with thebasic lack of land where these people could relocate have created certain tensions overstate-owned forest land. As a result of protests by farmers and NGOs, the government did
issue a Cabinet resolution in May 1993 which basically allowed those farmers who could
prove that they had been living in protected areas prior to demarcation to remain. This
resolution was revoked a few years later, however, when there were changes in politicalcircumstances. The basic underlying fact is that there is no land available for those whohave been evicted. The government is now forced to recognise the presence of ‘illegal
encroachers’ on state land by issuing them land certificates to curtail further
encroachment – though it has taken a long time to reach that point.
The May 1993 resolution transferred jurisdiction over land amounting to 44 millionrai (about 30 per cent of total forest reserves) from the RFD to the ALRO in order toaccelerate the land reform programme. The potential for these degraded forests tobecome plantation sites and land to be given to landless farmers naturally created tension
between two offices. The conflict became clear when an agreement was made in August
1995 which explicitly stipulated that areas defined as forest would now have to be
returned to RFD control.26 Previously there had only been an informal agreement which
instructed the ALRO to maintain roughly 20 per cent of the land under forest cover
either by planting or by conserving existing forests that remained inside the land reform
area. (This 20 per cent was never demarcated on the map, as will be explained below.)
The ALRO had no obligation to return those forest lands to the RFD. Based on thisagreement, however, approximately 10,000 million rai are now being surveyed.27
The fact that the RFD was forced to give away 30 per cent of its territory to the ALRO
clearly demonstrates the consequences of forest mismanagement by the state.
Demarcation that reflects the politics of departmental interests instead of those of local
villagers is bound to fail. Technical solutions unable to address the inherently politicalnature of the problem have led to further deterioration of the forests. It is in this context
that one must understand the nature and significance of the Community Forestry Bill
under discussion.
Public land for the people

The government’s effort to artificially demarcate state forests and private farmlands
has proven unrealistic since many of the rural people, especially the poor, rely on forest
resources on a daily basis. According to the present system, the richer the forest, the moredifficult it is for local people to utilise it. The new regulations imposed by the RFD would
be stricter in forests that are rich enough to attract local people for their daily use. If this26 Categories of land to be returned to the RFD are (1) land covered with forest; (2) land not suitable for
agricultural production; (3) ecologically vulnerable areas; (4) areas to be protected as communal forests;(5) land with an average slope of more than 35 degrees; (6) watershed areas; (7) land that goes under thesupervision of the RFD according to the law and regulations; (8) mangrove forests; and (9) degraded
forests that have not yet been cultivated by farmers. See Royal Forestry Department and Agriculture andLand Reform Office, Bantheuk khotoklong rawang Krom Pamai lae Samnakngan Pathrup Thidin (Bangkok:
RFD, 2538/1995).
27 Somtheep Lacharot and Theeparit Koyphokhaisawon, ‘Pa kap khon’, unpublished manuscript (Royal
Forest Department, 1997).

342  is the case, one might ask where within the present administrative boundaries a forest
can be found that might provide enough incentive for local people to enforce andcoordinate resource management at the village level. From a legal perspective, the only
law that defines collective space for the people is the Civil and Commercial Code of 1932;
Article 1304 refers to land that is a ‘public asset of the nation’ ().
There are three categories mentioned: (1) degraded vacant land (); (2)
assets to be used collectively by the citizens (); and (3) assets
exclusively for the national interest (), namely
facilities for military purposes. The first category can be privatised if one follows theappropriate legal procedures, while the second can be protected from privatisation.
However, examples given in the code refer only to roads, lakes and coastlines, not toforests. Also, it is important to note that common lands in the past were designated not
to protect the communal or collective rights of villagers but to secure the openness of theresources to prevent them from falling into private hands.28
The official origin of the community forest concept in Thailand appears to support
the above mentality. As early as the 1950s, there was an explicit reference to theimportance of communal forests: in 1956, as an appendix to the 1954 land code, theMinistry of the Interior issued an informal agreement among the land-related
departments regarding the procedures that all land allotment projects should follow. The
agreement made explicit that when the government redistributed part of the state land
to the people, approximately 20 per cent of the land should be kept as forest to be usedby the local people. ‘Forests’ in the agreement included trees along the roads, thoseserving as a windbreak, and those located near residential areas to be used forconstruction and firewood. Although this guideline was never strictly implemented, thisrecognition in an official document of the need for community forests deservesattention.29
One might ask why the government promoted this kind of arrangement, given thefact that in the 1950s there must have been an abundance of forest surrounding
farmland. A plausible explanation was provided by a retired Director-General of the
Department of Land in an interview with the author. According to him, the creation of
a communal woodlot inside the newly established village boundaries was encouraged
because most land allotment projects took place close to forest reserves where one could
find vacant state-owned land for resettlement. This conservation-oriented policy withthe apparent intention to help local people had another side, however. According to theretired official, the intention of the government at that time was to attract local people
to the newly created community woodlot so that they would not go into reserved forests
in search of wood or land. It is quite possible that it was the uneven distribution of richforests, rather than a complete lack of them, that motivated the government to promote
communal forests. Furthermore, this 20 per cent principle was seldom referred to or
28 Shigetomi Shinichi, ‘Tai noson no “kyoyuchi” ni kansuri ichikosatsu’ [Land tenure system oncommunal lands in rural Thailand], in Tonan Ajia no keizai kaihatsu to tochi seido [Economic development
and land tenure in Southeast Asia], ed. Shigetomi Shinichi and Mizuno Kozuke (Tokyo: Ajia Keizai
Kenkyujo, 1997).
29 MOI (Ministry of Interior) document 9317/2699, May 2499/1956. The document also refers to theecological importance of the forest in giving moisture to the soil in addition to its economic significancefor the local people. This statement, though never formalised, may be considered one of the earliest
explicit state acknowledgements of the function of community forests.

      

343

implemented until the mid-1990s, when the RFD began to reclaim its jurisdiction overthe forests that existed inside land reform areas.
At present, the community forests that the RFD officially provides for the people canbe found only inside the E zones, and they emphasize plantation rather than local use.
Access to forests in C zones is not permitted under the current legal system, although it
is sometimes granted on an unofficial basis. If healthy forests are first to be protected by
the RFD, it is generally the degraded areas that would be left for people to use. An official
document produced by the RFD confirms this conventional view: ‘Community forests
are those under the Forestry Act and Forest Reserve Act that do not exist inside nationalparks, wildlife sanctuaries, non-hunting areas or watersheds which are protected bygovernment regulations. In addition, they cannot be on those lands to which thegovernment prohibits access in the national interest.’30 Such a statement suggests that the
RFD has little incentive to hand over economically productive forests to local villagers.
Other than the plantation-oriented activities preferred by the RFD, three options for
local access to forests exist within the present institutional framework (Table 6). The firstis the forests outside the RFD-administered permanent forest area. (Permanent forests
cover a wider area than reserves, yet they are only supported by a Cabinet resolution,
whereas reserves are protected by law.) This is a category of public land that can avoid
the involvement of the forestry patrol because it is mostly under the supervision of the
Department of Land rather than the RFD. If registered properly, forests in this category
can be protected by Article 1304 of the Civil and Commercial Code and the Land Codementioned earlier.
According to the latest available information, there are 17,000 sites (totalling 1.08
million rai) in this category, with the largest portion registered as grazing land. In 1997,
those registered as community forests extended over 116,000 rai, and the area isincreasing, according to the officer responsible for registration in the Land Department.31
RFD can assert its claim even over trees standing on land outside its jurisdiction.
However, land outside its territorial control is implicitly outside the purview of the Forest
Reserve Act, meaning that there is less policing by the forest guards. Moreover, those whoare in reality highly dependent on forests, such as the hill people, mostly reside inside the
RFD land, thus making it difficult to apply this strategy.
The second and most common option is the informal use of RFD forests. In many
locations, local RFD officials and villagers have reached an informal arrangement thatallows people to collect forest products not only on a subsistence basis (firewood, herbs,
small animals) but also as a source of supplementary income (such as mushrooms andbamboo shoots).32 These apparently flexible and informal arrangements, however, are
30 Somtheep and Theeparit, ‘Pa kap khon’, p. 27.
31 The 1997 figure is from ibid. The most recent data is in Department of Lands, Thidin thi prachachonchai prayot ruamkan thi ok nangsue samkhan samrap thiruang laew (Bangkok: Department of Lands, April
2541/1998). Idle land with no occupants is by legal definition ‘forest’ regardless of the actual tree cover.
However, it can be registered either as ‘degraded vacant land’ or ‘land to be used collectively by citizens’ inaccordance with the Land Code under the supervision of the Land Department. Because of the larger
number of local staff, land under the RFD is strictly monitored. Thus, if given a choice, people tend toregister their common land as non-RFD land. Villagers’ room for manoeuvre in taking advantage ofvarious state regulations is a promising agenda for future research.
32 A detailed case study of this type of community forestry is in Community allies: Forest co-managementin Thailand, ed. Mark Poffenberger and Betsy McGean (Berkeley: Southeast Asia Sustainable Forest
Management Network Research Report, 1993).

344  vulnerable in the sense that the system can be taken away at any time, since there is nolegal foundation to back them up. In addition, this kind of forest use does not have thepotential to develop into an advanced form of community forestry including commercial
enterprise.
A third possible option for promoting community forestry involves lands
transferred from the RFD to the ALRO for land reform. According to the 1995 agreement
between the two agencies, remnant forests in land reform areas should officially be
returned to the RFD. Again, however, the definition of what constitutes a ‘forest’ isarbitrary, and it is up to the local officials to decide what to return and what to keep.
Since the original idea of the ‘20 per cent agreement’ was to plant trees on the land
reform area as community forests, the treatment of remnant forest stands is vague,
providing room for local people to take advantage of the ambiguity. Under this scheme,
small but locally useful patches of forest may be placed lawfully under local control.
From a conservation point of view, clearing forest for agricultural purposes entails
some risk, but it is up to the local community to handle this problem. Perhaps more
importantly, in the land reform areas people are given legal title to land for cultivation,
which provides a degree of stability not enjoyed by those living inside the RFD land. In
other words, there is a possibility for local people to obtain both private and communal
resources jointly.33 The problem remains, however, that since the best forests are the firstto be protected by the RFD, it may be difficult for the ALRO to obtain forests incontentious areas such as the surrounding areas of wildlife sanctuaries and nationalparks.
TABLE 7
Existing forms of community forestry in Thailand
Administrative
location

Responsible
Agencies

Form of Use

Risk/Shortcomings

Public land outside of Department of Lands
the RFD territory

Official

Marginal impact onforest dependent
people who aremostly inside RFD
territory

Forest reserves andprotected areas

RFD

Unofficial

Unstable access,especially insideprotected areas

Land reform area

ALRO

Official

Uncertainty of forest
status33 Because the ALRO certificate will be given to those who already occupy a piece of land to cultivate, itwill not rescue those who are literally landless. Given the likelihood that these landless people are more
dependent on forest resources, the rigid imposition of a land reform scheme (i.e., the demarcation ofprivate land boundaries) may distort the informal arrangement often made among villagers toaccommodate the poor.

      

345

It is unclear exactly how the new Community Forestry Bill will affect these practices,and many issues lie ahead. For example, the relationship between the Tambon (subdistrict) Administrative Organisations (given the authority to manage natural resources
under the 1995 Tambon Administrative Unit Bill) and the community forestry
committees responsible for forest management has yet to be sorted out.34 Moreover, land
titles inside the protected forest require further consideration. Despite the risks andshortcomings, however, an institutional basis for community development clearly exists
within the present system. Regardless of the final content of the bill, what remains crucial
to the success of community forestry initiatives is to learn from these working examples.
Conclusion: prospects for community forestry

State-owned lands in Thailand occupy about 50 per cent of its total land area.
Management of this large portion of land not only has significant implications for the
local villagers who depend on forests on a daily basis, it also affects broader domains suchas energy, water supply, and conservation of biodiversity and the environment at the
global level. To sustainably manage these various resources, social mechanisms toorganise links between the government, village communities, and individuals become
crucial. One cannot focus exclusively on a single component of a system while ignoring
the others. With regard to the state, one must ask what kinds of resources are given to thepeople and what forces are affecting particular allocation, before asking how thoseresources can be managed in a sustainable and participatory fashion. With regard to anindividual or a household, there needs to be attention not only to forest resources undercollective use per se, but also to private prerequisites (such as adequate farm land) thatenable people to effectively take part in communal activities.
This article has attempted to locate community forests within the existing legal
framework to explicitly address the structural constraints and prospects for further
development. It is argued that ‘public land’ as defined by the government has rarely been
conceptualised as land for local people. Rather, it is considered as exclusively ‘state land’,and even when there are references to local people, the context is primarily protecting
this land from their encroachment. The article has suggested that even without theCommunity Forestry Bill, there is a legal basis for community forestry if it only refers to
subsistence use of forest resources.
Even so, there would seem to be positive roles for the bill to play. Since much of thecommunity management of forests is taking place inside the C zones, the House versionof the bill will certainly assist the villagers by stabilising and securing what they are
already doing, given that any activity in such areas is considered illegal at present. This
may discourage local people from engaging in a speculative abuse of resources such as
the conversion of forests into farmland. Also, for those who are in the South where
logging concessions for mangroves have expired, the new bill may help preserve theforest land from state confiscation as part of conservation zones or state plantations.35
34 Both House and Senate versions of the bill lack explicit statements regarding the connection between
TAOs and community forests. Since a majority of the forest areas presently under the management of
TAOs lie within reserves, it is natural to assume that the RFD will retain ultimate control over their use;
Apichai Puntasen, ‘Tambol organization and community forests’, in Seeing forests for trees: Environment
and environmentalism in Thailand, ed. Philip Hirsch (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1997), pp. 72-88.
35 The 1989 logging ban did not apply to mangrove areas in the South.

346  The relationship among a rapidly changing economy, forests, people and thegovernment requires a more systematic treatment. Official attempts to isolate people
from forests by zoning and policing have naturally limited the numbers and skills of
people who are most capable of managing the very forest that is meant to be protected.
It is likely that economic development over the long run reduces people’s direct
dependence on forest resources.36 However, this tendency is not homogeneous acrossregions or social categories. Unless legal recognition is given to those communities thathave proven their capacity to care for their forests, community-based resource
management will be devoid of its best models. The relationship between resources andpeople is after all one of competition, requiring a degree of mutual awareness and trustthat has apparently been slow to develop in Thailand.
During the debate over the bill, one Senator who voted against Article 18 expressed
his fear that ‘if villagers were given access to protected areas, other people would follow
them and exploit the forest’.37 This tough but illuminating statement is a reminder that
community forestry is not only about the poor living in the forests, but also the rich who
do not live there yet have keen commercial interests there. If the new bill fails to protect
the interests of the poor living in the forests and remains incapable of addressing theissue of power inequality, which fundamentally affects how resources are used, thenpublic land for the people will never come about in Thailand.

36 H. M. Gunatilake, ‘The role of rural development in protecting tropical rainforests: Evidence from Sri
Lanka’, Journal of Environmental Management, 53 (1998): 273-92.
37 The Nation, 16 Mar. 2002.