Regime must do better for forest people

Today marks three years since the junta government took control over the Land of Smiles. Many of us might be counting every minute, waiting impatiently for the day we can cast the ballot again, while others may wish the junta would remain in power for another five years to complete its “return happiness” mission.

Each individual has his or her own reason for liking — or disliking — the junta. But as a reporter covering the environment, I have so many reasons to question — and at time frown upon — what this government has done regarding the country’s environment in the course of three years.

Indeed, I am quite surprised and bothered with this government’s policy on the environment. I still cannot comprehend why the junta, which promised to mend social divisions and bring political reform, has on the contrary tampered with environmental regulations and policy.

Natural resource management, environmental policy and related laws in Thailand require public participation — a term that may not find a place in the military’s vocabulary. This explains why the military government uses executive orders to establish environmental policies as it sees fit.

In his second year in office, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha used Section 44 in the interim charter to revise environmental regulations to allow infrastructure development including the construction of hospitals, transportation systems, water irrigation systems, along with other activities like natural-disaster prevention measures and industrial zones under special economic zones, to go ahead simultaneously with their environmental impact assessment studies.

Previously, projects with environmental impacts had to have their EIA studies approved first.

Critics said the junta undermined the integrity of the EIA principle which has been in place since the implementation of the Environmental Protection Act 1992.

Meanwhile, the policy on forest reclamation has disillusioned grassroots activists and villagers living in forest areas. After the coup, the junta launched a policy to reclaim forest land.

The campaign is praiseworthy on some levels as authorities took on big businesses such as resort operators who encroached on national parks.

Yet the policy to reclaim forest land leads to massive forced evictions: 8,148 villages in 1,253 forest plots are reportedly targeted for resettlement. But some of these villagers have been living in these forest areas long before the state officially designated the area as national parks under the forest reserve policy over three decades ago.

This is a complicated situation. Indeed, the issue of the villagers’ right to live in national parks or public forests have been carefully handled by previous governments.

There are many cabinet motions that have acknowledged some communities’ right to live in public forests. Some cabinets even launched the process to prove forest demarcation to find out which communities were in the area before and thus have the right to live there.

Villagers complained the junta government does not make space for community people to participate in proving how long they have been there and the authority is quick to move villagers out to meet their ambitious deadline to reclaim 26 million rai (about 10% of the country’s forest area) in the next decade.

Such a hasty forest reclamation policy is out of date. New forest conservation concepts encourage the role of original forest communities in helping to take care of the forest and make use of some forest resources to make a living in exchange for safeguarding nature.

To move villagers out, authorities promise to allocate new land for them (I wonder how many vacant land plots still exist). At the end, the authorities might get some land back, but social problems and more inequality will be the result of massive forced evictions.

The question is what are they going to do when they do not have land to live on? Do the authorities have enough manpower to deal with poachers? How can poverty and inequality be reduced when millions of forest dwellers are removed from their original homes?

I do believe the military government means well in executing these policies.

But its authoritarian nature cannot grasp modern environmental protection or natural resource management measures that have public participation and accountability at its core.

Over three years, society has paid a high price for the junta’s environmental policy and resource management.

Anchalee Kongrut writes about the environment and development for the Bangkok Post.