The
Mae Khan Sub-watershed is an informative example of the ways in which
the Watershed Conservation and Management Office (WCMO) has attempted
to enable and formalize community forest management while awaiting
appropriate national policies. In the Mae Khan case, the strategy
has involved working with decentralization policies and programs to
link upland and highland communities through local government
institutions.
The Tambon Administrative Organization (TAO) is a sub-district level body of elected representatives that are charged under existing laws to formulate development and natural resource management plans. Since the late 1990s, the TAOs have been allocated funds for such forest management tasks as fire control, reforestation, and road maintenance. The goal of the Mae Khan project was to build the capacity of village groups, drawing on indigenous leaders and institutions, to develop micro-watershed plans and to integrate them and approve them at the Tambon level through a series of meetings, workshops, cross visits, and planning activities.
The RFD has been pursuing community-oriented watershed management in the north through a variety of projects since 1981. The Sam Mun Highland Development Project (SM-HDP) funded by UNDCP was particularly important in developing collaborative resource planning process and pioneered the use of three-dimensional models for micro and sub-watersheds. Constructed by community members with support from NGOs and RFD staff, these tools provided a framework for discussing forest and land management issues and conflicts. Since that time, participatory land use-planning (PLUP) has become widely used by the WCMO.
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| HMONG VEGETABLES PLOTS. The Hmong in Mae Khan practice shifting cultivation growing upland rice, vegetables, corn on cleared slopes in the upper watershed. |
The Mae Khan Sub-Watershed is part of the Ping basin, one of six major river systems that flow through northern Thailand. The Mae Khan is situated between 270 meters at its outlet to over 2,000 meters along the ridge tops. Four major ethnic groups inhabit the area with the Hmong and Lisu in highland settlements, the Karen in the midlands, and the Thai in the lower watershed. The Karen and Hmong populations have inhabited the area for around one hundred years, but since the region was declared a protected watershed forest, their land claims have been thrown into question. National conservation-oriented policies have strong national support, especially among the urban middle-class, who represent a large and influential component of Thailand's electorate. Sentiment against forest resident communities is also based on ethnic perceptions of Thais and non-Thais many of whom are of a different kingdom of old or are migrants over recent centuries from southern China and present neighboring countries.In the sub-watershed of the Mae Khan, two Karen villages have an intensive rice-based livelihood while utilizing the neighboring forest. RFD has mapped with them their resource use and maintains a GIS database to monitor their land use in keeping with the forestry policies (Map 3).
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| Click here to enlarge Map 3 |
Hill tribes are sometimes perceived as "forest eaters," and some Thai environmental organizations have strongly lobbied for their removal from the forests in upland watersheds in the north. The presence of the highly valued Doi Inthanon National Park on the southern edge of the Mae Khan Watershed further reinforces national interest in conservation in the area. Other organizations, however, have worked in the Mae Khan for over a decade to find ways to integrate local communities into formal watershed management systems. These include both local NGOs operating out of Chiang Mai who support the community development and a networking of hill tribes, Royal Projects, as well as the Watershed Management Unit (WMU) of the Royal Forest Department.
In the Mae Khan each ethnic group has well-established traditions of forest protection and management. Each cultural community has different names, use practices, and regulations for their protection and utilization forests. Despite the accusations of some organizations that upland and highland communities are the destroyers of northern watersheds, much of the damage to forests of the Mae Khan occurred in the 1970s after an access road was constructed and logging concessions began operating in the area. The environmental impact of logging operations and forest clearing resulted in flooding and landslides and spurred local communities to strengthen resource use controls and regulations. Over the past ten years, many of the 21 hamlets in the Mae Khan Sub-Watershed, with support of the WMU and NGOs, have elaborated and codified their forest management rules, mapping and zoned their areas, and formalized their resource use committees.
The integration of three different cultural strategies of resource stewardship has been one of the biggest challenges for the pilot project. A major goal of the project was to formally integrate indigenous forest management systems into the Tambon natural resource management plan, while allowing them to maintain their individual ethnic characteristics, including leadership patterns, values and belief structures, and local terminologies. According to the TAO Act (an important component of Thailand's decentralization laws), is that two members from each village are elected to hold office and serve on the Tambon council (obator). Three regular meetings are held each year to discuss development and natural resource management activities. A major topic is fire control and includes the planning and implementation of fire breaks throughout the watershed. Each village is responsible for constructing a 10 to 20 kilometer long fire break drawing on community labor, with modest financial support ($70) from the Tambon. Forest patrolling and tree planting are also activities that are planned through the Tambon council and implemented by each community.
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| KAREN RICE PADDIES. The Karen traditionally cultivates rice on terraces along narrow valleys close to settlement and streams and uses indigenous irrigation systems. The Karen also have swidden fields located further from settlements, with fallow periods sufficiently long enough to allow natural regeneration. |
Through the Tambon council, and with the facilitation of the WMU project, a number of NRM issues are gradually being addressed. Conflict between the Hmong and the Karen over land rights and upstream pesticide contamination are gradually being resolved, while boundary disputes with Doi Inthanon National Park and the Hmong community are under discussion. Tension between the Karen and the Hmong and Lisu, who migrated into the area more recently, is often based on the Karen's complaint that the newer inhabitants do not respect customary land tenure. Participatory land use planning processes and coordination at the Tambon level appears to be an effective way to address such problems. The longer-term question of the tenure status of upland and highland communities continues to await national legislative decisions; however, the commitment of local government and technical agencies to support participatory resource planning with the hill tribe communities has lessened anxiety and provided a basis for collaboration between Hmong, Karen, and Thai villages.
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