Comparative Study of Participatory Mapping Processes in Northern Thailand
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COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PARTICIPATORY MAPPING PROCESSES IN NORTHERN THAILAND By Pornwilai Saipothong, Wutikorn Kojornrungrot, and David Thomas This paper explores the different mapping approaches difficult for villagers to understand and GIS maps can of the Raks Thai Foundation and the World Agroforestry only be produced by specially trained people and Centre (ICRAF) and how these differences affect require new technology and special knowledge. Both resource management, boundaries, beliefs and culture types of map promote cross village comparisons, practices, relationships within and among communities, increase efforts by villagers to have their forests and among communities and outside players. Since declared protected areas, and stimulate thinking among 1994 the Raks Thai Foundation has helped 167 sub- villagers about managing community forests. villages in Northern Thailand to build three-dimensional (3D) maps as tools for managing their natural resources. The last twenty years has brought rapid change in northern ICRAF has meanwhile built GIS databases for 55 villages Thailand. While most lowland areas now have some form of and eight sub-watersheds. The paper suggests a land title, land in the vast majority of mountain areas is number of similarities and differences between the two classified as “slope complex” and reserved or protected approaches. Villagers participate in the entire process of forest. No legal basis for land-use zoning currently exists for building a 3D map but their input into GIS mapping is areas within forest reserves. restricted. 3D mapping is field intensive and requires much community time and participation, while GIS A proposed community forest law is likely to provide a basis mapping involves time in lab and requires only one to for official land agreements in many of these areas. But in two days of local participation primarily to serve as data order to establish such agreements, the information on sources, to produce sketch maps, and carry out field which they are based must be in a form that can be officially checks of data. 3D maps are good for using within recognized. Thus, there is now much interest in ways to villages but because of their limited spatial scope, they translate land-use visions that have been locally negotiated are less useful for planning resource management at among stakeholders into scale maps. This is a necessary part sub-watershed or watershed levels. 3D models are of the process of fairly constituting forest law. difficult to retrieve and transport, are costly to produce, and are difficult to maintain and change. 3D maps are In many upper watersheds, there is also growing conflict useful for intra and inter-village communication and among villages and ethnic groups related to land use. Also, planning. GIS maps can be easily produced at different villagers in many areas are formulating local initiatives to scales and scopes, and data are easy to retrieve, zone and more effectively manage land and natural maintain, change, and transport. But GIS maps are resources in their domain. Mapping activity has been an 11 important part of these initiatives, and boundaries of In combination, the realities of increasing population and various types are being more clearly demarcated as part of export driven agricultural production have led to an this process. expansion of land areas under agricultural cultivation. At the same time, influenced in part by the global Different kinds of mapping techniques have been environmental movement, people in the urban industrial introduced by different agencies and organizations to help lowland area have developed sharpening concerns about people in various communities. The three-dimensional (3D) natural resource management practices in highland areas, model map has been promoted in Thailand for more than especially with regard to water supply competition. fifteen years, while more technically sophisticated spatial Historically, the lowland peoples have come to cultivate in information technology has been presented for use in rural upper watershed regions, effectively forcing ethnic minority areas only over the last five years. Both the Raks Thai groups to migrate upward into mountain areas. In keeping Foundation and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) are with its forest protection policies and opium substitution working to address mapping needs in rural north Thailand. program, the national government has instituted programs Because of their somewhat different approaches, it is useful to reduce the spread of cultivation into upper watershed to conduct a comparative study of their relative strengths and mountain regions. Therefore, minority groups in and weaknesses under different conditions. mountain areas have had to transition from their traditional land-use system, based upon a shifting cultivation or CASE STUDY BACKGROUND swidden, to a land-use regime based on permanent upland crops grown within limited areas. This transition had led to Policy issues related to land use great difficulty in meeting basic security needs for many As has been true in much of Southeast Asia, Thailand has a upland peoples. long and complex history related to land use and change in land-use patterns. The center of the Thai kingdom has As stipulated in the new national constitution, the typically been in lowland areas where agriculture is the decentralization of governance systems in Thailand has major production activity, implying that the lowland people been ongoing since 1997. Rural populations thus have had had more power than upland rural communities. This new opportunities to manage and use their lands at the power differential manifests itself clearly in that the subdistrict local level. The government provides funding, development of infrastructure and public services has been major infrastructure, and various other incentives to much more heavily carried out in lowland areas. encourage greater local self-reliance, but also promulgates 12 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PARTICIPATORY MAPPING PROCESSES IN NORTHERN THAILAND restrictions with respect to local autonomy, as justified by Lua live in remote areas and contact with them is extremely the interests of the larger Thai society. difficult, with only a few villages remaining along the ridge on the southwest of Mae Chaem Watershed. Traditional Lua Mae Chaem Watershed agricultural practices centered on a shifting cultivation Mae Chaem Watershed is one of 255 officially zoned system that differs from that of the Karen people. subbasins with an area of about 4,000 square kilometers. The elevation ranges from 400 to 2565 meters above mean sea The Karen level, and it is connected to Inthanon National Park and Ob The Karen entered the district in the mid-1800s from Luang National Park in the eastern part of the watershed. Burma. They have settled primarily in the middle altitude More than 70 percent of the area is mountainous, and the zone area (600–1000 meters a.m.s.l.) and practice their amount of arable land is correspondingly relatively small. traditional rotational shifting cultivation system (ten to fifteen years forest fallow). This traditional system was geared to meeting only their subsistence needs. The Karen exchanged forest goods with the lowland Thai to supplement their agricultural production. With the expansion of upland field crops and government natural resource management policies, they have had to transition from their traditional system to a system based on permanent field crops and cash cropping. The Karen are the most populous group in Mae Chaem, numbering more than 40,000 people, making up over 60 percent of the area’s total population. There are five major groups of people settled at different The Hmong altitude zones in Mae Chaem Watershed, each with a The Hmong migrated from Mae Hong Son Province (west different language, culture, and agricultural practices. of Mae Chaem) after World War II. They live in the highland zone of the watershed. They used to grow opium in their The Lua pioneer shifting cultivation system. Under the nationally The Lua or Lawa people were the first inhabitants of this mandated opium substitution program, they now cultivate area, arriving around the middle of the eighth century, and commercial highland cash crops including cabbage and numerous Lua temple ruins and cemeteries can be found in tropical fruit trees. places close to Mae Chaem town. However, most of the Lua were assimilated by local Thai and Karen groups as these A secondary group of Hmong people migrated from Hot later groups migrated into the areas. Today, the remaining District, south of Mae Chaem as part of a government 13 resettlement program and are now located in the lowland • As a legacy of World War II, and the Cold War, area. They also grow different kinds of vegetables as Hmong began migrating into Thailand and the Mae commercial cash crops. Chaem area from the late 1970s and have often been involved in practicing opium production. The The Lisu United Nations declared the highland area of Mae The Lisu migrated to Mae Chaem after the Mae Chaem Chaem district to be the principal area of opium Watershed Development Project. There is only one Lisu production in Thailand in 1980. Thereafter, the Royal village in this area. Thai Government and the United Nations initiated the Thai/UN Crop Replacement and Community Northern Thai Development Project, which does not aim to directly The local Thai live in lowland areas and use a wet rice suppress the cultivation of opium but rather to cultivation system supplemented with vegetable and introduce alternative crops. This has led to the soybean crops in irrigated areas. They also engage in field introduction of many kinds of vegetables and fruit crop cultivation in upland areas. Thai farmers have also tried trees to the highlands. Cabbage is currently the to expand their cultivation activities into the forest. major production crop in the mountain area of Mae Especially in cases where the area of expansion has been Chaem Watershed. forest fallow of the Karen people, this has led to conflict • The King’s project or the Royal Project Foundation is between those groups.