Recent efforts to evict General Surayud Chulanont from his picturesque hillside villa have generated some journalistic interest in the hundreds of thousands of Thais who are theoretically vulnerable to government efforts to remove them from their (forest) land. Back in 2008, Andrew Walker and I had an article, “Northern Thailand’s specter of eviction”, in Critical Asian Studies, which, as the title suggests, is about this very issue. Our argument generated some comments in an earlier New Mandala post.
Surayud…and 449,999 of his closest friends
– 27 January 2010Posted in: Environment, Northern Thailand, Thailand
Despite the high-profile nature of the case and the importance of the plan put forward by the RFD, the quantity and quality of information published is not impressive.
# of forest occupants threatened : Just in the BKK Post, I’ve read 45,000 people, 45,000 household, and even 400,000 households.
The difference is great because 400,000 households represents the total number of illegal residents of legal forests as estimated in 2002 and 2004 by forest authorities (2 m people; if 5 / hh = 400,000 hh).
So who exactly is threatened? Is it like the Sanitsuda believes everyone who resides without authorisation in legal forests (2 m people)?
Or is it, as in the case of Surayud, simply those who bought land from a third party who had the authorisation to reside in a legal forests at the condition that the land be kept in his family. In the case of surayud, the land is part of a Forest Village established during the counterinsurgency period. There are, I believe, at least 1.8 m households who received these limited land rights (1.523m in ALRO*; 58,000 in Forest Village Program, 232 000 in Self-Help Settlements, etc.) . The point I want to make is that it is quite likely that 45,000 illegal transactions have taken place in these settlements (45,000 = 2,5% of 1,8 m plots; 400,000 = 22%). Thus it is plausible that the threat is directed at the second category of ‘encroachers’.
Is this politically feasible? not really.
Is it just?
Of course, if the evictee is rich urban influential person or company, the injustice is of a limited nature.
However, given the great economic changes since the 1970s, low esteem agriculture is enjoying and the limited agricultural capacity of the land typically allocated in these schemes, I wonder if members of the schemes have problems convincing their sons and daughters to accept continuing farming the plot instead of moving elsewhere?
Also, I wonder if part of the illegal transactions are part of a land consolidation strategy by farmers. Again, given the price-cost squeeze that affected most field crops in the 1980s and 1990s (but perhaps less so between 2003 and 2008?), isn’t it legitimate that a farmer residing in these schemes attempt to augment the size of his farm by buying up neighbours ? (of course, he could always rent in).
Anyways, the plan of the RFD / MNRE is a very important subject to follow. Whether or not it will be attempted, debates about it will reveal a lot about the state of Thai forest politics.
* I do not know if illegal transactions in ALRO settlements are possible and as widespread as in Surayud’s Forest Village. If not, the people threatened are most probably those without authorisation to reside in legal forests (not equivalent to the case of Surayud).
Quality comment or not?
0 
0
Even the political drive against “double standards” stops at Surayud and leaves his 247 neighbors on the same hill in peace, why would anybody expect RFD to continue on their own and on a nationwide scale?
Quality comment or not?
0 
0