From Social Forestry to Community Rights in Thai Society

Abstract

Under the influences of mainstream forest conservation, various groups who are cultivating in the forest are frequently blamed as the forest destroyer through shifting cultivation discourses which misunderstand the actual practices of forest utilization. Based on academic view of forest as an ecosystem with outside socio-political relationships, several participatory research between academics, local people, and NGO workers are carried out in situ. Local people are found not simply use the forest but also have knowledge and regulations for forest management as well as protect forest from outside encroachment, especially in a form of community forestry. Existing largely in forms of customary, ritual practices and beliefs, they are not easily visible to most people who are trapped in the myths of fixed discourse. Research findings partly help disrupting those myths by providing some understanding in community rights. This concept inspires social movements in the struggles to transform local custom into community forest law, partly through negotiating space of forest conservation rituals. Although the passing of community forest law has not yet achieved, the social movement has opened new and alternative avenue for participatory management of conservation forest.