Terrestrial Biodiversity Conservation Law in Thailand: A Preliminary Illustration of Applicable Laws and Their Limitations
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Abstract
In early 2019, the House of Parliament of Thailand passed several pieces of legislation which have brought about a significant step of a biodiversity conservation legal regime. The coming into effect of such new laws gives rise the question whether the established legal measures concerning the conservation of land biodiversity can help Thailand reach a desirable point for the fulfilment of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) obligations or not. As a response to such doubt, this article explores two questions. First, ‘what are the existing legal measures that can be used for conserving terrestrial biodiversity in Thailand?’ Second, ‘what are the limitations of those legal measures?’ This article proposes that although there are a number of legal measures that can be used to conserve the components of terrestrial biodiversity under the existing regime, some limitations exist. These include the downsides of the reliance on command-and-controlbased measures, failure in conserving the components of biodiversity on private land, lack of the incorporation of an ecosystem approach into the law, as well as the overlap of the land notified as reserved areas.
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