Governance and Micropolitics of Traditional ... - IPRsonline.org

Table 6: Description of Threats Affecting Local Practice and Traditional Knowledge.
Threat
Thai Government
Policy
Tourism
Land Shortgages
Land Rights
Lack of
Citizenship
Poverty
Description
The Thai government has sought to intervene with increasing intensity since the 1950s in
the affairs of the hill tribe peoples for a number of reasons. These are: increasing concern
about slash and burn agriculture in watershed areas; the cultivation of opium poppies was
outlawed in the 1950s; national security and border protection with the Laos and Burmese
borders; and assimilation with the dominant Thai population.
Tourism has introduced a range of outside influences to local communities and has diverted
them from local activities into market oriented activities like the sale of handicrafts and
even tours.
Caused by increasing population with western health care, immigration and natural
increase. Also caused by encroachment of lowland agriculture into higher areas, logging
and the sale of land to businesses and outsiders. This has had obvious effects on the ability
to conduct shifting rotational cultivation, and thus there is more pressure to clear new
areas.
The legal owner of most of the mountainous land of the north is the state, as administered
by the Royal Forestry Department and the new Department of National Parks, Wildlife and
Plant Varieties. Thus most tribal people do not own the land on which they farm and dwell,
and the securing of land rights, though often promised by government officials, is
infrequent and sometimes impossibly expensive because of bureaucratic “delays.” In other
cases people are excluded from their traditional homes for the establishment of protected
areas or development projects such as large dams or tourist developments.
Many tribal peoples are legally entitled to citizenship, but often obstacles are created to
deny them this coveted status. Two requirements are official house registration documents,
which only half the tribal people have, and individual registration documents (ID cards),
which slightly more than a third of them possess. Frequently the hill tribes cannot obtain
these documents because perhaps they cannot prove where they were born, or their birth
was not registered soon after the event, or they cannot prove how long they have lived in
Thailand. Citizenship may even be blocked by officials who demand exorbitant payments
for completing the process.
The hill tribe economy is shifting from a subsistence economy to a cash economy in which
people are becoming more dependent upon the lowland Thai markets and travelling
merchants.
Social Dominance Many dominant cultures are ethnocentric. This attitude leads to various forms of
discrimination between competing cultures. This problem exists in Thailand where many
Thai consider themselves to be more culturally advanced than the tribal people whom they
feel are inferior subjects of Thailand. The clash of cultures may be particularly severe
because the Thai and hill tribes are competing for limited land and resources.
Education and
Language
Loss of
Biodiversity
Most tribal children now have the opportunity of a Thai education as schools are
constructed throughout the mountains of northern Thailand and Thai teachers sent to teach
at them. This provides an opportunity by which young tribal people may integrate into the
dominant Thai society; it also means better chances of technical training, better paying
jobs, and improved health. Yet this is also one of the most severe challenges to the
perpetuation of tribal cultures and traditional ways. For example school uniforms are
usually required instead of tribal clothes, and students are instructed in Thai language,
rather than their own which is a great unifying factor among the tribes.
The main problem has historically been logging, and illegal cutting operations in protected
zones, as well as movement of lowland Thais up the hills. This has been slowed
significantly by greater government control.
Source: Anderson, E.F. (1993) Plants and People of the Golden Triangle: Ethnobotany of the Hill Tribes of
Northern Thailand, Dioscorides Press, Portland, Oregon., and Santasombat, Yos. (2003) Biodiversity Local
Knowledge and Sustainable Development. Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development,
Chiang Mai University.
Due to greater government intervention in the community forest areas of the north, there have
been ongoing conflicts to assert the rights of the communities to continue their local practices
in the forest areas. Luangaramsri (Pinkaew, 2001) argues that much government intervention
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