Nature - autonomous learning

126 de-naturalisationexcellent books Misreading the African Landscape (Fairhead and Leach 1996),The Lie of the Land (Leach and Mearns 1996), Desertification: Exploding the Myth(Thomas and Middleton 1994), Uncertainty on a Himalayan Scale (Thompsonet al. 1986) and Critical Political Ecology (Forsyth 2003; see also the essay byBassett and Zueli 2000). Here I simply use a case study to tease out someof the key issues.Northern Thailand lies on the eastern extremity of the Himalayanmountain range (see Map 3.1). It comprises a series of lowland areas inwhich irrigated rice has been grown for centuries. These areas aresurrounded by forested uplands that have been cleared for agriculturalpurposes by the Karen (an ethnic group indigenous to the uplands) andby migrants from neighbouring China, Laos and Myanmar. For over twentyyears, environmental policy in northern Thailand has been influencedby the ‘theory of Himalayan environmental degradation’. According tothis theory, high rates of population increase in the Himalayan regionroutinely lead to increased pressure on the land.The result is the cultivationof steeper and steeper slopes involving clearance of biodiverse tropicalforest that produces environmental problems in the lowlands, such asincreased flash floods and the sedimentation of rivers and streams. Thetheory emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when a few Western researchersbegan to take an interest in the environmental impacts of population growthin the rural parts of the developing world. For instance, in 1976, E. Eckholmwrote on Nepal:Population [increase] in the context of a traditional agrarian technologyis forcing farmers onto even steeper slopes . . . unfit forsustained farming even with the astonishingly elaborate terracingpractised there. Meanwhile, villagers must roam further from theirhouses to gather fodder and firewood, thus surrounding villages witha widening circles of denuded hillsides.(1976: 77)On the basis of this understanding of Himalayan environmental degradation,successive governments in the region have targeted upland farmersfor over two decades. For instance, the Thai authorities announced a ban onall logging in 1989 and began a programme of reforestation involvingplantations of teak, pine and eucalyptus.The ban and the reforestation policyhave together altered the cultivation practices of upland farmers.Where the