Pongpol and the land mess

10 April 1998

The problem looks deceptively simple: how to prevent further destruction of forest lands by agricultural settlers. But this problem cannot be separated from a much bigger problem: the land rights mess which has helped to bring down two governments in this decade.

Pongpol Adireksarn’s solution looks deceptively sensible: 1. abrogate the Wang Nam Kheow resolution which has provided cover for new encroachment; 2. use satellite images to identify and remove the settlements founded after the land was declared as reserves; 3. remove settlments from "sensitive" areas irrespective of historical rights. This solution appears to offer a clear-cut, law-based solution aided by modern technology.

But the problem is not so clear-cut, and the existing law may be a very shaky basis. The Pongpol doctrine assumes that at the time they were defined some 20-30 years ago, the forest reserves were empty. Through law, technology and maps, this past can be recreated. But this is official myth. The realities are much messier. A successful solution has to confront the realities of Thailand’s land mess.

The historical reality. Most of the farmers inside forests were encouraged to settle by government authorities. From the 1950s to the 1980s, government incentivised farmers to colonize new land and grow the export crops which powered the economy. The army offered extra help and encouragement to farmers who burned the forests which harboured communist rebels. Local officials often promised farmers land rights. Over 30 years, 90 million rai were converted from forest to field.

The geographic reality. At the same time, officials were drawing maps defining 40 percent of Thailand as "forest" for conservation. By the time the reserved areas were declared by law, the maps were already out-of-date. At least half of this "forest" had disappeared.

The human reality. An estimated 10 million people are settled on land defined as "forest" – around a quarter of the rural population. There is no free land available to resettle them. They are denied full land rights and often treated as "squatters".

The social reality. Many of these "squatter" settlements look and function much as any other village. They have schools and temples. Occasionally they have government offices. Often they have been there for a generation.

The agricultural reality. Many farmers still do practice slash-and-burn cultivation. This is a measure of the failure of agricultural development policy over the past generation.

The administrative reality. Throwing villagers out and placing forests in the control of the forestry department offers no guarantee of conservation. The Salween saga is the latest evidence of the department’s failure.

The legal reality. For farmers, the lack of proper land rights is a major issue. In an economy which works on market principles, it is a big disadvantage not to have secure ownership of a key productive asset.

The political reality. Land rights and usage ought to be a major concern of the parliament in a largely rural country. But it is not. The parliament is filled with urban people and concentrates on urban issues. Farmers have no effective representation. As a result, their political views are expressed through agitational organisations like the Assembly of the Poor and NGO groups like the Northern Farmers Network and Project for Ecological Recovery. Government likes to deny any legitimacy to these organisations on grounds that they are not part of the official framework.

In short, government wants officials to impose a solution based on documents (laws and maps). But the documents do not match the historical, geographical, human and social realities. And the official agency does not reflect the administrative, legal and political realities. This is a recipe for failure.

Behind this short-term problem, there is a larger long-term difficulty: the Thai government’s bad faith on land rights. In the past, all land technically belonged to the king. That changed a century ago. But old attitudes linger, and provide the basis for new forms of bureaucratic paternalism. Officials often treat farmers as if they do not deserve full land rights, rather as children do not merit full civic rights.

Over the past twenty years, there has been a sad series of attempts to sort out the mess of land rights and forest destruction. In the 1980s, the land and forestry departments issued settlers with conditional land titles. These documents simply delayed any decision on whether the land should ultimately be farm or forest. In 1991-2, the army resolved to throw all the "squatters" out of the forests, but had to stop when the scheme provoked huge protests. In 1992-5, the first Chuan Leekpai government returned to the strategy of conditional land deeds, but was brought down because local officials gave these deeds to the wrong people. In 1997, the Chavalit cabinet at Wang Nam Kheow declared: "no more arrests, no more harassment… the people can now live where they are without worries." This provoked an immediate outcry by environmentalists who feared it would be a green light for loggers and settlers.

Officials, soldiers and politicians have all had a go at solving the land rights mess. They have all underestimated the scale and complexity of the problem. They have either tried to skirt round the issue with conditional rights, or to impose a quick-fix solution (all out, or all in).

All have assumed that current maps and definitions of forest reserves must form the basis for a solution. Here is the basic flaw. For once you hold that position, you have to work out what to do with 10 million "squatters". And once you run away from that problem, the encroachment continues and the forests continue to disappear.

Ten million people without land rights, and the continuing destruction of a million rai of forest a year amount to a big problem, The solution must match the scale. The realities listed above indicate some of the conditions for a solution.

The solution must be based on the human and ecological realities of today, not the distorted and outdated versions embodied in laws and maps. That will mean confronting on a national scale the issue of zoning land for different uses.

The solution must command acceptance or else it will be useless. That means the process of achieving a solution must accept political realities. A plan made and imposed by officials will not work. The government must involve the organisations which reflect rural politics, whether it likes dealing with them or not.

The solution must be hard-nosed about the official agencies currently involved. The land and forestry departments have very bad track records.

The solution must be linked with a new positivism about agricultural development. Just moving a few people around will not stop the slash-and-burn. Improving the farmers’ access to better and more remunerative agricultural technologies will have more impact.

The economic crash has revived interest in agriculture and in the importance of rural society. This presents a great opportunity to solve the major rural problem of land rights which has festered over the past generation. But a quick fix will not work. And may well lead to another political disaster.

This puts a lot of pressure on Pongpol Adireksarn as Minister of Agriculture. In recent years, this portfolio has been a sleepy number. But times have really changed. The worry is that Pongpol is a little out of his depth. He fumbled the early stages of the Salween saga by trying to appoint Prawat Thanadka to oversee the investigation into his own possible wrongdoing. He publicly backed the construction of the Kaeng Sua Ten dam without apparently understanding how complex the issue is. He may be seeking a quick fix on the land rights issue.