Fires burning in neighboring countries blamed for Chiang Mai woes - most polluted city in the World

[NorthernRyland]

1 minute ago, LetsGoJoe said:

Have you been to Tak?....a few years back I did a motorcycle trip; CM-Mae Sot -Sukohthai-CM, took a nice back road off the 105 that ran east, parallel to Hyw 12 from Mae Sot. Beautiful green and lush mountains all around for many kms, then suddenly, what appears like a lunar landscape, yet mountainous, opens up in front of us. As far as the eye can see are denuded hills - it was jaw dropping,we had to stop to take it in. The sheer Hercules hand & foot machete labor involved in the forest destruction of whole mountain-sides was impressive to imagine. As we continued to ride through this area we only saw a hand-full of hills that had active crops on them, the vast majority appeared to be abandoned or rendered infertile after likely only a few crop rotations, which assumed to be mostly corn. We saw people working the harvest, sacking and rolling bundles of corn down the hillside to a fleet of waiting trucks.

 

Interesting, yeah I've seen some of that but I haven't traveled as much as I should. I do see those mountain crops from the Hmong (I have a house in Samoeng and they're the dominate tribe I think) but I haven't seen any more burning then is typical from the average Thai farmer on the flat lands.

 

I've never caught them in the act but it's either the hill tribe or the Thai/Burmese/Thai Yai peoples that are in the area burning the forests, which is widely destructive since once they fires start they can travel for weeks. Those fires are burning constantly even if you can't see them from the road and especially not from the city.

 

Since you're on my same page I'll say how depressing it is to bike up a mountain (I'm a cyclist) and when you arrive at the summit it's wasteland of filthy shacks and African levels of poverty. What a shame since they have the nicest location in the whole country in my opinion. Totally wasted on idiots like that. I joke with my wife how great it would be if the Japanese colonized them and built lovely little gardens in place of their villages. Yeah, I have baggage with these people after living around them for years....

[JCauto]

On 3/13/2023 at 6:59 PM, NorthernRyland said:

What kind of burning are you talking about exactly? I live in the north and spend lots of times in the mountains and I don't see the hill tribes burning those steep plots like you're mentioning. I do see them burning the forests for foraging and general rubbish though which is the cause of most of the smoke I believe. The general squalor of the Hmong is pretty pathetic in general but that's their fault and if you held them to higher standards it would help everyone.

 

Anyways, why should we be so concerned about these particular peoples needs and lack of ability? This literally affects millions of people so I find it hard to find any sympathy for them.

 

 

It's known as "swidden", or more colloquially "slash and burn", a system of rotational agriculture where you cut down the vegetation, burn it in a series of controlled fires to reduce it to ash and open the land for cropping, plant a number of different crops on the land (dibble sticks and seeds usually) then rotate to another plot in the next year to do the same. By having several plots, farmers can leave the old land fallow for several years so vegetation re-establishes and fertility can recover before it is the time for the plot to be burned again. They have put a lot of effort into changing this system in Thailand and have probably succeeded for the most part with a combination of carrot, stick and the overall development of the economy to where there are numerous viable job alternatives for the people. Pity about the loss of their culture, but can't have everything! When there were major fires in CM in the more recent past, it was generally tied to CP Group commodities production on the same lands that had previously been rotational agriculture until this was stopped. Incentives to grow corn for animal feed in particular were the major cause for the burning up to a few years ago as I recall. This was not a secret.

If we examine the Lao situation (the one I know best), we can see that the burning has always been an issue but that there's a general sentiment that it's increasing over time. This is supported by land use data, and the growth well exceeds the rate of population growth. Therefore we can conclude that it is commodities production via plantations that is both putting pressure on the rural people and therefore reducing their fallow periods so forcing them to burn more land to produce the same amount of food, and paying rural people as labour to burn the fields the plantation companies are leasing for the company's production. So, similar to Thailand, when one looks to "why?" the burning is increasing, the answer is "big bidness".

I find your proposed rural development methodology of "holding them to higher standards" an interesting one. So you take the poorest and least educated parts of the populace who are marginalized within the country due to language and cultural differences, you assign them high standards to meet in order for them to be allowed to grow enough food to subsist (their basic objective) and that somehow assists in resolving this problem? Or you forbid them from burning but without providing some alternative means that they might otherwise grow enough food to survive? I fail to see how this is going to solve the problem.

Having millions of starving people whom you need to subjugate and feed to prevent them from growing their traditional crops will be quite a challenge for the Government of Lao PDR and the other countries like Myanmar, Vietnam and China where these people live. They've been pretty good at the subjugation and marginalization part, but can't seem to find a way to keep them fed without them burning the place for three months every dry season. 

 

[SoilSpoil]

7 minutes ago, JCauto said:

It's known as "swidden", or more colloquially "slash and burn", a system of rotational agriculture where you cut down the vegetation, burn it in a series of controlled fires to reduce it to ash and open the land for cropping, plant a number of different crops on the land (dibble sticks and seeds usually) then rotate to another plot in the next year to do the same. By having several plots, farmers can leave the old land fallow for several years so vegetation re-establishes and fertility can recover before it is the time for the plot to be burned again. They have put a lot of effort into changing this system in Thailand and have probably succeeded for the most part with a combination of carrot, stick and the overall development of the economy to where there are numerous viable job alternatives for the people. Pity about the loss of their culture, but can't have everything! When there were major fires in CM in the more recent past, it was generally tied to CP Group commodities production on the same lands that had previously been rotational agriculture until this was stopped. Incentives to grow corn for animal feed in particular were the major cause for the burning up to a few years ago as I recall. This was not a secret.

If we examine the Lao situation (the one I know best), we can see that the burning has always been an issue but that there's a general sentiment that it's increasing over time. This is supported by land use data, and the growth well exceeds the rate of population growth. Therefore we can conclude that it is commodities production via plantations that is both putting pressure on the rural people and therefore reducing their fallow periods so forcing them to burn more land to produce the same amount of food, and paying rural people as labour to burn the fields the plantation companies are leasing for the company's production. So, similar to Thailand, when one looks to "why?" the burning is increasing, the answer is "big bidness".

I find your proposed rural development methodology of "holding them to higher standards" an interesting one. So you take the poorest and least educated parts of the populace who are marginalized within the country due to language and cultural differences, you assign them high standards to meet in order for them to be allowed to grow enough food to subsist (their basic objective) and that somehow assists in resolving this problem? Or you forbid them from burning but without providing some alternative means that they might otherwise grow enough food to survive? I fail to see how this is going to solve the problem.

Having millions of starving people whom you need to subjugate and feed to prevent them from growing their traditional crops will be quite a challenge for the Government of Lao PDR and the other countries like Myanmar, Vietnam and China where these people live. They've been pretty good at the subjugation and marginalization part, but can't seem to find a way to keep them fed without them burning the place for three months every dry season. 

 

Hold them to a higher standard and give them a fair price for their hard work. The real problem is the profit margin that millers, factories, agro corps and supermarkets require. Time to rethink and redesign our social and economic systems. 

[JCauto]

7 minutes ago, SoilSpoil said:

Hold them to a higher standard and give them a fair price for their hard work. The real problem is the profit margin that millers, factories, agro corps and supermarkets require. Time to rethink and redesign our social and economic systems. 

I certainly agree with your last sentence, but it's going to take some time if it ever happens to fight uphill against the entrenched corporate interests who are perfectly fine to watch the world burn in the name of maximizing shareholder value while building their doomsday bunkers. As to the previous ones, recall my point that these are subsistence agriculturalists, not market farmers. They grow quite a diverse range of different food, herbs and medicinal plants on their plots including their staple, upland rice, and alternative sources of carbs such as tubers. They seldom are involved in the market economy other than low-level trading of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) and the like, so have traditionally had no dealings with the larger corporations, only itinerant rural traders. 

We are seeing now where Chinese businesses (in the North) and commodities traders (particularly cassava in the South) are heavily influencing cropping decisions so that farmers will now grow those crops on contract or lease their land to the businesses. However, they will seldom stop growing their own subsistence crops so will add those to the overall land use. This is how plantation companies and private sector pressurize land use and cause larger areas to be burned on an annual basis in Laos.

[Stargeezr]

When I see the satellite maps and the burning in the surrounding countries, it makes me realize that 

most of Asia has a lot of poor farmers who cannot change their habit of burning, cane leaves and 

their crops. I do not see any changes in the next 50 or 100 years. Maybe the developed countries 

could send all their ultra green people to help the poor farmers. Just joking of course.

Good Luck to all.

[NorthernRyland]

On 3/16/2023 at 3:18 PM, JCauto said:

I find your proposed rural development methodology of "holding them to higher standards" an interesting one. So you take the poorest and least educated parts of the populace who are marginalized within the country due to language and cultural differences, you assign them high standards to meet in order for them to be allowed to grow enough food to subsist (their basic objective) and that somehow assists in resolving this problem? Or you forbid them from burning but without providing some alternative means that they might otherwise grow enough food to survive? I fail to see how this is going to solve the problem.

So we're all held hostage because these particular people don't have any other ideas? This can be applied to any person polluting in order to make a personal profit. What if some family had a profitable business that involved dumping contaminated water into the river, do we all have to tolerate this until we can find a better system for them or a new job? The answer is of course no, so why is there this double standard?

 

They need to be given a dead line in which to stop and then ban them if they don't figure it out. The only exception to this would be if it could be determined this would crash food production and people would starve   but for that I don't have the answer.

[NorthernRyland]

10 hours ago, Stargeezr said:

When I see the satellite maps and the burning in the surrounding countries, it makes me realize that 

most of Asia has a lot of poor farmers who cannot change their habit of burning, cane leaves and 

their crops. I do not see any changes in the next 50 or 100 years. Maybe the developed countries 

 

What about the forest fires in the mountains? That's what catches my eye. Those burn uncontrolled for weeks and we don't even see them unless from satellite images. Agreed though 100% chance nothing changes unless the farmers are replaced by another system.

[NorthernRyland]

On 3/16/2023 at 3:46 PM, JCauto said:

This is how plantation companies and private sector pressurize land use and cause larger areas to be burned on an annual basis in Laos.

This all falls on the heads of the government to ban the practice then, but obviously this isn't going to happen in Thailand.

 

I would be happy if local governments enforced burning bans on people needlessly burning rubbish and leaves as that would at least let me know it's illegal and start to change the culture. Even today where I am the air cleared up to a reasonable level (can see some blue skies even) and people are out burning leaves because they can't be bothered to dump them in the forests that are everywhere. 

[JCauto]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:06 PM, NorthernRyland said:

So we're all held hostage because these particular people don't have any other ideas? This can be applied to any person polluting in order to make a personal profit. What if some family had a profitable business that involved dumping contaminated water into the river, do we all have to tolerate this until we can find a better system for them or a new job? The answer is of course no, so why is there this double standard?

 

They need to be given a dead line in which to stop and then ban them if they don't figure it out. The only exception to this would be if it could be determined this would crash food production and people would starve   but for that I don't have the answer.

Of course it would crash food production and the people would starve. This is how they eat, it's subsistence agriculture meaning agriculture for production of enough food, medicines and the like to keep the family alive. To completely change the agricultural production system would take decades and a heck of a lot of external assistance and based on results of these efforts in numerous places to date they would be almost totally ineffective. Nobody has really succeeded in getting wholesale change to take place in these remote and poor upland communities and it's not been for lack of trying, budget, technology or any other factor. This is what I have been trying to explain. It seems so easy! But it's practically impossible.

As to "being held hostage", those people who are burning were there long before anyone else in the region, so they're the indigenous who have had their land repeatedly stolen from them as they were pushed further and further away as development by lowlanders happened. These same lowlanders then take over the government of the land where these people have lived and farmed for thousands of years and try to ban these practices without providing any alternative livelihoods for the people while simultaneously selling off their land to corporations for plantation establishment and making their traditional practices "illegal". They then try to promote economic measures like tourism to bring people like yourself to the region where they'll spend money and fill the coffers of those same lowlanders who own all the tourism infrastructure and have by now dispossessed the highlanders from their more picturesque locations which they then take ownership of. The foreign expatriates who have by now found a discount retirement location then show up on fora like this, whine about the air quality and propose additional draconian measures to make the life of the poor even worse for their own minor convenience. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by JCauto

[JCauto]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:16 PM, NorthernRyland said:

This all falls on the heads of the government to ban the practice then, but obviously this isn't going to happen in Thailand.

 

I would be happy if local governments enforced burning bans on people needlessly burning rubbish and leaves as that would at least let me know it's illegal and start to change the culture. Even today where I am the air cleared up to a reasonable level (can see some blue skies even) and people are out burning leaves because they can't be bothered to dump them in the forests that are everywhere. 

So you believe that a viable practice to reduce burning is for people to pick up leaf waste from their yards that have basically ended up there because of falling from the trees in the forest and being blown by the wind, and then walk back up into the forest with great bags of leaf waste and dump it back onto the forest floor? I...don't even know where to start. You have such a lack of understanding of the issue I might better talk to a tree and request it to not drop its leaves for fear of inconveniencing the older White gentleman living nearby. 

[JCauto]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:08 PM, NorthernRyland said:

What about the forest fires in the mountains? That's what catches my eye. Those burn uncontrolled for weeks and we don't even see them unless from satellite images. Agreed though 100% chance nothing changes unless the farmers are replaced by another system.

You propose "replacing" the farmers? Where will they go? What will they do? Is this forced resettlement to put them in camps and such? You can live with completely destroying the lives and cultures of millions of poor people because you can't stand the air pollution for a couple of months in the dry season? 

[JCauto]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:08 PM, NorthernRyland said:

What about the forest fires in the mountains? That's what catches my eye. Those burn uncontrolled for weeks and we don't even see them unless from satellite images. Agreed though 100% chance nothing changes unless the farmers are replaced by another system.

Those "forest fires" you see are not forest fires for the most part, they're people's fields being burned in the uplands. They are not burning uncontrolled for weeks unless exacerbated by some other factors. Those places aren't forest because it's a lot of work to grow upland crops in forested land. They grow upland crops instead in degraded land that USED to be forest but is now part of that family's rotational land. Swidden Agriculture varies from 4 to as much as 15 year rotations depending on the land, land pressure, the culture of the farmers and whether they practice individual family farming or communal farming. The field preparation involves clearing and piling up the vegetation, then burning it in a series of controlled burns. This is obviously a huge amount of work if it is forest instead of scattered trees, shrubbery, bamboo and other vegetation.  Farmers don't have the means, equipment or strength to deal with larger trees.

This is how logging leads to land clearing. The Loggers go in and build access roads to the forest, take out the big trees and then many of the remaining ones are cleared out in the subsequent phases of logging by small-scale operators. At that point the land is ideal for upland swidden agriculture since the farmers have road access and new land that has been conveniently cleared for them already. 

[NorthernRyland]

4 hours ago, JCauto said:

Those "forest fires" you see are not forest fires for the most part, they're people's fields being burned in the uplands. 

Do you know what I'm talking about though? Literally forest fires that happen every year and you can see them burning at night even. They only burn the forest floor though and don't reach the branches at least.

[NorthernRyland]

4 hours ago, JCauto said:

You propose "replacing" the farmers? Where will they go? What will they do? Is this forced resettlement to put them in camps and such? You can live with completely destroying the lives and cultures of millions of poor people because you can't stand the air pollution for a couple of months in the dry season? 

How much of the food consumed in Thailand is grown by hill tribes? I doubt there's even any good data on this. I see them transporting this food for sale daily so it's not like we're talking about  food which they need to eat or they personally starve. 

 

I bet you can easily replace these particular hill tribe famers with Thai people who are under regulation (in theory, won't happen in practice). They can't produce enough food to survive without burning can't they? I don't care what they do but they need to follow the rules like everyone else.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by NorthernRyland

[NorthernRyland]

 

4 hours ago, JCauto said:

So you believe that a viable practice to reduce burning is for people to pick up leaf waste from their yards that have basically ended up there because of falling from the trees in the forest and being blown by the wind, and then walk back up into the forest with great bags of leaf waste and dump it back onto the forest floor?

It sounds like you live here and know what you're talking about. but do you know what I'm talking about? People constantly burn leaves in their yards instead of collecting them and composting them. Just the other day some monks at a temple were burning a pile of lives directly outside of some containers they built in the forest to store the leaves. Those particular monks were too lazy I guess and didn't bother.

 

The common thread of all your comments is that you hold these people to a lower standard (the bigotry of low exceptions we call it).

[JCauto]

11 hours ago, NorthernRyland said:

How much of the food consumed in Thailand is grown by hill tribes? I doubt there's even any good data on this. I see them transporting this food for sale daily so it's not like we're talking about  food which they need to eat or they personally starve. 

 

I bet you can easily replace these particular hill tribe famers with Thai people who are under regulation (in theory, won't happen in practice). They can't produce enough food to survive without burning can't they? I don't care what they do but they need to follow the rules like everyone else.

 

 

Thailand is a much more developed economy than the others in the region, so by now many of the highland people have joined the market economy so you see them bringing food to market. You don't seem to realize that much of the burning is occurring in Laos, Myanmar and Southern China and the smoke is carried by the wind into Thailand. Their situation is much different, they are much poorer.

Were you a Marxist Economist in your previous life before you came to Thailand? You seem obsessed by the idea of moving people around like they're commodities to be pushed to the correct location for the optimal means of production. These are indigenous people who live in these places and have for hundreds of years. You can't "replace" them, what do you think that means in a practical manner? Trucking people by force into camps? Selling their land to more responsible companies or farmers and forcing them into the cities? These are people, they have rights. You can't simply decide that their existence is bothersome so they have to leave.

[JCauto]

11 hours ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

It sounds like you live here and know what you're talking about. but do you know what I'm talking about? People constantly burn leaves in their yards instead of collecting them and composting them. Just the other day some monks at a temple were burning a pile of lives directly outside of some containers they built in the forest to store the leaves. Those particular monks were too lazy I guess and didn't bother.

 

The common thread of all your comments is that you hold these people to a lower standard (the bigotry of low exceptions we call it).

I don't hold people to standards, I don't work for the ISO nor am I a government environmental officer or something like that. I work in rural development and forest conservation in Laos so I deal with the reality of life that the people who live there face. This reality includes grinding poverty and subsistence farming. There are zero viable alternatives for those people to suddenly adopt permaculture, something that takes many years of labour and investment that they simply don't have so can't even consider as a possibility. They also can't take big risks in growing for the market with long-term products that might gain them better prices because of the time it takes before it can be sold. It's a complex issue that you appear to believe one can solve by simply informing people that they must do (A), (B) or (C) or else they will be replaced by people who will with some kind of police state to enforce this upon millions of citizens (albeit second class ones). This is absurd and awful - you cannot dispose of people because they make your air quality poor for a few months. You have money and so can come to Thailand and enjoy your retirement. You actually don't have more rights than these people whom you are so ready to dispose of, you have less. Shut up and accept that you have a bit of smoke in the dry season or move to some other expatriate haven where you can whine about the natives. Check your privilege.

[JCauto]

11 hours ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

It sounds like you live here and know what you're talking about. but do you know what I'm talking about? People constantly burn leaves in their yards instead of collecting them and composting them. Just the other day some monks at a temple were burning a pile of lives directly outside of some containers they built in the forest to store the leaves. Those particular monks were too lazy I guess and didn't bother.

 

The common thread of all your comments is that you hold these people to a lower standard (the bigotry of low exceptions we call it).

Okay, this is a much smaller issue, one that has a barely discernable impact on the smoke and haze as a whole (there's no comparison in the amount of biomass being burned in a swidden field versus some leaves in a back yard or temple), however one that is much more annoying to you since it is happening nearby so you gain the full sensory experience.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for you to learn and understand? Take some Thai lessons and start conversing with your neighbours, see if you can figure out why it is that they don't do what seems such a simple thing for your local village environment. Start a demo project and build composters and a home garden and invite the local kids to join you in growing vegetables. Participate in your local community and get to know the people here. Maybe you can start the change that you want to see! 

...or just whine incessantly in an expatriate forum about what a bunch of savages the local people are and how they ought to be held to higher standards.