Thai Govt Called For Moving 2 Million People From Mountain Zones

[connda]

It's difficult to eat a tree.

[connda]

In the bigger picture this sounds like part of AGENDA 21 [ agenda for the 21st. century - Rio global summit 1991] gradually going forward all over the world to remove humans from the wilderness areas and concentrate them into small highly controlled areas.

Soylent Green

[Petertimo]

So take the land and re-house 2 million people! Where they want to put these people in gods sake. Maybe it will make these people aware, but do they really think these people would care about the environment if they get evicted from the lands that have been in the family for decades. Environmentalists really not care about people, and this is the perfect example. I'm working in the environmental sector myself and this attitude is the whole reason why environmentalists never get anything done.

[connda]

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

One good asteroid strike will take care of the pesky human problem.

[connda]

So take the land and re-house 2 million people! Where they want to put these people in gods sake. Maybe it will make these people aware, but do they really think these people would care about the environment if they get evicted from the lands that have been in the family for decades. Environmentalists really not care about people, and this is the perfect example. I'm working in the environmental sector myself and this attitude is the whole reason why environmentalists never get anything done.

The christian evangelistic ministries will take good care of those 2 million heathens.

/sarcasm off

[Petertimo]

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

Civilised people are not a single hair better.

[unanimosity]

Fact : Paying people to plant trees is far less costly than trying to move and rehouse 2 million people.

Where do the trees come from that you plant?

What is the method of payment (per tree? per rai?) and who and how is the process audited? Looks like a whole lot of trees may get planted over and over. Would save on having to buy them and on the trucking costs of delivering them.

Anybody that proposes such a scheme should be scrutinized for potential abuses in the revenue stream.

Historically, to advocate paying hill people to plant trees is also paying the paymaster 30% to pay the people with peoples' money.

[unanimosity]

I would re locate (overseas) the ENV-minister and all the VIPs involved in the de-forestation...NOT the Hill people

+1 Hard to improve on a perfect idea.

[yumidesign]

moving 2 million people where

[unanimosity]

Fact : Paying people to plant trees is far less costly than trying to move and rehouse 2 million people.

It is more cost effective to protect the existing resources and to invest in expanding the protected areas around key parts of the watershed.

Not arguing with you because you raise a good point. Unfortunately, the type of vegetation and soils degraded by encroachments and inappropriate land use can not be fixed quickly by planting trees. Planting is good, but is only a small part of an effective solution.

Do you not think that keeping people on the land, paying them to cooperate and maybe plant some trees, makes it much harder to identify illegal loggers than it would be if everybody were required to vacate the area?

[mogoso]

It's difficult to eat a tree.

Verily thou doest speak the truth, as the trees themselves tend to be a difficult meal. However the crops gained from trees tend to be quite tasty and profitable.

I like mangosteen,but my neighbor now brings his cows over to graze and they ate my newly planted mangosteen plants. We invited him to bring over his cows to graze so it wasn't thought out all that well on our part (we being wife) It does keeps the field short and it brings another person to watch over our house when we're away

[Wandering]

The plan is very simple.

1. Rich businessmen cast the blame on villagers.

2. Remove these people as they are in the way. Let them be slaves in the cities.

3. Use the land for illegal logging.

4. Become incredibly wealthy while the floods get worse.

[lannarebirth]

The plan is very simple.

1. Rich businessmen cast the blame on villagers.

2. Remove these people as they are in the way. Let them be slaves in the cities.

3. Use the land for illegal logging.

4. Become incredibly wealthy while the floods get worse.

You've got the order wrong.

1) "Dark Forces" illegally log the land

2) Populist parties promise these lands to local people in Thailand's latest land reform scheme which never comes to fruition in giving them clear title.

3) As the land becomes more valuable "Influential persons" through their toadies in the government, parliament and the forest department come up with a plan to "Save" these "degraded forests" and move all the people out, by force if necessary.

4)

Influential persons then sign long term leases withe the government to "restore" these forests by planting eucalyptus trees which they then feed their paper mills with. The Eucalyptus trees do untold damage to the environment.

[animatic]

The hill people have been doing fine for hundreds of years,

but the industrial strip logging operations by influencials is the real deforestation hazard.

They are just scapegoating the poor tribes people as an excuse,

plus it makes more factory workers and leaves the land to be

strip deforested in more places without complaints,

but HUGE kick backs to look the other way...

in a word this all STINKS.

Edited March 30, 2012 by animatic

[Miami Bob]

In the bigger picture this sounds like part of AGENDA 21 [ agenda for the 21st. century - Rio global summit 1991] gradually going forward all over the world to remove humans from the wilderness areas and concentrate them into small highly controlled areas.

Soylent Green

Yes only Soylent Green was a fictional movie... Agenda 21 is reality. Moving the populations into designated areas is only part of the agenda. They are having a follow up global summit this year again in Rio, Brazil to discuss progress. It also includes centralized control of all energy and resources globally. Obama and all the other major leaders will be there. It's a scary prospect in my view.

[Longtooth]

If you look at the island of "Hispanola" (??) The Dominican Republic is green, and Haiti is brown, bare, ground. Half and half, right down the middle. Man is able and capable to completely deforest a nation. If there is such a thing as "sin", that might be it.

[Markaew]

Who comes up with this crap? Is this similar to crackdowns? I am overwhelmed with daily nonsense. I need to fall back on my solution to the problem....

[RPCVguy]

Forestry is a lot like the burning in the north (and sometimes the same). … They don't look any further than today. Floods? What floods...it's dry!

Agreed, yet many Thai in Bangkok now see the impact of poor oversight. Maybe that will be sufficient incentive to act responsibly this time. As also noted here:

the floods really frightened the sh#* out of everyone this time, and the economic damage to the economy might finally wake them up to the consequences of all the over clearing.

Yes the hill tribes are responsible for some but so are the generals and police colonels who have had access and ability to loot the teak forests for the past 50 years.

One thing is for sure, with expected climate change, the wet seasons could be much wetter and that means more floods unless they rehabilitate the headforests in the hills.

The idea of paying the hill tribes is a practical and cheap alternative to forced re-location.

I can remember the princess talking about the negative effects of overclearing thirty years ago, with demonstrations of clear streams running through pristine rainforests and muddy streams running through clear felled areas.

It's incredible that they didn't pay heed to her wise words.

Money the root of all evil.

All good comments bobmac. We live in the valley near the headwaters of one of the named rivers. My wife lights up when she tells of the numerous clear springs that sprang from the surrounding hills during her youth – supplying clear water that was sweet and safe to drink. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Erosion and flooding starts high in the hills now – which are mostly teak farms and corn fields. Corn on hillsides is bad in general, but when the furrows are not along contour lines AND it is in the tropics where the sun and torrential rains quickly leach health from exposed soils, then corn is a disastrous crop. Though the teak forests are better, this is only marginally so because it takes intercropping of leguminous trees like tamarind to supply nitrogen - and it takes a truly mixed forest to have the diversity to maintain health during drought and rain – while feeding pollinators with different flowering plants through every month and season.

A fact about slowing runoff and getting water absorbed into the land to feed the water table… one can begin the principles of Permaculture (http://en.wikipedia....ki/Permaculture) in building swales on contour – beginning at the altitude on the hills where they shift from being convex hilltops to concave valley. Then anchor those swales and feed them by including canopy trees that also fix nitrogen. The actual sequencing and placement of trees to plant is referred to in the FORRU material I link to below – along with the overriding problem of requiring land to be “cleared” so as to claim it. (TommoPhysicist described that issue quite clearly.)

Actually, work done by the Forest Restoration Research Unit at Chiang Mai University suggests that high quality forests can be restored very quickly and at low cost. Planting is not, as you suggest, the entire story, it is essential to provide residents with an improved quality of life where they live, not simply punish them for the poverty that has led to the low yield agriculture in which they are currently engaged. But certainly uprooting them from their homes and dumping them in lowland areas is no solution. Leave aside what it does to their lives, just where is the fertile farmland onto which they are going to be dumped? I cannot immediately identify any unclaimed expanses, and I suspect that their new neighbors whose land would have to be confiscated will also take a very dim view of this whole project. All in all, this is precisely the sort of (1) environment over people sort of project that urban environmentalists often think up and (2) Bangkok over the rural areas sort of project that politicians usually think up. Bravo and bravo again to the Minister for publicly and loudly writing this "solution" off. Don't waste money moving people; spend money (for the first time) on meaningful development for the minority communities of the headwaters areas. Help farmers move from land-extensive, low-value crops like corn and dry rice to land-intensive, high value crops like coffee and avocados. Trade high quality extension and complete supply-chain support for land retired for reforestation. Make a deal; don't just punish the innocent and do nothing to fix the long-term problem, because moving people will do nothing to restore the watersheds.

Warmheart 2010 has several good points too. Might I suggest that the research being done in Chiang Mai is by the Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU) and they have produced many papers – such as

http://www.unep-wcmc...d%20highres.pdf

Though in searching for it I also found a video that introduces their project

In use of headwater forests - it is particularly urgent to understand that forest farms are not sustainable – and it is precisely the type of canopy generation and multiple species planting which FORRU is demonstrating as viable which needs to be understood by the citizenry and their leaders. Coffee and avocado plantations would add to the problems of a degraded forest.

One more topic being ignored – it is not solely the regional people who are moving into these areas. Our valley and hills are undergoing an influx of Thai from the Bangkok region. Indeed the floods have caused many to reconsider where to live – and this influx is also causing yet more trees to be cut to supply the traditional wood housing.

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

This is not a primitive people issue – it is a civilization consumption issue… as most clearly demonstrated by the deforestation now happening in Canada for the sake of tar sands extraction… but also here to grow maize for biofuel, or cutting trees to have a style of housing that while traditional is no longer sustainable.

[Johpa]

How convenient to suggest the forced relocation of the minorities, the largest minority being the indigenous Karen whose traditional agricultural practices are not the most environmentally destructive of the lot but who are the dominant population ranging from south of Mae Sot northwards up to Mae Hong Song and east towards Wat Chan and down to Mae Chaem. That is a huge region of land where once off the main highways you will find few if any Thai villages. The Thais have always attempted to hide the dominance of the Karen in this region by renaming most of the geographical names to Thai from their Karen names. With the building of the new Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Song highway and the building of the all-weather roads radiating out from Wat Chan, this entire region is becoming attractive to investment if it were not for the pesky indigenous folks having rights to the best farm lands which tend to be scattered in small valleys. But I am sure the Thais can follow the example of the United States in this regard and find some desolate land in Isaan to serve as reservations for the Karen who can then have their own Wounded Knee incident.

[Bosse137]

I think anybody who has lived in Thailands "outland" knows,that nobody,absolutely nobody,gives a dam_n about the environment! Whether they are poor or rich,they all have a common goal;to enrich them self.If you put people to monitor,they too want a piece of the cake (kickbacks).The same goes for "education";whether people are educated or not,doesn`t change this behavior,except perhaps,that the educated are smarter when it comes to lay their hands on the big buck.It is sad,but an undeniable fact..

[richard10365]

I wonder how they will handle the loss of the Thai coffee market seeing how Thailand's Arabic coffee comes from most of the hill tribes.

[RPCVguy]

I wonder how they will handle the loss of the Thai coffee market seeing how Thailand's Arabic coffee comes from most of the hill tribes.

Coffee grows under taller canopy trees - which if were left in place as the coffee was seeded in a scattered manner along forest trails - results in one of the variations of healthy mixed growth, long term yield crops. It adds value to protecting the forest. So too do nuts and other perennial plants. Avoiding pests is naturally done by scattering the trees.

Humans have longbeen horticulturalists - even before becoming agriculturalists. Analysis of distribution of plant varieties in the Amazon Basin shows humans there have long supported the reseeding of plants they found edible or beneficial. Doining it this way then removes the need for intervention irrigation or pesticides. The mixed established forest protects itself... and the valley below.

[Johpa]

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

Actually, primitive people usually live in relative harmony with the land. The native North American people had close spiritual ties with the land. The traditional Karen agricultural practices maintained healthy forests. It is "civilization" that tends to harm the land. And one can make a strong argument that it is modern capitalism that is the primary cause of the worst environmental damage to the planet whether it be forests or the oceans. At its heart, capitalism is an extractive economic model that will extract until nothing remains. Whether it be major oil spills in Baku or the Gulf of Mexico, deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, the Japanese fishing fleet's drift netting, or global warming, the one unifying root cause of the inevitable environmental collapse of the planet is that capitalism is the economic model of the ruling elite just about everywhere.

[connda]

In the bigger picture this sounds like part of AGENDA 21 [ agenda for the 21st. century - Rio global summit 1991] gradually going forward all over the world to remove humans from the wilderness areas and concentrate them into small highly controlled areas.

Soylent Green

Yes only Soylent Green was a fictional movie... Agenda 21 is reality. Moving the populations into designated areas is only part of the agenda. They are having a follow up global summit this year again in Rio, Brazil to discuss progress. It also includes centralized control of all energy and resources globally. Obama and all the other major leaders will be there. It's a scary prospect in my view.

A really not so subtle move toward global totalitarianism. Now where is my skin whitening cream and "silky soft" hair repair lotion.

[connda]

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

Actually, primitive people usually live in relative harmony with the land. The native North American people had close spiritual ties with the land. The traditional Karen agricultural practices maintained healthy forests. It is "civilization" that tends to harm the land. And one can make a strong argument that it is modern capitalism that is the primary cause of the worst environmental damage to the planet whether it be forests or the oceans. At its heart, capitalism is an extractive economic model that will extract until nothing remains. Whether it be major oil spills in Baku or the Gulf of Mexico, deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, the Japanese fishing fleet's drift netting, or global warming, the one unifying root cause of the inevitable environmental collapse of the planet is that capitalism is the economic model of the ruling elite just about everywhere.

Yeah, just love the Shark Fin soap fisheries. Catch shark, cut off fins, toss shark back into ocean. How so modern and civilized. Hill tribes are just the latest scapegoats. Environmentalists good; Hill Tribe bad.

[PoodMaiDai]

The Thai gov can't even get enough blankets to the people who live in the mountains. No way they are going to relocate 2 million of them. And even if they did, those same people would just destroy the new area they are in.

Dream on.

[moe666]

Two thoughts; firstly where will these people be able to grow their ' strangely familiar ' plants if they get moved from the hills ? Secondly, why not let them pay to re-forest with the money they get for growing those ' strangely familiar ' plants.....just thoughts

They are not growing strangely familiar plants, they are growing various crops to make money

[moe666]

Primitive peoples have always destroyed the environment, England was once covered in ancient forests, now just a few tiny remnants remain. The Sahara desert was one the Roman granary. Legislation always fails in the face of human need and human greed. It is a battle that will never be won until we change the mindset of the people.

Actually, primitive people usually live in relative harmony with the land. The native North American people had close spiritual ties with the land. The traditional Karen agricultural practices maintained healthy forests. It is "civilization" that tends to harm the land. And one can make a strong argument that it is modern capitalism that is the primary cause of the worst environmental damage to the planet whether it be forests or the oceans. At its heart, capitalism is an extractive economic model that will extract until nothing remains. Whether it be major oil spills in Baku or the Gulf of Mexico, deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, the Japanese fishing fleet's drift netting, or global warming, the one unifying root cause of the inevitable environmental collapse of the planet is that capitalism is the economic model of the ruling elite just about everywhere.

OOO please how many american indian reservations have you been on. I live in New Mexico home of more native indian tribes than any other state and they are the last people I would ask for enviromental help from. Just as I would not ask the hill tribes of Thailand for advice from. Drive on the 1263 highway and you will see the affects of clear cutting and slash and burn. Several months ago I asked what was to be done with the hilltribe people and there way of life when the question of reforestion came up, I guess this is the answer. Edited March 30, 2012 by moe666

[unanimosity]

I think anybody who has lived in Thailands "outland" knows,that nobody,absolutely nobody,gives a dam_n about the environment! Whether they are poor or rich,they all have a common goal;to enrich them self.If you put people to monitor,they too want a piece of the cake (kickbacks).The same goes for "education";whether people are educated or not,doesn`t change this behavior,except perhaps,that the educated are smarter when it comes to lay their hands on the big buck.It is sad,but an undeniable fact..

One has only to travel to Vientiane and back to notice how littered and polluted the streets and klongs are in LOFS. Laos has signs to love the land and the slogans are put into practice.

[TeddyFlyfisherDavis]

Let us all know how you make out with that....Move 2 million people...? Where did I put my yaba....