--- Garuda eat naga and naga eat ordinary frogs and very small
green frogs. The ordinary frogs and the small green frogs eat
insects and caterpillars. Some animals eat other animals that
are smaller than they. --- (From: Traibhumikatha, ca. 1345
A.D. by (?) Phya Lithai)
A remarkable decision
On 18 March 1988, the thirty-nine member inquiry team
chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Thienchai Sirisamphan,
which had been asked to review the environmental
implication of the proposed Nam Choan dam, made a
remarkable decision (Paisal 1988: 24). The inquiry had
originally been established to explore remedial measure to
contain the impact of the dam development on forestry,
wildlife, geology, and archeology,; instead, the inquiry
unanimously requested the postponement of the project, and
there is much to suggest that the Nam Choan dam will never
now flood the protected forests of the Thung Yai Wildlife
Sanctuary, although nothing in Thai environmental politics
can ever be guaranteed. Recent attempts by a leading and
much respected environmentalist, Seub Nakhasathien, to
consolidate the decision by achieving UNESCO World
Heritage status for the Thung Yai-Huay Kha Khaeg complex
(Seub and Stewart-Cox 1990) have not yet borne fruit, and,
sadly, events have been somewhat overtaken by the tragic
suicide of Seub while at Huay Kha Khaeng. Such are the deep
depressions of the environmental debate in present-day
Thailand.
Such a volte face was unexpected, with certain prominent
member of the inquiry team changing their minds at the very
last moment; the decisions were clearly affected by short-term
political expediency. I is the purpose of this present paper,
however, to analyse the wider trends in Thai society that have
helped to create a climate in which such a decision was
possible at all, a decision which, for the moment at least,
raised the uncosted benefits of "externalities" like wildlife and
wilderness above the hard economic realities of a newly
industrialising country.
The Upper Khwae Yai Project, now forever know as the Nam
Choan dam, had already been halted once in 1982 by a
caretaker Cabinet, which left the decision to the next
government. The dam was to be part of a much larger project
focussed on the Khwae Yai river system for which funds had
been first obtained in 1966. Two dams, the Srinakharind, built
in 1978, and the Tha Thungna or Lower Khwae Yai dam,
finished in 1981, are already on stream; Nam Choan was to
have been the third in the Electricity Generating Authority of
Thailand's (EGAT's) trio of hydropowers producers,
generating 576 MW, or 9% of installed capacity. The
projected cost was US$406 million. Pressure for the dam was
revived in 1986, and EGAT marshalled great political,
economic and scientific resources to achieve its acceptance.
Construction of the dam seemed inevitable.
Yet, in the end, EGAT's resolve was unexpectedly frustrated
by a passionate, if somewhat disparate group of
conservationists, who ranged from academics and students,
though The Nation newspaper, and other mass media, to
international pressure groups and concerned farangs,
including HRH the Prince of Wales and HRH Prince
Bernhard (Stewart-Cox 1987; 1988: 18). More particularly,
however, there was strong local opposition to the dam
development in Kanchanaburi itself, where the existence of
two geological fault lines and the occurrence of a major
earthquake in 1983 (5.9 on the Richter Scale) raised the
fearful spectre of death by dam burst. Moreover, Kukrit
Pramoj, warned sagely that popular concern on this issue
could topple the whole government. At the last throw, Prime
Minister Prem Tinsulanonda and his close advisers clearly
agreed.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
This is not the place to rehearse the arguments for or against
the dam, although it is worth emphasising that, for both sides,
the stakes were high, and that the combined contiguous
habitats of the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the
Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuary, the Kroeng Kavia Non-
Hunting Area, and the undisturbed forest across the border in
Burma possibly comprise the finest remaining conservation
area in the whole of mainland Asia. Moreover, the sheer
diversity of habitats, which range from tropical semi-
evergreen rain forest, though monsoon forest, bamboo forest,
and savanna forest, to many waterside formations, guarantees
a rich wildlife, with rare endemics ad relict species surviving
in a last stronghold. The dam would have breached the
integrity of this "island of forest" in a "sea of uncontrolled
development", and would have inevitably opened up the
region even further to the predations of squatter settlers,
illegal loggers and hunters, and to increasing demands for
more development. The region would have become one of the
last "pioneer" frontiers in Thailand's long history of
extensification, which has already witnessed, for example, the
demise of the dense forests that once clothed the Khorat
Plateau escarpment described in the nineteenth century Nirat
No'ngkhai. Nevertheless, most observers, including
ecologically-sensitive students at the School of Oriental and
African Studies in the University of London, were pessimistic
about the outcome of the inquiry. In a role-playing session
held in November 1987, when the students acted out the
debate over the dam, EGAT clearly won the day. In reality,
the predatory chain was reversed, and the "very small green
frogs" turned and gobbled up the naga".
Concern over the environment has been present in Thailand
well over two decades. The student uprising of 14 October
1973, was partly triggered by a hunting scandal. But the
decision on the Nam Choan dam is of a different order of
maturity, and is one which could be matched very rarely in
other developing countries in the tropics. The elite of the Thai
mu'ang, namely the government, many lesser ranks of the
wider Royal family, the educated, especially those who have
studied abroad, the press and a group of concerned farang,
fought out the battle, and eventually a decisive number chose
for the pa thu'an, the wild, untamed, and unsocialised forest,
thus integrating the pa within the Thai state, the mu'ang, in a
very deep sense.
In this paper, I shall, in general, be avoiding the use of a
common word for `nature', "Thammachat", because I am here
concerned more with "pa thu'an", the uncivilised forest lands
traditionally at the edge of Thai 'civilised' space. Thammachat
is a word too refined and wide in its meaning, embracing as it
does all natural phenomena, such as rain, wind and sun, and
even natural human behaviour. It is also rather formal and
poetic. Thu'an, in contrast, is a powerful word, meaning wild,
illicit, and it is not simply a reduplication of the word "pa".
The two together emphasise the barbaric character of the
forest, which lies outside the civilised and lawful lands; such
regions are wild, uncontrollable, and full of 'energy'.
Interestingly, the word, thu'an, is also used for illicit opium,
bottle of whisky (or 'moonshine'), for charlatans, and quack
doctors. Pa likewise means more than simply forest or wood,
having the sense of 'the wilds' or more wilderness, savage and
barbarous. Pa thu'an, unlike Thammachat, thus stands in
direct contrast with mu'ang. It is arguable that the changes I
describe in this paper mean that for the urban elite of Thailand
pa thu'an has come closer to Thammachat.
I believe that thus subtle change represent a remarkable new
view of cosmology of power in the Thai mu'ang. It is more
than one developing country's learning at last to live with the
imperative of conservation and sound land management. The
pa thu'an is now directly 'under the merit' of the mu'ang, and,
in a sense, as I shall attempt to show, the essentials of Forest
Buddhism have become accepted in the urban heart of the
state (cf. Supaphan Na Bangchang 1990).
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ELITE VIEWS OF NATURE
The elite of the mu'ang has thus changed, or is slowly altering,
its view of Nature. Of course, forest, flowers, fruit and
animals have always had a sanitized and stylized place in the
poetry, drama and art at the court, as evidenced in the nirat
genre of poetry. Now, however, the earthy pa is no longer
outside the interest, the merit of the mu'ang. Indeed, many
would argue that it must form an essential land element in any
sensible organised and managed mu'ang., thus helping to
maintain, if I may coin the terms, 'Right Climate', 'Right
Earth', 'Right Water', and harmony between people and the
land. At any scale of Tambiah's 'galactic polity', the argument
seems to hold good (Tambiah 1970). At the village level, the
new view demands the development of agro-forestry, forest
villages, social forestry, access to fuel wood and local forest
products, as well as employment and a benign environment in
which to live. At the regional level, the main concern is
watershed management to maintain humid microclimates,
prevent soil erosion and thus further downstream siltation, to
control flood and drought, and to sustain a wide regional
resource base. At the national, Thai mu'ang level, the concern
is to organise local and regional programmes in a balanced
fashion, to set aside 'core' forest for long-term genetic
resource conservation, for research, for educational purposes,
for recreation, for timber needs, and to present a mature
political and 'green' face t the international community. Above
all, it is recognised that the goods of the mu'ang is ultimately
lined with the wise inclusion of pa as part of the civilized and
socialized state.
But how has this new view come about in Thailand? I believe
that a whole range of factors have inexorably, but at different
time-scles, worked on the thoughtful elements of society.
First, there is the recognition of the sheer rate of destruction
of the forest habitat, which has at last hit home to even the
most unobservant of travellers. In 1960 about 50 per cent of
Thailand remained under some sort of forest cover. In 1988,
although official Government statistics still claim 30 per cent
(Dhira and Suthawan 1987) the real figure is closer to 15 per
cent, with much land legally classified as 'forest' hardly
carrying a tree. In 1982, FAO/UNEP estimated the rate of
forest loss as 3.15 per cent in Thailand (Allen and Barnes
1985), one of the worst rates in the whole world.
Secondly, there has been the steady infiltration of the basic
scientific principles of ecology, which are today widely taught
at all educational levels, and particularly to young children.
Book shops in Bangkok now carry a considerable and
colourful array of 'Nature books' and readers. All carry the
message of the need to look after the wild places of the world.
Some of these are inevitably scientifically poor; others simply
ape farang or Japanese texts; yet others are written for Thais
by Thais about Thai natural history and problems. Although
perhaps underplayed in this paper, it is impossibly to deny the
importance of Western scientific thought dating from at least
the reign of Rama IV, in helping to create elite views of
Nature and ecology. Likewise, the adoption of Rousseauesque
Western romanticism, which become apparent in the early
portraits and fine arts of the Bangkok period, had already
begun to soften and civilise the Thai concept of the pa. The
conservation ideal is thus a Western import, but the move
described in this paper can be seen as a vital element in the
creation of a Thai environmental discourse.
Thirdly, many young people have studied abroad; which is an
elite trend which began early in the twentieth century with
princes and the offspring of high officials. Many of these
western educated students are now very thoughtful about
Thailand and its image in the world, and many of them have
witnessed at first hand elements of conservation in other
countries where they have studied.
Fourthly, there has been the growth of an urban middle class
who increasingly view pa as a place to visit for recreation and
leisure.
Finally, there is the ease with which some of the principles of
ecology can be grasped by a Buddhist and animist people - as
one of my close colleagues at Kasetsart University, Bangkok,
put it, 'Right Action, the law of cause and effect, and the fact
that the Buddha became "enlightened" partly because of the
wild places of the world, all conspire to make ecology a ready
ethic in a changing Thailand'. As my opening quotation
shows, the concept of the food chain goes back a very long
way in Thai thinking; it is possible to overemphasis the
recentness of Western scientific thought.
The decision on the Nam Choan dam is then the first fruit of
this changing view among the elite. The pa is no longer
outside the mu'ang; it must now exist in its new form as
Thammachat, for the mu'ang and for the people at its urban
heart. In many ways, it is the agricultural countryside (ban
no'k), lying between the pa and the centre, which constitutes
todays backward and uncivilised space.
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Quoted from: Thai Construction of Knowledge, edited by
Mansas Chitakasem and Andrew Turton, SOAS, 1991, pages
142-154