NO CHAINSAWS IN NAM SA

"Before this program began, forest use in the watershed was out of control."

-"Uncle" Chan, Karen hill farmer in Nam Sa, December 1992

Introduction

The northern watersheds of Thailand play an important role in supplying water to the nation's central rice bowl. Planners have been concerned that the hydrological function of these critical watersheds, with the second highest regional rate of deforestation, are being under-mined. Similar to the Northeast, the forests of the North have been under growing use pressures from lowland populations migrating into the upper watersheds. However, unlike the Northeast, a steady stream of hill tribes has also migrated into the highlands to practice shifting agriculture. In recent decades, political instability in Laos and Burma has increased the flow of highland tribal people. While many of these hill tribe communities have been engaged in opium cultivation, foreign governments and international agencies have placed strong pressure on the Thai government to control production. Numerous crop substitution programs and resettlement schemes have been implemented since the 1980s, showing some success in decreasing opium growing and responding to the needs of highland tribals. However, the midland tribals, among the poorest in the region, have been relatively ignored. Furthermore, given serious upland deforestation and associated environmental deterioration, the fundamental problems of sustained productivity persist.

Based on the urgency of protecting the upper watersheds of the Northern region and the relative failure of programs to reverse the processes of deforestation, until recently the government has emphasized resettlement of midland and highland tribal people outside areas designated as national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, or Class 1 watersheds (STK program). However, resettlement has not proceeded on a broad scale due to community protests and limitations on available land for relocation outside the steep watershed areas. The case of Nam Sa offers an alternative to resettlement, illustrating an opportunity for government to forge partnerships with local communities to protect critical watersheds and important forest resources without disrupting local settlement patterns. The Office of the Prime Minister and the RFD have recently initiated a Northern Watershed Rehabilitation Program, which might draw upon the significant experience of Nam Sa and extend its forest stabilization strategies through much of the upper North region.

Background

Figure 9

Beginning in 1986, collaborative field studies sponsored by the Ford Foundation were undertaken by social scientists at Chiang Mai University (CMU) and RFD program officers. The work helped to identify important conflicts between the highland opium-cultivating communities and the midland Karen and lowland Thais. One of the findings confirmed research conducted over the past decade which documented differences in shifting cultivation strategies among hill tribes. The upland tribes practice a form of swidden cultivation involving the clearing of steep, erosion-prone ridgetops and exposed upper slopes which have good sunlight and drainage. The communities remove most of the trees, dig out rootstock and stumps, and burn the entire swidden area. They then farm these fields for 2-3 years or until the soil's fertility is badly depleted and weeds such as Imperata grass invade. Abandoning the plots in an ecologically disturbed, inhibited state of succession, upland tribals rarely attempt to return one day to reutilize them. Instead they move on to clear new vulnerable uplands, repeating the process of forest overexploitation, degradation, and conversion to grassland.

In contrast to the often unsustainable land-use system practiced by the more recent migrant highlanders, the midland Karen --some settled for over a century -- adopt a dual production system. Both shifting and sedentary, the system combines midland swidden with lowland irrigated paddy farming. First, the Karen protect headwater forest to ensure topsoil stability and a consistent supply of water to their lowland paddy fields. In swidden field preparation, they take care to minimize disruption by burning on field edges and leaving coppicers and mother seed trees in an effort to ensure natural forest regeneration. The Karen rarely cultivate a field for more than one year. Thus forest regrowth is often rapid, sufficiently rejuvenating soil fertility so that the newly regenerated forest can be cleared again after 8-10 years of fallow. The Karen move less frequently than the highland tribes due to their permanent lowland paddy in the valley bottoms and tendency to return periodically to farm old swidden fallows again. Their less land-extensive, rotational swidden systems have historically proven ecologically sustainable (see Figure 10).

Figure 10

Differences in Shifting Cultivation Strategies, North Thailand

The highlanders' swidden practices have subjected the Karen to the negative downstream impacts of forest degradation, often bringing them into conflict with upland tribal groups. The Karen are also being squeezed from below due to increasing pressure from lowland Thais who migrate into the watershed and compete for irrigated rice lands. At the same time, none of these communities has had any legal resident authority or rights over the forest resources of the watershed since the area is formally designated Reserve Forest Class 1 Watershed under the jurisdiction of the RFD.

Project History

The Sam Mun watershed project strategy adopted an unusual approach by deciding that communities must be given rights and responsibilities to effectively stabilize and manage the forest environment. The CMU-RFD collaborative experiment in Nam Sa subwatershed of the Sam Mun began the initial testing of this unconventional strategy.

Figure 11

A small dirt road built in 1985 winds its way over the ridgetops and along the valleys, connecting a few of these communities to the outside world. Log bridges crisscross the many perennial streams that drain the subwatershed. Local communities selected their village sites and names based on the five streams that drain the Nam Sa (e.g., Huai village is located next to the Huai Dua stream). The project team felt it might help communities protect and manage their entire subwatershed if the larger geographical area were clearly demarcated by smaller tributary microwatersheds, hydrological units with which the hill tribes were already familiar.

Figure 12

At the field level, project officers determined that the villagers might be most successful if they conducted microwatershed planning through village (muban) committees, while also developing a subwatershed Network forum to coordinate intervillage decisions and management activities among the ten mubans. The primary role of the COs has been to assist the hamlets in establishing Muban Land-Use Committees and a subwatershed Network coordinating forum comprised of elected village representatives.

Among the first activities undertaken jointly by the COs and communities was the construction of large, three-dimensional maps based on information from topographical maps and aerial photographs. Khun Rath, the kamnan of the subdistrict, notes that in his village of Pong Sa, the COs taught community members not only how to construct a three-dimensional map of their microwatershed, but also how to utilize the information. Constructed on a scale of 1:5,000, each map took 2-3 weeks of community work-cutting, stacking, and painting raised cardboard with different colors to indicate ridge and valley boundaries, fields, forests, and streams. Initially, villagers had some difficulty orienting to the topographic maps. This changed as they worked on the watershed model, gaining experience and confidence in map interpretation.

The interactive process of creating the three-dimensional maps led to numerous discussions of resource use in the subwatershed and helped the community focus its attention on the spatial location of problems and management options. The maps have cultivated a keen sense of ownership, interest, and responsibility among the village members, assisting them in visually understanding the upstream- downstream river linkages and serving as discussion tools for land-use planning at monthly meetings. With the maps as reference points, local land-use management plans have been developed for each microwatershed. Reaching a consensus on a new management plan generally takes Muban Committees 2-6 months. Detailed sets of management rules and regulations to implement the plans have also been developed by the village committees, although changes and refinement of the regulations are an ongoing process.

Figure 13:

Thailand Upland Social Forestry Pilot Project:
Working Group Structure

Land-Use Transitions

Figure 14:

Management Issues in Nam Sa

Cabbage has also been an attractive commercial crop, and its intensive cultivation has been encouraged by certain agencies as a substitute for opium. While input costs for seed, fertilizer, and pesticides are high, cabbage can generate 20,000 baht or more per rai ($4,800 per hectare). However, farmers in Nam Sa have become increasingly alarmed over the dangers of heavy pesticide application, which the crop seems to require. In response to a series of fishkills from stream contamination, community committee members are now pressuring farmers to reduce pesticide use in cabbage cultivation.

Figure 15:

Forest products continue to provide an important source of supplemental food and medicine for the communities of Nam Sa. A wide variety of forest leaves, shoots, roots, fruits, seeds, and fungi, as well as insects and small animals, are collected for food. Villagers also earn income by collecting and selling wild orchids, rattan and bamboo shoots, honey, bamboo, worm larvae, hornets, and a number of mushroom species. In Pong Sa, Karen villagers have underplanted over 10,000 seedlings of edible rattan in the primary and secondary forests to supplement shoot availability and enhance their forest-based income. Collected in the forest, the seeds are propagated in the village and then outplanted in the forest understory.

Muban Committees

With ninety-eight households, Pong Sa is the subdistrict headquarters and comprises the largest village in Nam Sa. It has its own Muban Land-Use Committee and also serves as the subwatershed's Network coordinating forum, holding monthly meetings for village committee representatives and community members. Normally, 50-60 people attend forum meetings, including 2-3 representatives from each Muban Committee.

A team of 2-3 men generally assumes patrol duty. The patrol typically climbs to the top of the hill and walks the ridgeline to survey activities in the demarcated forest area. Patrol duties are organized by dividing responsibility among the five residential clusters (yom ban) in the village. The cluster chief (hua na yom ban) is responsible for assigning duties to the voluntary male members of the hamlet. Each residential cluster patrols for six days before passing the responsibility on to the next cluster. During the dry fire season, as many as ten people may be enlisted to monitor and extinguish spot fires. Typically set by outside hunters or swidden cultivators who accidently allow their plot burns to escape, fires are a major threat to the forest slopes.

Each Muban Committee is responsible for allocating agricultural plots to households. The family who clears the land holds usufruct rights as long as it utilizes that land. If a family abandons the land for more than two consecutive years, the committee has the right to transfer the usufruct to another household who needs additional land. Farmers are required to dig fire breaks before burning off new fields. If a farmer permits his fire to escape, he is subject to a fine of 2,000 baht ($83) for each rai damaged. Families that require timber for house construction or domestic repairs must submit a request before the community headman, and a written approval is necessary from the village committee before any felling is carried out. If a villager cuts a tree in Pong Sa without permission, he can be fined 1,000 baht ($42) per tree; if any tree is cut for sale purposes, the fine jumps to 3,000 baht ($125). Generally, first-time offenders are warned, and very few fines have been levied. However, recently a villager was charged 6,000 baht ($250) for allowing his fire to escape and burn his neighbor's mango orchard.

Figure 16:

Rules and Regulations Pong Sa Land Use Committee Community Managed Microwatershed Forest 1500 Rai

The Pong Sa committee has also placed a ban on hunting, setting fines of 500 baht ($21) for jungle birds and 2,000 baht ($83) for wild pigs. If an individual is caught acting as a guide to hunters from outside the community, the fine is also 2,000 baht. Outsiders who are caught hunting in the area or who start fires to flush game are turned over to the RFD officers or local government authorities. The revenues collected from fines go into the-community development fund. Villagers who fail to pay their fines are sent to the district office. While first-time warnings have been largely effective in ensuring that rules are followed, the kamnan feels that the rules serve as an effective deterrent and will need to be enforced periodically.

The Network forum has been particularly worried about the problems of pesticide contamination originating from commercial cabbage field runoff in the upper watershed. The local people are attributing the massive fish die-off in the streams and rivers draining the subwatershed to pesticide overuse. The forum is attempting to discourage farmers from using heavy applications of chemicals and has decided to levy fines for throwing contaminated containers into the streams. Ultimately, the forum's goal is to induce farmers to abandon pesticide applications altogether and to shift to the organic farming techniques advocated by a demonstration farmer, Mr. Chan (see below). Forum leaders report that half of the farmers in Nam Sa have substantially reduced their pesticide use. The forum is also concerned about the recent introduction of chainsaws into the watershed. While most committees have agreed to ban them, placing a heavy fine of 5,000 baht ($208) on violators, the puyaiban of Khun Sa Nai village has allowed one insistent man to continue using his chainsaw. The forum is applying pressure on him to change his decision.

Recently, forum members have been working to construct a communal meeting hall. As the joint management program in Nam Sa evolves, there is a growing sense of commitment to forest protection by the community, combined with the feeling that the environmental stability of the villagers' homelands will be sustained into the future. This stands in sharp contrast to the official, legal position, which denies rights or responsibilities of these communities over the forested watershed.

Uncle Chan

A frail, sixty-four-year old Karen hill tribe farmer from Pong Sa village, "Uncle" Chan lives with his family in a small wooden house on stilts located on a ridge "a dog's bark away" from the main settlement. Over one hundred years ago, his ancestors migrated into the area from Burma. For his entire life, Uncle Chan has cleared and converted secondary forests to fields in the hills surrounding Pong Sa, practicing traditional Karen techniques of rotational swidden farming. As noted, the Karen rarely if ever cut primary forest, but instead return to their old fields after leaving them fallow until soil fertility is renewed. When Uncle Chan was a young man, he recalled how he allowed his fields "to rest" for 8-10 years or more so they could rejuvenate. Today, as the population of the area expands, with highland and lowland migrants geographically squeezing the midlands, Chan has been forced to shorten this cycle to five years, clearing ten of his fifty rai annually.

Royal Forest Department project officer and community organizer discuss the importance of three dimensional watershed maps to facilitate community land-use planning in Nam Sa

Formerly cultivated ridgetops in Nam Sa's upper watershed are now rapidly regenerating into dense evergreen forest while hill shift to terraced, more permanent fields below.

Swiddening hill tribes in the Nam Sa highlands are in the process of shifting their ridgetop fields to terraced, irrigated lands on midslopes and in the river valleys.

Intimately involvement in agriculture and forest products collection, Lisu tribal women in Nam Sa actively participate in Muban Committee meetings on forest protection and management.

In the past, Uncle Chan cultivated opium in his swidden plots, as well as upland rice, com, cassava, and other food crops for family consumption. While he could harvest over three kilograms of opium per rai, making it by far the most profitable crop, his increasing awareness of the liability of his own addiction and the fact that he was poisoning others finally led him to stop cultivating the crop. Influenced by the messages of RFD officers and community organizers, three years ago Chan decided to cease farming his upland swidden plots and to begin practicing more intensive agriculture near his home. Tapping his years of experience with mixed polyculture production, he now grows over seventy vegetable, herb, and fruit species in his three-rai homegarden. His staple foodcrops include rice, cassava, maize, and sweet potatoes; in addition, he grows eggplant, squash, beans, chilis, and mixed greens. He also cultivates his own coffee, tea, and spices -- including key ingredients in Thai cooking such as lemon grass and basil -- and underplants bamboo and rattan shoots in the surrounding natural forest. Huge papayas hang from Chan's trees, along with bananas, guavas, pomellos, lemons, apricots, and a variety of fruits unknown outside of Thailand.

To provide cash income, Chan's family raises silkworms on mulberry plants intercropped between the rainfed rice. Chan uses the stalks to mulch his soil and grows pigeon peas to fix nitrogen and enrich the soils with organic matter. Based on his success, Uncle Chan has become a demonstration farmer and key spokesman in the village for the transition away from highland swidden plots of opium and cabbage. Before the Network forum and Muban Committees were formed, Chan recalls that forest use in the subwatershed was out of control. Villagers were competing for land, communication channels were poor, and conflicts between upland and downstream communities were frequent. Chan has assumed an important leadership role in raising his neighbors' awareness of the interrelated problems and ecological linkages among deforestation, soil erosion, hydrological stability, crop productivity, and pesticide contamination. He has developed his own organic biocide spray, made from a concoction of tobacco, neem leaves, ginger, lemon grass, and soap and has become an outspoken campaigner against the use of chemical pesticides. Chan believes that pesticides have killed most of the stream fish and caused ill health in the community.

Uncle Chan's hilltop homegarden is surrounded by lush, regenerating evergreen forests-land in swidden not long ago. He recalls that the grove of dipterocarp trees towering in the distance used to be his grandfather's swidden plots. From the forest surrounding his farm, Uncle Chan collects more than twenty types of medicinal plants, which he and his wife use to treat family illnesses. They also gather a variety of mushrooms, fruits, and other forest foods to enrich their diet. Closer by, where dry rice had grown only five years ago, bamboo and coppice shoots from tropical hardwood species stand over ten meters high. Chan explains that the Karen tend to grow food in a particular field for only one year, leaving the big trees and smaller coppice stumps when they clear the plot. Through this management strategy to enhance natural regeneration potential, the forest rejuvenates quickly, often growing up to three meters a year.

At each Network meeting, Chan reminds his village neighbors that they can feed themselves and sustain a good life if they practice the conservation and wise use of the watershed's natural resources. He notes that at first the Hmong and Lisu resisted the idea of changing their practices of extensive upland shifting cultivation. But over time, as they visited Chan's farm to listen and learn, many have come to understand the need to practice settled agriculture given the growing population pressures and ecological sensitivity of the uplands. The power of farmer-to-farmer extension and demonstration in affecting change has been remarkable. Recently, Uncle Chan was honored by an unexpected invitation to speak to villagers from an adjacent subwatershed who have heard of his commitment and progress in Nam Sa.

Spirit Forest

The Lisu village in Nam Sa subwatershed was established thirty-six years ago by tribals who migrated from northern Chiang Rai and Tak provinces. Until two years ago, most of the forty families in the village derived the bulk of their income from opium cultivation. Consistent contact with community organizers and Muban Committee members in the Network gradually convinced the Lisu to stop growing opium and shift to plantations of mixed fruit trees in their upper fields. The Lisu community now holds regular committee meetings to discuss resource-use issues and management strategies. To ensure participation, each household is required to send at least one member over fifteen years of age to attend the meetings. Failure to do so results in a 100 baht ($4) fine for elected committee members and a 50 baht ($2) fine for other households in the community.

Typically located above the community, the spirit forest, or apamu, in a Lisu village functions as a sacred grove. The village shaman identifies a tree near the top of a ridge where the spirit resides, and the community builds a shrine to make regular offerings. The spirit forest has historically functioned as an inviolable source for food and medicine. The Muban Committee has designated 1,000 rai in the upper watershed as strictly protected forest, substantially extending the 50-rai domain of the original spirit forest. It has placed a ban on tree-cutting in the entire protected area, much of which is regenerated evergreen forest. Even more effective than the ban as a deterrent is the traditional belief that the forest spirit will create problems for those who disturb its habitat. A village story is told about a man who cut a tree in the apamu and lost his ability to walk until he offered a pig's head to the spirit. The committee is considering a new rule that offenders must take a vow before the spirit, swearing to no further transgressions. In addition to their protected spirit forest, the Lisu have designated an additional 400 rai of forest for fuelwood supply. Committee members have subdivided this area into eight compartments, to be used on a rotational basis for the collection of dead and dry timber. The fine for cutting green trees in the fuelwood forest is 500 baht.

With financial and technical assistance from the program, the Lisu have begun to construct terraced rice fields along the streams further down the valley. Initially, the project had requested the communities in the upper reaches of the subwatershed to shift both their villages and their fields to lowerareas. Lisu and Hmong communities were reluctant to move, and new settlement locations for villages were difficult to find. A compromise agreement was reached with the Lisu, so that only upland fields would be shifted. While this means a longer walk to lowland fields, the Lisu feel it is preferable to resettling their homes. With the use of communal labor, 10-15 days are generally required to clear and terrace one rai of paddy field, including the construction of diversion dams and irrigation canals. To facilitate water management, several Hmong and Lisu communities are also forming water user associations (muang fi). Through the collection of fines, as well as funds allocated by the UN Fund for Drug Control, the Lisus' village development fund currently contains an impressive balance of 11,000 baht ($458).

Reflections

Spurred by a number of forces, the forest resource management initiatives by communities in the Nam Sa subwatershed have accelerated over the past few years. Members of the Karen tribe were increasingly distressed about the negative impact of upstream deforestation resulting from Hmong and Lisu clearance practices of ridgetops and steep slopes. Deforestation in the upper watershed was threatening the Karens' agricultural systems in the valleys and generating conflict among hill tribe communities that were failing to communicate with each other. Simultaneously, the Hmong, Lisu, and Karen had all grown concerned that the government might try to resettle them completely outside the subwatershed. The official policy to restrict habitation in certain reserve forest watersheds and the implementation of the controversial Khor Jhor Khor resettlement program posed serious threats to the villagers' tenure security. By cooperating with the RFD and other agencies, the communities may have felt they could evolve effective co-management strategies which could reduce the possibility of their resettlement out of the area.

The Nam Sa experience holds promise that if encouraged and empowered, local communities in northern Thailand can successfully establish decentralized controls over resource use and begin to reverse the process of deforestation and environmental decline. In many cases, controls over burning, logging, and upland forest conversion to swidden have resulted in rapid regeneration of the natural forest ecosystem. While attempting to respond to the diverse needs of the traditional communities of the region, the program's Network of locally derived community institutions provides the operational access controls which have stabilized forest resource use. The village committees have joined the RFD as allies and partners in ensuring the protection and regeneration of natural forests in the upland watershed.

The hill tribes of the Sam Mun mountains are an intrinsic component of a dynamic watershed system. In contrast to the conventional resettlement approach which dislocates communities and would leave the watershed unpopulated, unprotected, and vulnerable to disturbance from outside forces, the Nam Sa project approach -- while requiring compromise and consensus from all parties -- has been able to respond effectively to both environmental goals and community needs. Ultimately, the question of insecure land tenure remains an open-ended, unresolved threat to the tribal communities of Nam Sa and beyond. The current land-use permit program will be unable to address the tenurial needs of the hill tribes, which lack Thai citizenship. It is hoped that as the documentation and dissemination of learning from inspired, grass-roots community initiatives spreads, a supportive national policy will be issued in Thailand to legitimize such management partnerships between the RFD and forest-dependent community groups such as those in Nam Sa. Only then will motivated rural communities across the Kingdom's northern watersheds have a chance to re-establish controls and share in the stewardship and benefits of their forest homelands.