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"The governments nationalization of forest has faced policy implementers with land tenure issues that reflect the conflict with traditional land use. Policy makers tacitly agreed that local people should be settled in fixed villages or moved out of the national forests. One solution to this problem was the Forest Villages Project that was promoted by the Royal Forest Department of Thailand (RFD) from 1975 until the early 1990s. The main aims of the project were: 1) to supply the labor force required for reforestation of degraded national forest reserves, 2) to develop self-supporting forest village communities by providing infrastructure as incentives, and 3) to fix land use by assigning provisional cultivation rights, known as the Sor Tor Kor (STK).
"The kind of agrarian conditions of the Forest Village is provided by the characteristics of the STK, which is the most important capital resource for farmers. According to the STK certificate, the land referred to cannot be sold and can only be transferred by inheritance. Cultivation rights for up to 2.24 ha were assigned. These characteristics of STK-certified land make it clear that the RFD visualized so-called 'self-sufficient' family farms as forming the root of the project. Since there is no way to acquire additional land or obtain a mortgage on their land, farmers cannot expand their farms. This prevents stratification of farmers from occurring. Initially, the families living in forest villages were the main labor pool for reforestation work. Furthermore, these families would be responsible for the future management of community forestry, especially in governing the buffer zones around reserved forests.
"The fieldwork data shows that the agricultural land has widely transferred and rural differentiation has occurred under the agrarian base provided by the RFD. The economic movement is occurred among forest villages that may undermine the policy basis of forest village projects. Thus, I examined the effect of communication channels on land use with regard to the collective diffusion of the provisional cultivation rights system. Of the various groups found inside forest villages, reforestation labor groups provide effective communication channels. It is important to make the distinction that these labor groups are not social groups but economic groups formulated under the RFD's projects.
"A comparison of these communication channels was made in three forest villages and forest offices. It was revealed that some villages collectively adopt the provisional cultivation rights system when found to be suitable for that village's situation. It is worth noting that some villages modified or re-invented these innovations and also alters the organizational structure of villages themselves within the legal limit provided by RFD. It shows the possibility of spontaneity for constructing the alternative tenure system in a local context, as against the standardized tenure system under the modern law. Further discussion is needed on ways to collectively adopt land tenure system innovations, aiming at proposing a revised framework for social forestry by identifying problems and possible countermeasures." |
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