Advisory council calls for openness in forest issues

Weerawat Theeraprasat - chairman of a NESAC working team on science, technology, natural resource s and environment - said yesterday NESAC had hosted a seminar to formulate more effective measures and policy suggestions for the government. Attending were forestry academics, lawyers, forestry officials, educational institutions, related agencies and organisations as well as public representatives.

Even though the Forestry Act 1985 was not relevant to the current situation, the Constitutions of 1997 and 2007 supported community culture and rights, he said. The authority thus could not claim the growing population made forestland management impossible. The forest occupies about 33 per cent of the country's space.

For forest conservation policies to gain public involvement, problems such as resistance from related parties and a lack of clarity would need to be faced, he said. He cited the forest encroachment on Phang Nga's Kho Yao Island where title deeds were issued for forestland, but nobody did anything to resist them.

He called on the government to decide on its goals for forestland management and urged them to become public policy with people participation, he said.

Weerawat said the three relevant agencies - the Royal Forestry Department, the Natural Resources and Environment Department and the Land Department - should work for a better understanding of the cultures that led to deforestation, especially the Andaman forestland ,and for improved access to resources.

He also urged a recognition that community forest policy, aimed for sustainable forestland management, was successful although it had been practised for 15 years now.

NESAC member Pairoj Polpetch said true facts about Thai forestland over the past 20-30 years should be available for all groups.

There should also be an integration of people's conservation of forestland with a common goal - whether they wanted to save the forest, save the people or promote both to coexist harmoniously, he said.

He stressed that drafting policy without clarity and agreement on these points would be impractical.

"The weak point is that the people who are affected by the [forestry]policy have no chance to explain their life stories. For example, the policy to rent out national park space has to be discussed freely, not merely by saying villagers are living in the forestland. Also in the forest are investors, police and army officers and state officials too. We must come clean and let minority groups speak up and participate in the debate so it's a true public policy," he said.

A legal expert from the Royal Forestry Department, Thinakorn Sitthiwong said forestry mismanagement was partly a result of the agency's inappropriate internal work division. The current forest management was only a revisit of the National Forestry Policy 1985, drafted to appear as a new one for the public hearing. To make it public policy, the related three agencies must come to a united conclusion because many problems stemmed from them.

He cited examples where the law said land with more than a 35 per cent gradient could not be issued a land title deed, but the authority still issued such title deeds for mountainous plains.

Chiang Mai University's Law lecturer Paisith Panichkul called for the inclusion of data on how much information the Agricultural Land Reform Office had about forest dwelling farmers . He said he was confident NESAC could push for the forestland conservation policy to become public.

A representative from Si Sa Ket, Boonseng Chana-ngam said he wanted to see forestland become true public areas with communities participating in the making of forest conservation policy - rather than the authority making decisions without people's acknowledgement and then claiming it to be public policy.