BASELINE STUDY 5, Thailand - Forest Trends

3. NATIONAL FORESTRY STRATEGY, POLICY AND
REGULATIONS
The legal framework upholding the national forestry sector in Thailand includes: the Forest Act 1941; National
Park Act 1961; National Forest Reserve Act 1964; the Wild Animal Preservation and Protection Act of 1992; and
the Forest Plantation Act 1992 (reforestation and land registration of private reforestation rights and ownership).
In addition, there are more than 20 laws and several Cabinet resolutions regulating forest management.
The 1997 and 2007 Thai constitutions recognize the rights and roles of Thai civil society in participating in national
policy formulation and implementation, as well as in the management of natural resources.
The tenth national plan includes proposals to protect and conserve forests at no less than 33% of the total land
area, with conservation forest representing 18% of total land area (FAO 2009:10). Annual deforestation has
been estimated at 50,000 – 63,000 hectares per year (Nalampoon 2003; FAO 2009:13). However, Leblond
(2011), based on extensive fieldwork and reviews of available studies, challenges this narrative of a continuing
deforestation crisis in Thailand, noting that forest cover likely increased between circa 1995-2005.
Every five-year period the government readjusts the country’s national development model in their National
Economic and Social Development Plan, the most current one (the tenth) for 2007-2011. Currently the government
is striving to balance their national economy to be prepared for future global changes, benefit from
globalization, build resilience in all sectors to future turbulences, and all in accordance to the country’s Sufficiency
Economy philosophy.
3.1 Forests and Conservation
The legal system of state forest tenure in Thailand is ambiguous and characterized by multiple and at times
overlapping zones. Even the key state agencies do not appear to have indicative maps for the boundaries of all
of the forest zones officially in effect. As has been widely noted, many areas declared as legal forestland by the
Thai state, are not actually populated with trees— but rather are represented by smallholder agricultural plots.
There is also considerable disconnect between official policies and local land use realities, and local officials
within the forestry bureaucracy are said to have considerable discretion in the enforcement of national regulations,
which can help with diffusing potential state-village forest-land conflicts (Fujita, 2003). The following represents
our best attempt to describe the system of ‘legal forest lands’ in Thailand.
Leblond (2011) notes that legal forests in Thailand include the following: three categories of National Forest
Reserve; different types of Protected Areas (including wildlife sanctuaries and national parks); and a residual
category of un-demarcated ‘ordinary forest’ (or, paa 2484, i.e. the year in the Thai calendar in which the 1941
Forest Act was passed). 5 Not all of these types of legal forest have been mapped or demarcated on the ground,
and public access to these maps is limited. Some of these legal forest categories also overlap with each other.
National Forest Reserves: There are currently 1,221 distinct areas of National Forest Reserves in Thailand, totalling
some 23.4 million hectares. Reserve Forests are formally under the jurisdiction of the RFD, and are said to
represent about 42% of the territorial landmass of Thailand (FAO 2009:18). 6 It is claimed that approximately
5
Paa 2484 includes all land defined by the 1941 Forest Act as ‘forest’, in other words, all legal forest (Leblond, pers.
comm., Nov 7, 2011).
6
Under the Thai land reform program, National Forest Reserve land that has long been deforested and cultivated by farmers
can be re-zoned and allocated through the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO). To date, approximately 6.5 million
hectares of National Forest Reserve land has been transferred to the ALRO as part of the on-going agrarian land reforms
(Leblond 2011). This indicates that the area covered by National Forest Reserves has by now decreased to approximately
17 million hectares (Leblond, pers. comm., Nov, 7, 2011)
© EU FLEGT Facility, BASELINE STUDY 5, Thailand: Overview of Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade, July 2011
This Action is funded by the European Union and the governments of Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The views expressed herein
can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
www.euflegt.efi.int
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