THE POLITICS OF CONSERVATION AND THE COMPLEXITY OF LOCAL-CONTROL OF FORESTS IN THE NORTHERN THAI HIGHLANDS

This paper argues that conflicts in the northern Thai highlands are a clear case of the politics of environmental discourse in the sense tha t conservation has played a role in lending legitimacy to both governm ent agencies and ethnic communities in their struggle for the control of forest resources. Underlying such conflicts is the official line of negative thinking about ethnic minorities in the hills by associating them with various vices, namely as enemies of the forest, opium produ cers, and a threat to national security. The government agencies alway s cite ethnicity against a role in conservation, which keeps them from appreciating ethnic-specific knowledge in the management of the fores t. Shifting cultivation has been distorted for having only a negative impact on the environment, disregarding the realities found in local p ractices which are varied, complex, adaptive, and quite dynamic in man y cases. The ethnic minorities, on the other hand, keep raising the is sues of community rights in relation to their role in the protection o f the forest. Rarely are their voices recognized until serious conflic t occurs, which can be seen particularly in cases of the eviction of m inorities from conservation forests. Only recently have government age ncies begun to show some positive concern over the social issues of ri ghts, as seen in the official pilot project on community forestry and the drafting of the community forest act. However, there is still no s erious discussion of legal recognition of minorities' rights to live i n the forest.