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| Volume 105(1) 2005, pages: 77-88. | | Sacha Zurcher: | Public participation in community forest policy in Thailand: The influence of academics as brokers | | This article focuses on the role of environmental movements that
have an influence on state policies regarding community forestry in
Thailand. It analyses how conflicts between the state and local people
over the right to manage forest resources have ceased to be seen
as isolated incidents, but as part of a structural shortcoming in Thai
law. In so doing the article discusses the appearance of networks of
actors who question the effectiveness of state control, and lobby for
the establishment of formal frameworks to establish the rights of local
people in regard to access to, and control over forest resources.
The article analyses how the different actors became involved, and
what their influence was in the process of drafting and presenting a
peoples’ version of a Community Forest Bill in 2000. In doing so,
the paper pays special attention to a group in Thai society that has
received little attention in the international literature. This group
consists of academics and public intellectuals who have played an
important role in the participatory process. Results show that conflicts
over access rights to forest resources at the local level would
not have had such a widespread national attention if it were not for
this group who supported the idea of local management. | | >> download as pdf |
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