Sustainable Community Forestry: Insights from Rural Thailand

Community participation in forest management has evolved as the new paradigm of natural resource governance in recent decades. Focusing on community participation in local forest resource management, this article examines the evolution and working of community forestry in Thailand from a socio-historical perspective. It narrates the social history of forest governance practices in Thailand and explores the community’s response towards deforestation, resource degradation and rising livelihood insecurity. Drawing insights from three case studies of community participation in forest governance from the provinces of Lampang, Lamphun and Kanchanaburi, this article highlights the potentials of community forestry in evolving as an alternative institution for sustainable livelihood security and forest governance. The article maps out the social history of forest governance practices in Thailand by identifying three successive stages: (a) influence of early European colonial rule in the neighbouring territories, (b) the American influence of 1960s, and (c) social uprisings and a visible ‘community’ in forest management practice.