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Maps for participatory planning in Thailand


Research Methodology
Among the various highland development projects, which peaked in the late 1980s with a total of 168 agencies (Ganjanapan, 1997), the Thai-German Highland Development Programme (TG-HDP) operated the longest, with 17 years of project activities till it closed in September 1998. Highland development activities were shifted towards participatory approaches such as the Community Based Land Use Planning and Local Watershed Management (CLM) in 1990 (Anonymous, 1998). In order to protect forests, while at the same time supporting hill tribes in the transition towards permanent agriculture and residence, a participatory process of classification and mapping of natural resources at village level was initiated in Mae Hong Son province. The aim was an improved sustainable use of land, water and forests, a rehabilitation of watershed catchment areas and an intensified agricultural production on suitable land. One of the most useful visualisation tools became three-dimensional topographic models on a scale of 1:5000 in order to demarcate village areas including outer user boundaries for village registration, permanent cultivation areas, community forest areas for use and conservation/watershed forest areas for environmental protection. As planning approaches became more concerted, it was possible to experiment with new technologies (Puginier, 2001). It is against this background that the research project was initiated to develop a method to combine land use planning with remote sensing tools, together with the full participation of the local communities.

In order to go beyond land demarcation and to carry the CLM process from the village to higher planning levels, the PhD research examined possibilities to transfer the data from village maps into a Geographic Information System (GIS), so as to provide visual information understandable by the people who displayed it and by those who would interpret it. There are several challenges when combining participatory approaches and GIS (Abbot et al., 1998):
  • Scaling up to show local concerns as well as broad regional or national perspectives, so that local priorities can be integrated into regional plans.
  • Access by the local people to decision making power through the ownership and use of data, which in the past was limited to a few highly-placed decision makers and thus constituted a merely extractive extension tool.
  • A land use model or GIS turns local knowledge into public knowledge and out of local control, and can be used to locate resources or extract more taxes.
Hand-drawn land use maps were collected in villages and digitised using a hand digitiser into the GIS programme Arc Info and then converted into maps using the map-drawing programme Arc View 3 (Puginier, 2002). Contour lines were obtained from the Remote Sensing Centre of Chiang Mai University (CMU) to give a three-dimensional perspective. The roads and streams, as well as the boundaries for Huai Poo Ling sub-district (Tambon in Thai) were obtained from the Survey Section of the Northern Narcotics Control Office (NNCO) in Chiang Mai in digitised form. The different land categories were then colour coded using the same colours as on village maps. Maps were displayed using the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates with grid points in steps of 1 kmē for village maps and 5 kmē for the sub-district map. The polygons for different land categories were added for area calculations. The same procedure was at aggregated Tambon (sub-district) level. As the resulting map was aggregated from individual village maps, neighbouring villages often had overlapping outer user boundaries (marked in pink on the map), which is significant in the case of land disputes and official village registration. Once the maps had been digitised and printed, they were taken back to villages for modifications or corrections, so as later distribute them in plastified A1 size for longer term use. Maps were also distributed to district forest officials to facilitate their work in land use monitoring. The data and the GIS software were then transferred to the Survey Section of NNCO as well as to the ICRAF office in Chiang Mai that collects this data for the whole north of Thailand (Saipothong et al., 1999). One example from a Lahu village as well as one from a Karen village are discussed below, followed by an aggregated map at Tambon level (sub-district) with practical implications.

Results and Discussion

Bor Krai village
The Lahu Sheleh village of Bor Krai (class 2, potential for permanent settlement according to DLD, 1994) has been inhabited for 20 years. It has a population of 170 or 12 people/km2 and was registered in 1996 as key village No. 11 (DOLA, 1996). The villagers of Bor Krai migrated to the new location from their original village of Cho Bo in 1978. Initially Bor Krai was a satellite village of Cho Bo and gained full status when it was registered and given some land from its area of origin. Some villagers still have land in the old village, but officially this land is lost as it lies outside the current village boundary. The village is located at the northern tip of the Pai Wildlife Sanctuary. This means that according to RFD the village should not exist and the establishment of paddy fields is forbidden. Nevertheless, the village is included on the Tambon model (Diagram 1). In contrast to the Tambon model, the digitised village map based on the village model, omits some land to the East (Diagram 2), and official boundaries go beyond what the villagers have outlined. The village committee reacted with positive surprise to this finding. The display of the map generated discussions as to why the TG-HDP had not included the data on the model earlier, with fears of land confiscation.

According to a survey done in 1997 by the RFD district office, 179 ha of upland were used in 1996 or nearly double the measured value of 92 ha from the digitised village map. Farmers explained this discrepancy as a strategy to keep as much farmland as possible. Villagers expected land confiscation by RFD based on this survey, so by indicating more used land than in reality, they could secure enough even after confiscation to maintain a livelihood. This shows that villagers feel they have no land security and continue to live in a state of uncertainty. In order to demonstrate its willingness to preserve forests, the village has strict rules for natural resource management that include the imposition of fines for felling trees and hunting within the conservation forest. On one hand according to RFD, the village is located within a wildlife sanctuary, thus it is illegal; on the other hand the settlement is officially registered with DOLA. These overlapping and contrasting destinations clearly indicate a lack of legislative coordination among concerned ministries.


Diagram 1: Bor Krai village on the Tambon model (village No. 11)




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