ELL: Pine trees and forced move of Akha Village

[Matthew McDaniel]

Dear  Tansamrit-Hoho Songkiert at Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT):

A Ms. Josephine Birch sent me your email address and suggested that I
visit a village that she noted is being forced to move by the Thai
forestry department.

She said that you are opposed to moving people to plant trees.
I hope so, and that this order to move a village can be turned back.

As I am very busy I don't always see things happening as they build up
and in this case it is very unfortunate because this situation has
progressed very far already.

A village in Ampour Mae Faluang, Chiangrai District named Huai Maak, is
being told that they will have to move. This Month.  A "village" has
been chopped out of a mountain for them.  Complete with highly
carcinogenic asbestos roofing in these tiny row houses.

People in Forestry and Watershed are both involved in this decision.
Since I noted that there are a score of pine trees surrounding this
village on all sides and your signs often accompanying such plantings I
could not help but note the connection that she pointed out.

On visiting the village and talking to the villagers I indeed noted that
they are being forced to move against their will.  The village has been
there 78 years according to them, that is going back to about 1922 if I
calculate correctly.  A little of a long time on immenent domain.

I also saw the site where they are being crouded into row houses on a
hill, courtesy of some money from Taiwan I am told.

The Thai people at the village today told me that the village was
poluting the water and that villagers were cutting trees.  Yet I saw no
evidence of either.  After all, rather old growths of pine are planted
up to one side of the valley ridge and much younger pine planted to the
other side near the site where another village was forced to move three
years ago.

Your strategy is obvious, take all the land that the Akha are living on
and force them to live else where while you plant row after row of non
native specie pine tree to the impoverishment of Thailand and its
natural habitat. Tourists and the tourism industry will soon find out
what you are doing to the Akha and Thailand will suffer a tourism loss
as a result of the greedy exploitation of these poor people.

Today I inspected rai apon rai of pine planted, ten years old I would
guess, not a damn thing growing underneath it, the soil dead.

Since anyone can tell you that pine has not near the bio mass that
verdent jungle does, your progrom is increasing the likelyhood of
drought in Thailand and the diminishing of multiple species of both
plants and animals.  I don't know if someone plans to harvest this in
the future or not, sure looks convenient to that, a rich portfolio.

The other foolishness of this kind of planting is that in these
mountains each spring huge layers of very humid air build up from flash
rains, heat presses it all down, making the forest a furnace and then
lightning strikes all afternoon, you can see it rolling in the clouds
like great electric fingers.

Normal jungle is diverse and wet, many layers of wet, pine blows like an
exploding flame and both animals and people die and forest is stripped
bare in minutes.  I have seen it here near Doi Tung, and I know of
people that have died from it, you can not outrun such an inferno
shooting to the ridge.

If you will, could you please explain to me why PTT (Petroleum Authority
of Thailand) is engaged in sponsoring all this non native specie pine
and further how you can justify moving villages?

This village in question has been there for 78 years, much older than
you or I, a history, a people, rice terraces, fruit trees and a fortune
in human memory and knowledge of the environment.

Rather than work with them, as part of that environment, they are to be
moved against their will, this month, January, 2000.  Welcome to the new
millenium and the new world order? Is that it?

The concept that they are above watershed is foolish at best.  The water
from this valley drains into the Haen Taek region only kilometers away,
where every kind of polutant is dumped into the water, so how is one
village endangering that?  Further, we have been after the idea for
years that all these herbicides and pesticides should not be so freely
sold in Thailand, and then they wouldn't be in the water either, would
they?

If this is used as an example, following these flimsy guidelines, you
could justify the moving of every Akha village out of the border
mountains of Thailand.  That appears to be the often stated and non
stated goals here in the north, and then these people without a land,
without a country, are blamed for everything, cutting new trees to farm
at the new location, running drugs (as in to feed themselves),
prostitution and what ever other social ill. After all they are aliens,
are they not, damaging the environment? Non Thais.

The social welfare cost to the several hundred Akha in this village will
not come cheaply to them or the Thai government once this move is
forced.  I have worked with other villages that have been forced to
move.  The death rate of the elderly and the infants is quite high, and
since there is no land for these people where they are being forced to
move compared to their current location, we can assume they are being
moved into poverty.  Pigs, cattle, water buffalo and chickens not only
do not do as well down at lower altitudes but there will also not be
room for them.  So the protein supply and the fruit supply, the general
nutrition of this village will plummet.  Rather than being self
sufficient and independent, they will be forced into a cash economy
completely, and will have to farm themselves out to rich others who will
pay them the standard $2.50 US per day for whatever labor.

Have you ever spent a night in an Akha village?
Do you know who these people your trees move so easily are?

>From every place in the Doi Maesalong and Doi Tung area I see where
these pine trees have been planted in mass it has turned rich jungle and
manageable areas into rows of single specie trees which impoverishes us
all.

If you don't know that these things are going on, you should find out
who is putting your PTT signs up all over the  mountains of Chiangrai
Province.

I am always seeing in the Bangkok post how the Thais try so hard to help
the "backward and impoverished Akha".  Well, maybe, just maybe, they
have at Huai Maak, some clue as to how this impoverishment and
backwardness comes about.

Huai Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are:

20degrees 13.31 N
099degrees 34.49 E
1053 meters

Sincerely,

Matthew McDaniel


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