It's a
jungle out there, but perhaps not for long.
The government’s recent decision to recommence the
promotion of commercial tree plantations as part of its led to fears that it
could once again spark the destruction of Thailand's remaining natural forests.
The
eucalyptus tree favoured by commercial foresters is well-suited to life in the
jungle, or just about anywhere for that matter. It is highly efficient at obtaining the water and nutrients it
needs for survival, often at the expense surrounding life forms.
Eucalyptus has been
bred for adversity by Mother Nature herself.
Native to Australia, its ability to grow quickly tinder harsh conditions
such as drought and infertile soil means that it can be 'Based to begin
reforestation of degraded land. But in
this case, the trees must be left to grow so that other species of trees can
grow alongside them.
More
often, it is used as raw material by the pulp and paper industry, which admires
the tree's efficiency for economic reasons.
But economics also favours the planting of eucalyptus in monoculture
(single-species) plantations which are out down after five to seven years.
Such
an arrangement has in many cases contributed to - rather than cured -
environmental degradation. It has also
led to widespread socioeconomic conflict around the developing world causing
critics of traditional economic development strategies to curse its very name.
"Eucalyptus
has become a symbol for a whole host of issues," says Dr John Raintree' an
anthropologist who has carried out a socioeconomic analysis of the eucalyptus
debate in India. "One has to admit
that something about the tree makes it suitable for controversy, but changing
the species will not solve the problem."
The problem in
Thailand is that the government in general and the Royal Forestry Department
(RFD) in particular want to promote agro-industrial farming practices, but
insists on calling them "reforestation". Monoculture plantations - of eucalyptus or any other fast growing
tree - which are cut down every five, years are not "economic
forests", they are farms where the crop happens to be rather tall.
Technical
experts like John Davidson, gathering last week for a conference on eucalyptus
sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization, argue that, with proper
management, eucalyptus plantations can be grown in a sustainable fashion, Other
researchers, such as Tamara Stolzenthaler of the University of California at
Santa Cruz, are more skeptical.
Even
if eucalyptus can be grown in a sustainable fashion, there's no guarantee that
this will be the case in Thailand.
Given the government's poor record on natural resources management, the
promotion of tree farms in the name of reforestation is likely to lead to
further ecological problems, more socio-economic conflict and even increased
deforestation.
The
process by which this could come about is well-recorded. In 1990, the Suan Kitti Reforestation Co was
caught destroying natural forest in order to increase the size of their
eucalyptus plantations on leased, forest reserve land. Subsequently, the Chatichai administration
prohibited the leasing of forest reserves to private investors. The Anand administration continued to severely restrict the practice.
But
this past Sept 13 and 2 1, the Cabinet agreed to allow private investors to
operate commercial plantations on degraded forest reserve land, and loosened
the restrictions imposed under Anand.
So far, however, the government is only studying how such permission
would be granted, and says it is focusing on subsidizing the planting of
commercial trees by farmers with proper land rights documents.
Reungchai
Pousujja, a research officer with the Royal Forestry Department's Office of
Private Reforestation and Extension, outlined four new reforestaion programmes:
two for promoting conservation forests and two for promoting "economic
forests".
In
conservation zones, five million rai
of land will be planted with local species of trees by the year 1996, he
said. In "addition, 300,000 rai of
land along the border of these zones will be planted with local species next
year. They will form buffer zones 1O
trees (40 metres) wide and (in all) 5,000 km long to delineate clearly one type
of forest from another.
Meanwhile,
in economic zones, farmers with land rights documents for 50 rai of land or
less will be given Bt3,000 over five years for every rai of land they plant
with local economic species, such as teak, tamarind or pladuu.
Also, loans
of Bt2,850 at five per cent interest over five years will be handed out to
farmers for every rai of fast-growing tree species that is planted. In practice, this means planting eucalyptus camuldulensis, the species favoured by the local pulp and paper
industry.
It is
estimated that, out of the 51.8 million rai of degraded forest reserve land
slated to become economic forests, villagers have settled on 40 million
rai. They are gradually being given
title to the land - at a rate of four million rai per year - under the sor por kor land reform programme. .
Both Phra
Prajak Khutajitto, the famed conservationist monk, and Srisuwan Kuankachom of
the Project for Ecological Recovery (PER) admitted that these schemes are
better than the old policy of leasing forest reserve land directly to private
investors.
But
Srisuwan hastened to add that it could be just a ploy, and that the end result
of the new policy could be that land becomes concentrated in the hand of
agro-industrial investors.
Bankrupt
farmers might eventually have to sell their land to private investors if they
have full ownership (nor sor 3 documents). It's not clear what would happen if the
farmers have only sor por kor documents,
which can be inherited but not sold.
Land
ownership issue is one of the most bitter and emotional factors in the debate
over eucalyptus. In India, Dr Raintree
looked at who benefitted from eucalyptus plantations and decided that,
"the cut-off point was not between large and small farmers, but between
landed and landless farmers." Critics claim that by using up precious
resources while offering less opportunities for employment, plantations
actually hurt the landless.
This brings
up a second controversy involved in the eucalyptus debate: land use. There are many angles to this issue:
development versus conservation, cash crops versus subsistence farming,
farmers' interests versus those of industry, and spiritual versus material.
"Forests
are important. They supply u I s with
air, water and food. I walk through
them to study and learn. They help to
bring peace of mind. We shouldn't just
think of trees in terms of paper," he explained.
On the
other hand, he argued that, "the planting of eucalyptus is now
possible. They can be a kind of front
line for natural forests ... Planting is better than not planting. It provides people with jobs and money, so
they can't be hired to cut down trees."
But while
tree farms might be better than cassava farms or bare plots, NGOs like PER ask
why doesn't the government promote community forests instead. The answer is almost certainly because the
authorities are also trying to please the agro-industrial lobbies.
Davidson
noted that in regions with rainfall between 400-1,200 mm/year (which applies to
parts of the Northeast), "eucalypts can be grown in mixture with food
crops and other trees, but available water has to be assessed carefully and
planting density adjusted to achieve the desired balance of water use between
trees and crops and to leave enough surplus for humans and livestock.
"Eucalypts
are also strong competitors for nutrients, often drawing them from far
away," Davidson added. To keep
soil fertile, he recommended that leaves and bark be left under the trees since
they contain valuable nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium. Usually, however, they are
taken away to use as fertilizer elsewhere.
Furthermore,
leaf and bark litter from eucalyptus contain chemicals such as terpenes that
leach into the soil and inhibit the growth of other plants. Davidson played down this effect known as
allelopathy - but Stolzenthaler claimed it was a serious problem.
In short,
the Great Eucalyptus Debate is not solely about eucalyptus. It's about the industrializing of
agriculture, and the use of fast-growing trees in short-lived, monoculture
plantations.
But
eucalyptus, as the ultimately competitive tree, is the ultimate tool for the
highly competitive tree and paper industry, and a fitting symbol for the
changes rural Thailand is undergoing.