Community-based land use planning and local watershed management: an approach to achieve sustainable highland farming systems
1994
Buadaeng, K. | Borsy, P. (Thai-German Highland Development Programme, P.O. Box 67, Chiang Mai 50000 (Thailand))
The paper aims to discuss the Community-Based Land Use Planning and Local Watershed Management (CLM) approach which has been developed by the Thai-German Highland Development Programme as a key to achieve sustainable highland farming systems. The approach has been developed within the context that the Thai-forestry law, which aims to protect natural resources could hardly be enforced. The Watershed Class 1A which by law should remain under permanent forest cover, for instance, puts thousands of highland people in an illegal position. Also, the laws are not flexible enough to allow the Karen people, who have stayed in the gazette areas and practiced ecological sound farming systems for hundreds of years permanent settlement. In fact, the conservation of natural resources is not only an objective of the government, but is also of interest to the farmers themselves. However, different objectives and perspective from villagers and government officials create conflicting perceptions and strategies. The CLM process is a strategy to find agreed solutions for these potential conflicts. The CLM process aims to combine the interest of the communities and villagers with government officials and policies. Besides, it aims to achieve a land use pattern in the villages which preserves natural resources and which is optimized with regard to the villager's own economic and ecological objectives. The land use plan which has been agreed by local officials and villagers will be proposed to the policy level for the law adjustment. At the same time, village organizations play a major role to assure that the land use plan and agreed farming practices are followed by villagers under the technical support from the local government agencies
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