The students got back from the Forests Course just before spring break for the Thai Songkran holiday.  Here are some photos from the course to give you a taste of what the expedition was like.  Great course, and a great group of community-based instructors and host families.

Students after finishing the ridge hike from Nam Hu village to Huay Hee village.

Taylor with a dried "saba" pod found on one of the forest hikes.

Nam Hu village.

Jump to Caroline’s blog for more great photos from her.

Betsy, Krissy, Kristen and Riley cooling off in the Huay Puling falls.

One of the host mom's spinning cotten before dying and weaving it.

Kristen helping her village mom to prepare food for the pigs.

For a great blog post from a student about the Forests Expedition, jump to Caroline’s blog post, Stories from the Forest.

Hiking through the forest in the clouds.

Many of the marginalized communities in Thailand have lived for generations in what are now classified as “protected” areas. National parks, forest reserves and wildlife sanctuaries have been declared in recent years (often after a coup) to extend state control and, it often seems, to make it easier for the state to proceed with building dams, clear cutting forests for monocrop plantations, and other mega projects.

Villagers have been fighting this for decades, with limited success. Every time the state extends control or evicts villagers from their ancestral lands (often at gunpoint), it is with the claim that villagers are “degrading” the resources.  Human occupation of course impacts the environment, but these communities have, by necessity, learned how to do it in a sustainable way. It is especially ironic that the excuse is “protection” when, in fact, the real goal — as we’ve seen year after year — is resource exploitation and privatization through dams, mining concessions and other mega projects controlled by the elite.

One of my favorite writers is Sanitsuda Ekachai, a reporter for the Bangkok Post.  Her posts are always relevant, and she understands the social and political context better than just about any other writer in the Thai media.  Below is a recent editorial that speaks to some of these issues that we study in our Forests and Rivers course, and touch on in the others as well, since many communities in Thailand are constantly under threat from resource exploitation and centralized control.

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Posted in the Bangkok Post on Friday, January 22, 2010

Forest eviction plan to steal from the poor
Posted by Sanitsuda Ekachai

Ulterior political motives aside, the Khao Yai Thiang controversy highlights how draconian central land control, legal impotency and endemic corruption are causing systematic land theft from the poor.

But it is a pipedream to hope that the government will use the controversy to clean up the system.

After all, General Surayud Chulanont is just one of the countless powerful figures and investors who have encroached on the commons to build resort businesses and holiday homes.

And who dares stir up the hornet’s nest?

Yet, without any sense of guilt, the forest authorities are using the Khao Yai Thiang controversy to step up their crackdown on the poor who live in the grey forest zones.

This is not a farce.

This is exactly what the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has up its sleeve.

The ministry’s permanent secretary, Saksith Tridech, said recently there are over 450,000 people illegally occupying 5 million rai of forest land.

To counter them, the ministry will combine forces with the military and police to immediately crack down on the 190 critical areas across the country.

A forest area protected by the Karen.

The evictions will start without waiting for any pending court decisions because it would otherwise be too late to rehabilitate the degraded areas, Mr Saksith said.

Interestingly, among the ministry’s first urgent targets are the communities which have been fiercely fighting to reclaim land rights and to oppose the environmentally destructive state projects.

For example, the Kaeng Krung community which opposes the construction of Kaeng Krung dam in Surat Thani. And the Konsarn villagers in Chaiyaphum who are defiantly fighting against state-sponsored eucalyptus tree farms.

Obviously, the forest authorities see this is as a chance to get rid of the thorns in their side _ and to enjoy a huge budget at the same time.

How huge?

According to Mr Saksith, the first eight months of the nationwide eviction will need 1,200 to 1,500 million baht. And he needs a lot more to carry out the five-year crackdown plan.

Nationwide civil uprising is on the horizon if the cabinet approves this daylight robbery.

As taxpayers, why are we continuing to allow these bureaucrats and politicians to ruin our forests and steal from the poor?

One of the main reasons is because we have long been brainwashed into believing that the forests must be free from human habitation and conservation is best done through central control.

This belief is rooted in our ignorance about the way of life of the rural folk and lack of respect for their ability to manage their pool resources sustainably.

Following state central control in the past century, the rural communities have suffered from logging concessions and the draconian zoning of national forests which has turned local inhabitants into illegal encroachers.

Karen village elders.

Big dams, mining, massive tree farms and cash crop plantations _ all state policies _ further destroy the wilderness and the locals’ sources of livelihood. Meanwhile, land speculation amid weak law enforcement and fierce corruption has put much scenic forest land in the hands of the rich.

The injustice has given rise to nationwide resistance on the ground through the community forest and land reform movements.

The Thai villagers are not alone. Across the globe, the plunder of natural resources from draconian state policies has given rise to similar grassroots movements to manage the commons themselves.

From her extensive research in various parts of the world, the users-managed properties often work better than state control, concludes Prof Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, USA.

And the world is listening, having honoured her with this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics.

Thailand is abundant with success stories of users-managed forests, rivers, lands and coastal seas. Yet, we refuse to take note.

If we support their movements, we can help them save the commons from breaking down. Or we can just allow the authorities to exploit nature to serve the rich and big business.

The choice is ours.

A Karen host-mom prepares a meal in the family kitchen.

Right now our students are up in Mae Hong Son, living and learning with the Karen (Ba’ken yaw) people. A large part of the Forests Course is learning about the ecosystems of upland Northern Thailand, including how upland rotational farming as practiced by the Karen fits into that. It is a complex issue, as practices which are ecologically sustainable at low population densities face pressure with growing numbers of villagers, and as the Thai State moves to further extend control of mountain areas. (There have even been efforts to remove tribal people from the mountains by force, thwarted only by NGOs and journalists exposing what was happening.)

But it is hard to fight corrupt officials and powerful commercial interests bent on extracting the last tree, log or flower from the forest, since the Karen are marginalized by language, culture, and the remoteness of their mountain villages.

As James Fahn, author of the book Land on Fire points out, in Southeast Asia, environmental issues often have a human rights component.

That’s true in America as well.

I’ve often been struck with the similarities of marginalized mountain peoples of both Thailand and the United States, particularly in Appalachia. There, human rights violations, corrupt government officials, and powerful private interests are not only displacing already marginalized people, but literally destroying the mountains to profit, not from logs, but from coal.

A great movie has been produced by Yale 360 on mountaintop removal mining (MTR), Leveling Appalachia.

During the last two decades, mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams. Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, a video report produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, focuses on the environmental and social impacts of this practice and examines the long-term effects on the region’s forests and waterways.

If ISDSI was in the United States, those are the communities our students would be living in right now.  That would be our Forests Course.

If you are in the US or not, watch Leveling Appalachia, then get involved in helping stop mountaintop removal.

At least in Thailand the trees have a chance to grow back.

Our students have just returned from our Forests course studying political ecology and the relationship of the Karen tribal people with the mountain forests that is their home.  Long days in the mountains and rai, weaving naturally dyed cloth, eating “mu-sa-to” (delicious Karen chili paste), and learning from our tribal colleagues and teachers.  This course is one of our oldest, and shows how wonderful learning can happen with village teachers and collaborative curriculum design.

Here are a few excerpts from student blogs and some photos.

In Ban Hui Hee, a Karen woman spinning thread. (from Jeremy)

Spinning.

Another photo of spinning thread from Ally:

Grandmother.

Ally also wrote about her host mother:

Mom

My beautiful host mother is one of the most loving people I have ever met. She spoke very little Thai, but was extremely excited to teach me about her culture. I have never seen anyone shower people with love and care the same way that she did. She taught me so much. Thank you.

Writing more about host families (from Johnny)

the host families were truly amazing. just in a matter of days, the connections we had with these people and their community were unexplainable. we would eat, sleep, work, and sit with them, yes, but in every village we would all meet together as a community so we students could ask them questions about their livelihoods. sometimes we would sing american songs for them and they would sing karen songs back, and the joy that we all felt was wonderful.

Click over to his blog for more on why we study with the Karen, and have them as our teachers:

we visited all these communities because of what they all had in common- their relationship with the forest. all of them lived subsistence-based lives, growing and gathering all the food they consume, cutting all the wood they use, and fetching all the water they drink. the history of these karen communities with the forest was one of harmony and sustainability. they always have lived with the forest and their lifestyles have not been destructive to the ecosystems they inhabit. but the government begs to differ.

Acadia has a great post up on sustainability, biodiversity and culture:

Before coming to Mae Hong Son and after spending a week reading and discussing the Karen and political ecology, I assumed that the attitude of the Karen toward natural resources would be born of subsistence necessity and utilitarianism. Now, I see that the situation is much more complex. Outside forces, such as the central Thai state, world religions, and the global economy have caused reactions from these mountain communities that have moved them away from traditional relationships with the natural world and toward a redefined culture-ecology connection. For example, increasing state control in conservation areas that are also home to Karen villages have caused the villages to systematically classify and distinguish their lands into different use areas in order to show that they are not pillaging the landscape as is commonly portrayed and also to lay claim to lands that might otherwise be taken away.

Students entering a Karen village at the end of 8 hours trekking through the jungle and mountains of Mae Hong Son.

This week students at ISDSI are in Mae Hong Son province on our Forests course, learning about the Karen (Bak’en’yaw) and their relationship to the forested mountains that they call home. While some of the villages students will visit and live in have road access, we walk in, using the traditional trails that have, in some cases, been used for generations.

(While I’ll refer to it as “walking,” it is really some of the most difficult trekking/backpacking there is.  The landscape is very rugged, with rivers, steep terrain, muddy slopes, and thick jungle on and off trail. Some days are 8+ hours long with over a dozen river crossings in a day, so just calling it “walking” might not give the right feel to what it is really like! However, we’re doing it on foot, so “walking” it is.)

Years ago when we were first working with the villages of the areas to design and set up the course, the villagers expected that we would, like tourists, drive to the villages and then go on day hikes. However, as we talked about our goals of having students learn about their lives, how they as a group of villages form a wider community, and how we wanted to understand the traditions and history of the Karen people, the idea of walking between villages was born.

Walking has a lot of advantages over using a jeep to access the villages.

• Walking slows things down. You notice the birdsong, the small changes of humidity and temperature, and the pace of life in the mountains more.  You see things at a slow walking pace you cannot see in a vehicle.
• Walking gives our village teachers a chance to talk about specific rivers, forests or habitat that are important to them, that we wouldn’t see otherwise.  It also gives us a chance to get to know them and see how comfortable they are in the forest that is a part of their home.
• Walking helps us learn about how far apart the villages really are.  It is easy to zone out on a long ride in a truck, but when you’ve spent 8 hours walking from one village to the next through jungles, rivers and rugged terrain, you REALLY understand the distance!
• Walking allows time for reflection.  There are plenty of times when you need all your attention on the task at hand (like a difficult river crossing or a steep trail), but walking through the forest allows time to think and connect and process what you’re learning.
• Walking through a landscape allows a deeper connection to it than is possible when driving encased in glass and steel.  You know in a very visceral way how high a village is on the mountain, what the forest is like, and how the streams form and cascade down the mountainside.

David Orr in his book Earth in Mind talks about the importance of living in and learning from a landscape.  Walking is one of the best ways to do that.