These days, many people are talking about Thailand's forest areas which are dwindling because of fires and encroachment. What can we do?
Strict forest concession regulations are one of the answers.
Thailand used to have forests covering more than half of the kingdom. But, after successive governments approved forest concessions over the years our forest land has been reduced to about a quarter of the country. The situation got so bad that the government decided to end all forest concessions in 1989. But that has done little to stem the destruction.
The Thailand Development Research Institute reported that before Thailand stopped authorising forest concessions, about 1.2 million rai of forest land was being destroyed annually from 1982 to 1989. After the granting of concessions was terminated, the destruction eased only slightly to 1.1 million rai a year from 1989 to 1998.
The government has announced various projects to increase the amount of forest land. Both government and private funds were used to pay for reforestation efforts. If we believe the numbers on record, we should have millions more rai of forest, but in fact we don't.
Some areas are identified as forest land grown by either the government or the private sector, but photos taken of the land tell another story. In reality, those areas are now illegitimate farmland or resort areas.
Back to my suggestion. Strictly regulating forest concessions is the answer. In the past, we gave concessions with no close supervision. But we have learned from other countries that forest concessions can be managed to be good for business and good for the nation.
When I was a forestry student, I learned about forest management and about forest concessions. Done properly, regulators should give long-term forest concessions to private operators, long enough for them to run their businesses while conserving the forests.
How can we ensure that business and the forests are able to live together?
It takes 30 years to grow a teak tree for commercial use. With proper concessions, the private sector should be allowed to utilise the abundant degraded forest areas to grow teak. Then the areas should be divided into 30 slots in which the private sector would invest to grow teak. After 30 years we would have teak trees covering the whole area. Then, in the 31st year, mature teak trees in the first slot could be felled under one condition _ that they are immediately replaced with new trees.
In reality, investors wouldn't have to wait for 30 years as they could cut down some trees along the way after five years to sell under the so-called "thinning and pruning" method.
In areas where the weather is not suitable for teak trees, the government may offer concessions to grow other trees which may need only five to 10 years to reach commercial maturity by providing incentives to investors.
Forest concessions nowadays should be different from the past when the concessions allowed the private sector to reap benefits from our nature areas without any investment and without the required reforestation.
Under the new concept, a forest concession would be for open space in degraded forest areas allowing the private sector to invest in growing and nurturing trees until they can reach a profitable size. Therefore, the life of the concession must be long enough to attract investors. In the case of teak, the concession should be long enough to cover at least three crops _ or 90 years _ to ensure that the felled trees will be steadily replaced with new ones.
I would like to emphasise that it should be the private sector that does this because once they get the right to use the land, they will not allow encroachment or forest fires. They will maintain their areas much better than government agencies which clearly lack the manpower to look after the country's forests.
In this way we would combine capitalism and conservationism.
Suphaphan Plengmaneepun is Assistant Managing Editor, Bangkok Post.