in Defence of Community Land and Religion against the Trans Thai-Malaysian Pipeline and Industrial Project (TTM) 2002-2008
Chana activists and others
For many years, Southern Thai Muslim communities have been fighting a destructive gas development backed by Barclays and other foreign banks that has violated their human, religious, environmental and land rights alike. In words and pictures, this book (now in an updated and revised edition) recounts their struggle.
A Decade of Resistance in Southern Thailand
Larry Lohmann
Slowing and halting new fossil fuel developments has moved to the top of the global climate change agenda. But what are the obstacles to, and resources for, such a project? The 10-year struggle against a gas development project in one corner of Southeast Asia, described in this article in the journal Race & Class, offers lessons in some of the complexities.
Activism, Expertise, Commons
Larry Lohmann
Seeing social or technical change as the application of new "theory" to "practice" is one of the hazards of 21st-century middle-class life. Middle-class activists could take a leaf from both expert elites and grassroots movements, who both tend to know better.
Lessons from the New Thailand
Dr Pasuk Phongpaichit
Corruption in Thailand has been neither pervasive nor incompatible with economic growth. It is centred on a big business-politics complex whose rise has gone hand-in-hand with globalisation.
New Tensions and Resolutions over Land
Larry Lohmann
Multilateral agencies have been promoting the commoditization of land in the Mekong region. How is this project being advanced and resisted?
Ethnic Discrimination and Conservation in Thailand
Larry Lohmann
The intersections between international nature conservation and ethnic politics are of serious and growing concern to many social movements in Southeast Asia. This paper offers evidence that international environmentalist practices interact with local and national conditions to advance the structural work of ethnic discrimination and racism in Southeast Asia. The racist outcomes of these practices do not flow exclusively from unprofessionalism, faulty science, irrationality, immorality or incorrect beliefs -- and anti-racist strategy has to accommodate this insight.
Larry Lohmann
A presentation at a seminar on "Environmental Justice in a Divided Society", Goldsmiths College, University of London, suggests that individual Western environmentalists are often pushed into supporting racist or discriminatory structures by their need to adhere to the rules of professional performance, including those of peer-reviewed science.
Racial Oppression in Scientific Nature Conservation
Larry Lohmann
13. Some strains of environmentalism treat “cultures” as fixed, closed systems with impermeable boundaries. Racism is neither a theory nor a collection of beliefs, sentiments or intentions, but rather a process of social control which functions to block inquiry and attempts to live with difference. Illustrated with a case study from Northern Thailand.
Larry Lohmann
All development projects follow a three-act dramatic plotline, as development agencies try to impose plans, meet local opposition, and improvise freely in an attempt to overcome resistance.
Chatchawan Thongdeelert and Larry Lohmann
This 1991 article describes a non-aggressive form of irrigation formerly common in Northern Thailand, in which land, water, forest, agriculture and the spirits thereof form an ecological whole. The system holds signficant lessons for the current international discussion on the "rights of nature."
Indonesia and Thailand in a Globalizing Pulp and Paper Industry
Larry Lohmann
This essay sketches some of the pressures behind -- and some of the dangers of -- the expansion of the pulp and paper industry in Southeast Asia over the last decade. It describes some of the mechanisms by which the industry has enclosed land and water in two of the countries most affected, Indonesia and Thailand, and outlines the various forms of opposition the industry is meeting. It concludes by indicating some of the strategies the industry is using to manage this resistance.
and Other Institutional Matters
Larry Lohmann
The decisive piece of evidence for the cosmetic nature of the World Bank's periodic claims to be reforming itself is that its staff are given no incentives to change their ways. The operative incentives for those who want to get anywhere at the Bank have always been to move lots of money, to find jobs for the boys, and to get and stay involved in lots of projects. This talk illustrates this predicament by referring to an "implementation review" of the Bank's forest policy.
Approaching Thailand’s “Environmental” Struggles from a Western Starting Point
Larry Lohmann
Westerners wanting to engage in effective international campaigning often will need to question their very conceptions of what social movements are.
Villagers, NGOs and the Thai Forestry Sector Master Plan
Larry Lohmann
Disputes over a forestry master plan formulated for Thailand by Finnish consultants and others illustrate how environmental conflicts are often settled by translating concerns and suggestions in procedures acceptable to the more powerful.
Interest Groups, Centralization and the Creative Politics of “Environment” in Thailand
Larry Lohmann
Effective political struggle in intercultural space means creatively weaving in and out of all the cultures present.
Larry Lohmann
The takeover of land for pulpwood eucalyptus plantations was a major source of rural conflict in Northeast Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s, and the alliances that resulted have exerted a continuing influence on the country's politics. This 1991 article from the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (now Critical Asian Studies) outlines some of the issues involved.
