From akha@loxinfo.co.th Thu Jan 6 10:49:30 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id KAA25520 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 10:49:29 -0800 Received: from chmai.loxinfo.co.th (root@chmai.loxinfo.co.th [203.146.0.65]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id KAA24314; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 10:49:23 -0800 Received: from loxinfo.co.th (p7-criHS1.N.loxinfo.net.th [203.146.34.7]) by chmai.loxinfo.co.th (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA11782; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 23:21:53 +0700 Message-ID: <3874C234.5499300C@loxinfo.co.th> Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 23:26:42 +0700 From: Matthew McDaniel Reply-To: akha@chmai.loxinfo.co.th X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: 240299@ptt.or.th, Endangered Languages Linguist list , Subject: Pine trees and forced move of Akha Village Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Tansamrit-Hoho Songkiert at Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT): A Ms. Josephine Birch sent me your email address and suggested that I visit a village that she noted is being forced to move by the Thai forestry department. She said that you are opposed to moving people to plant trees. I hope so, and that this order to move a village can be turned back. As I am very busy I don't always see things happening as they build up and in this case it is very unfortunate because this situation has progressed very far already. A village in Ampour Mae Faluang, Chiangrai District named Huai Maak, is being told that they will have to move. This Month. A "village" has been chopped out of a mountain for them. Complete with highly carcinogenic asbestos roofing in these tiny row houses. People in Forestry and Watershed are both involved in this decision. Since I noted that there are a score of pine trees surrounding this village on all sides and your signs often accompanying such plantings I could not help but note the connection that she pointed out. On visiting the village and talking to the villagers I indeed noted that they are being forced to move against their will. The village has been there 78 years according to them, that is going back to about 1922 if I calculate correctly. A little of a long time on immenent domain. I also saw the site where they are being crouded into row houses on a hill, courtesy of some money from Taiwan I am told. The Thai people at the village today told me that the village was poluting the water and that villagers were cutting trees. Yet I saw no evidence of either. After all, rather old growths of pine are planted up to one side of the valley ridge and much younger pine planted to the other side near the site where another village was forced to move three years ago. Your strategy is obvious, take all the land that the Akha are living on and force them to live else where while you plant row after row of non native specie pine tree to the impoverishment of Thailand and its natural habitat. Tourists and the tourism industry will soon find out what you are doing to the Akha and Thailand will suffer a tourism loss as a result of the greedy exploitation of these poor people. Today I inspected rai apon rai of pine planted, ten years old I would guess, not a damn thing growing underneath it, the soil dead. Since anyone can tell you that pine has not near the bio mass that verdent jungle does, your progrom is increasing the likelyhood of drought in Thailand and the diminishing of multiple species of both plants and animals. I don't know if someone plans to harvest this in the future or not, sure looks convenient to that, a rich portfolio. The other foolishness of this kind of planting is that in these mountains each spring huge layers of very humid air build up from flash rains, heat presses it all down, making the forest a furnace and then lightning strikes all afternoon, you can see it rolling in the clouds like great electric fingers. Normal jungle is diverse and wet, many layers of wet, pine blows like an exploding flame and both animals and people die and forest is stripped bare in minutes. I have seen it here near Doi Tung, and I know of people that have died from it, you can not outrun such an inferno shooting to the ridge. If you will, could you please explain to me why PTT (Petroleum Authority of Thailand) is engaged in sponsoring all this non native specie pine and further how you can justify moving villages? This village in question has been there for 78 years, much older than you or I, a history, a people, rice terraces, fruit trees and a fortune in human memory and knowledge of the environment. Rather than work with them, as part of that environment, they are to be moved against their will, this month, January, 2000. Welcome to the new millenium and the new world order? Is that it? The concept that they are above watershed is foolish at best. The water from this valley drains into the Haen Taek region only kilometers away, where every kind of polutant is dumped into the water, so how is one village endangering that? Further, we have been after the idea for years that all these herbicides and pesticides should not be so freely sold in Thailand, and then they wouldn't be in the water either, would they? If this is used as an example, following these flimsy guidelines, you could justify the moving of every Akha village out of the border mountains of Thailand. That appears to be the often stated and non stated goals here in the north, and then these people without a land, without a country, are blamed for everything, cutting new trees to farm at the new location, running drugs (as in to feed themselves), prostitution and what ever other social ill. After all they are aliens, are they not, damaging the environment? Non Thais. The social welfare cost to the several hundred Akha in this village will not come cheaply to them or the Thai government once this move is forced. I have worked with other villages that have been forced to move. The death rate of the elderly and the infants is quite high, and since there is no land for these people where they are being forced to move compared to their current location, we can assume they are being moved into poverty. Pigs, cattle, water buffalo and chickens not only do not do as well down at lower altitudes but there will also not be room for them. So the protein supply and the fruit supply, the general nutrition of this village will plummet. Rather than being self sufficient and independent, they will be forced into a cash economy completely, and will have to farm themselves out to rich others who will pay them the standard $2.50 US per day for whatever labor. Have you ever spent a night in an Akha village? Do you know who these people your trees move so easily are? >From every place in the Doi Maesalong and Doi Tung area I see where these pine trees have been planted in mass it has turned rich jungle and manageable areas into rows of single specie trees which impoverishes us all. If you don't know that these things are going on, you should find out who is putting your PTT signs up all over the mountains of Chiangrai Province. I am always seeing in the Bangkok post how the Thais try so hard to help the "backward and impoverished Akha". Well, maybe, just maybe, they have at Huai Maak, some clue as to how this impoverishment and backwardness comes about. Huai Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are: 20degrees 13.31 N 099degrees 34.49 E 1053 meters Sincerely, Matthew McDaniel .