Stories from the Field
Mudslides, Energy-Producing Cows and Organic Pomelos: A Village Comes Together
|
23 January 2008 In Thailand’s Phayao province, a village that has become a model for protecting its natural resources and livelihoods through UNDP-supported projects comes together as a community when environmental devastation strikes nearby. |
The noise in the classroom is deafening as over 30 first-grade students follow their teacher in reciting a well-known set of questions and answers for some visitors.
Teacher: Why did the landslide happen?
Students: Our trees were cut down!
Teacher: Who cut down these trees?
Students: Our parents, our elder brothers and sisters, everyone in the community cut them down!
Teacher: What do we have to do?
Students: Stop cutting down trees!
The classroom breaks up into laughter. For these 6 and 7-year olds, the mudslide that came close to their village, wiping out crops and livestock, is now a distant memory. But the students’ answers are obviously heartfelt, and point to a change that has come over this community.
“People are much more aware of environmental issues now,” says Naree Neungkanta, an energetic young woman who coordinates local environmental projects. “They are also much more conscious of what they can do as a community.”
Baan Don Nguen is a settlement of about 200 households that lies along both sides of a highway connecting areas of Thailand’s north and northeast. Before the highway, the village was another remote forest community, living off hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture. The highway allowed villagers to sell cash crops, and brought money and electricity, but it also took people away to go find work in Bangkok.
|
Tired of watching young people leave the area because of lack of work, and of feeling dependent on outsiders for their needs, the village elders decided to act. The community started off with projects to generate their own energy as well as organic farming projects to improve livelihoods – both funded by the Small Grants Programme of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and overseen by UNDP Thailand. |
A village meeting These projects were so successful that they persuaded the government of the local sub-district to support more livelihoods projects, which encouraged people in the community to come up with even more innovative schemes. Now, if one walks along the highway through Baan Don Nguen, one can see local people involved in all sorts of activities, supported by either the local government, GEF/UNDP, or Thai foundations: organic farming, solar panels and water wheels to produce energy, biogas from cow manure, an older person’s group that makes baskets and other items to supplement incomes, a marketing group for community products, a traditional herb garden – just to name a few.
 |
Talking to people in the village, it is clear that along with awareness, they also have a great deal of pride in what they have been able to accomplish in the last few years. The community elders were also impelled to act by the very rapid changes in their environment that they had watched in recent years, and a desire to protect what they had. |
Weaving baskets in Baan Don Nguen |
At 79, Nai Iad Chalad is one of the oldest men in the community. He remembers that when he was young, the surrounding forest was packed with animal life, animals that for the most part have disappeared: barking deer, wild elephants, wild boar, hornbills. He is clear about what the largest change has been since that time: “Commercialization! Before, we just used to share among ourselves – borrow and barter. We only grew what we needed.”
The growing environmental awareness was sped up by the mudslide, which came within a few kilometers of the village. Although no one was killed, fields were wiped out and farmers lost cows and other livestock. Children from the local school were taken to the site of the slide and asked to draw pictures of it.
Kanoksri’s drawing |
One girl, Kanoksri Ketsanoi, six, drew a stark image of tree stumps with the caption: “All the trees died. All the animals died.” She remembers being taken to the site even now, a year later: “There used to be a bridge there, but it fell down. It was very muddy.”
The artist |
As new thinking spread about the value of the forest and the dangers of recklessly clearing forest land for agriculture, community members also began to question some other practices.
Nonglak Inyawong grows organic pomelos (a large, sweet citrus fruit) at an orchard on the outskirts of town. According to her, until recently local people – herself included – would constantly overuse pesticides. The problem was so bad that “not a single cricket could survive”, she says.
 Nonglak and her pomelos |
Now, she says, people have been convinced by the success of the initial projects that they can grow better crops – and make more money – by using less chemicals. She says people come from towns as far away as the provincial capital to stop along the road and buy her pomelos. She has a rice field as well but she admits she is neglecting it because the demand for her fruit is so great. |
Naree, the coordinator, says that people in Baan Don Nguen are becoming famous in the local area because of the success of their projects. But their success was never a sure thing.
In the beginning, local people were highly skeptical about the usefulness of these kind of solutions, Naree says. But they agreed to an initial project – a few backyard biogas “digesters” that would produce a gas supply from cow manure. Once it became clear that an average family’s cows could produce enough energy for all household cooking needs, and that the gas did not smell bad, the concept took off. Now there are eleven digesters in the village, with plans for over 50 more. One local man is even notorious for collecting unused cow manure from other households, which he uses – lacking cows himself – to feed his backyard digester.
 |
Feeding a biogas digester |
According to Naree, the initial GEF/ UNDP projects were successful because they focused on the role of the community itself in making the projects work, not just on the infrastructure. “At first the community approached the local government for help,” she says. “But they were just interested in building things or giving equipment – which then went unused.”
After the first projects got off the ground, the local government had another look, and they liked what they saw. The province is using the village as a model, and they have received ten official visits in the last two years from communities in other provinces who want to learn from the people of Baan Don Nguen. The village elders have produced a curriculum on how people can use alternative energy, which is now being used in schools around the district.
The GEF/UNDP projects had a number of inter-related positive effects, according to Naree: they proved the initial concepts; they made the community members more confident about what they were able to achieve and more ready to take further risks; they made local government and foundations more willing to fund further projects; and they brought the community together around a common purpose.
In the process, Baan Don Nguen has been transformed. Thinking about the environment is now second nature to the community, and the need to respect nature is an integral part of the school curriculum. Livelihoods have also improved, as young people find opportunities opening up that didn’t exist before. Naree herself is a case in point. Before getting involved with these projects, she admits she could not use a computer. Now she is fully employed coordinating community projects, and is even advising the provincial government on how to spread these concepts to a wider audience.
When asked what they are most proud about, village elders unanimously say the fact that less people now have to leave the area to find work to survive. They estimate only 10% of people leave the community to go to Bangkok, which if true is a much smaller proportion than the average in rural areas.
 |
Nai Iad Chalad, one of the oldest men in the village |
There is still much work to be done, though, and there an acute sense of what has already been lost. Nai Iad Chalad puts it most poignantly when he is asked what he hopes most for his grandchildren to have as they grow up in Baan Don Nguen:
“I want the forest return to what it was when I was a kid. I want the big trees to come back. I want the wildlife to come back. If you have a real forest, the animals will come.”
______________
For more information:
email registry.th@undp.org (Attn: Nicholas Keyes)
