Preserving local knowledge for conservation: an experience from Northern Thai.
On this very first post after a year, I would like to share my experience in Northern Thailand, when I did summer program with International Alliance Research Universities (IARU). I promised myself and some friends to share what I’ve learnt and experienced in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai this July.
Before we jump to some key take aways of Global Summer Program and what makes me feel dumber after joining the program, let’s know IARU a little bit closer. IARU is a not-for profit organisation consists of 11 research-savvy universities, including Australian National University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, UC Berkeley, Yale University, University of Copenhagen, UTZ Zurich, University of Tokyo, National University of Singapore, Peking University and University of Cape Town. AIRU, which is chaired by UC Berkeley, offers a dozen of programs/courses every year. The summer course is started vary, some of them are last for 3 weeks, some others to over 8 weeks.
The summer program that I joined is COP4 Borderlands Field course, which started on the end of June to end of July 2018. The course itself is about how to engage critically in Global South issues, especially related to border (i.e. local communities or refugee in borderland) and borderless (i.e. intensified mobility of people, goods, ideas, capital, technology) situations. I personally think this topic is very timely and urgent as every countries (or every communities and human beings) are dealing with border/borderless issues one way or another. There are 30 students who are involved in the COP4 Borderland (Yes, that’s the program nickname!) from at least 9 out of 11 universities of IARU members. I was teamed up with Benedikte Krogsgaard from University of Copenhagen (black stripy shirt), and Sebastian Ong-Osmond from UC Berkeley (black t-shirt) to work with Teerapong Pomun (Green t-shirt), the director of environmental justice-based NGOs Living River Siam Association and Mekong Community Institute in Chiang Mai, Thailand. E, Teraapong Pomun’s nickname, guided the three of us to understand how local communities use local knowledges to preserve natural resources — or called ‘Taibaan’. The fieldwork is conducted in Haat Bai, Ing Tai, Buun Ruang, Tai Le villages in Chiang Rai Province.
Before the fieldwork, all the participants of COP4 Borderland got a week preparation through class-room seminar in Chiang Mai University. The lecturers delivered different topics and they came from different universities. My favourite ones were Professor Katharya Um (the course coordinator) session on the first day, when she gave us the big picture of Borderland/Borderless nation, the issues of human rights and social-environmental justice, and a Professor from University of Tokyo on political economy of ASEAN (including the influence of China to the regions, which is extremely fascinating!). I also have to say that I grateful to hear (Dr.) Andreas Christensen’s story, the co-coordinator of this course, on his fieldwork in one of Pacific countries for a year to try to understand how the local communities employ their adaptive strategies to ecological ocean changes. I also met Nicole Ponta, a researcher who devotes herself to study about the natural resources management by the local communities in different places (i.e. they called it ‘socio-ecological’). She shared her experience in conducting fieldwork, and in using game board, in the Amazon Forest to try to understand how the indigenous tribes manage the forests. Also, I have to share it with you, I met Ajan Chayan, a very down to earth and resilient academic-activist from Chiang Mai University. If you meet Ajan Chayan in person one day, you’d know why I have to say this: he is one of the hearts of this whole experience.
From this experience, I learned that multi-perspectives, or what people called as ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘multidisciplinary’, are essential to tackle complex issues. Complex issues, or some people called it wicked problems, are public-policy issues whose root causes are intercorrelated to one another, and there is no single definition of problem, thus no single solution to address the problems (Howes 2015). I found the ecological and socio-economy changes in Mae Khong (Mekong) river in Lower Mekong sub-Regions is a great example of a wicked problem. The changes of Mekong River ecology are attributed to the development of dams in the Upstream of the river, climate change, governance issues, and the political economy of the Golden Triangle. Thus, it is impossible to address the ecological and socio-economy changes by adopting single perspective. Adopting multidisciplinary perspectives, in my case we’re a team of Anthropologist, Environmental biologist, and political-social scientists, becomes inevitable to understand and approach this wicked problem.
However, adoption of multidisciplinary perspectives might not be enough: I also learnt that a genuine participatory, or called the bottom up, approach is extremely important to tackle the problem of river ecological changes in Lower Mekong sub-Regions. The dispute over water in Mekong river has been lasting for quite a while, and there has been many attempts to discuss the possible solutions through the regional governing body called the Mekong River Commission (MRC). Nevertheless, the proposed solutions seemly not reflecting the people of Lower Mekong Sub-Regions aspirations: it is too far from reality. This disconnection between the elites decision makers and the people has created scepticism. Nevertheless, this scepticism also motivates other policy actors, such as Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), to try to solve the problem using community-based initiatives. The initiative that we found in the ground are the Women Group of Buun Ruang who uses and conserves forests and river for their livelihood, Mekong School in Chiang Khong which teaches the local communities to learn, utilise, and preserve their local knowledges, and also the spread of Taibaan (methods of grassroots participatory research) by the Living River Siam Association and Mekong Community Institute to other NGOs and CSOs across the regions. The collaboration between NGOs, CSOs, and individual leaders could potentially create an alternative solution for this dead-locked problem. Without trying to simplify the problem, I’m on optimistic side this time.
As part of the team work, Sebastian, Benedikte, and I assisted the local communities in five villages to share their stories, and we made this little documentary, named “Her name is Khong”. This documentary highlights how Mekong River means to their lives and how the ecological changes in Mekong River has changed their and their offsprings lives. If you are interested to watch this 13 minutes-long documentary, please find it here:
Lastly, it was a fun and encouraging experience that I had during with COP4 Borderland program. Meeting new people indeed makes me feel dumber — but in a good way! I reckon that I know so many things that I do not know, even when I felt that I have came across this issue in classroom, online news or journal article. Meeting new people, in real life in their life setting, have allowed me to learn a lot. Yet, it is still far away from enough. I learned from my new mates (they are all seriously amazing!), new colleagues, and inspiring local communities in Northern Thailand. I also was lucky to be able to meet many inspiring people along this process, such as Ku Ti (the head of Mekong School) and many people in Mekong School in Chiang Khong, the Women Group of Buun Ruang who uses and conserves forests and river, village chief in Haat Bai, Ing Tai, Tai Lei, some new local Indonesian mates who lives in Chiang Mai (you know who you are!), and the last but not least, the baristas in Coffeeshops in Nimmanhemin street (your coffees are a morning punches in the face! Chiang Mai coffees are amazing!).
PS. This is a great opportunity to say thanks to everyone. I would like to sincerely thank Prof. Um, Andreas, Ajan Chayan, my cohorts at COP4 Borderland, Teerapong Pomun (E), Ku Ti, women’s group from Buun Ruang village, and village chiefs of Haat Bai, Ing Tai, and Tai Lei. Also, thank you for YOU, who is reading my piece. Please leave your comments or thoughts below. I added some links to additional readings related to IARU, Mekong River issue, and Chiang Mai, in case you are interested with the topic or to join AIRU next year :)
Mekong River issues
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/27/chinas-mekong-plans-threaten-disaster-for-countries-downstream/
https://www.ft.com/content/1add7210-0d3d-11e4-bcb2-00144feabdc0
https://www.internationalrivers.org/node/10852
https://thediplomat.com/2016/12/why-the-mekong-river-commission-matters/
About Chiang Mai
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thailand/chiang-mai-province/chiang-mai
About IARU
http://www.iaruni.org/for-students/global-summer-program/gsp-courses-2018/666-gsp2018-cop4
