This story by Prachatai originally appeared on Global Voices on November 5, 2025.
Nestled in the mountains of Chiang Rai’s Wiang Pa Pao District is Huai Hin Lad Nai village, an Indigenous Karen community that has been named Thailand’s first Indigenous way of life protection zone. The community lives on over 10,000 rai (1,600 hectares) of forest land, only 1,632 of which are utilized. Their efforts have won them several conservation awards, including the UN Forest Hero Award.
In September 2024, the community was devastated by floods and landslides, which were described as a once-in-a-lifetime disaster.
The community was subsequently accused of causing the flood. Several video clips and news reports alleged that the community’s rotational farming tradition involves deforestation. One Facebook page posted an aerial picture of the community and claimed that their practice of monocropping means that trees cannot grow on the mountain, while some academics have claimed that they were responsible for deforestation and the resulting natural disaster.
Civil society organizations said that such media reports perpetuate a negative stereotype of Indigenous communities and that they added insult to injury by spreading misinformation against a community suffering from the effects of a natural disaster.
The community is now well on its way to recovery, but debates continue about the role of traditional knowledge in disaster prevention and whether Indigenous communities should be given a larger role in disaster response.
Nivate Siri, 68, one of the Huai Hin Lad Nai community leaders, said that the floods and landslides came after days of constant heavy rain, and that he has never seen such severe landslides in the village.
Experts explained that it was the kind of disaster that happens once every few centuries, according to Nivate. He noted that some of the community’s rice paddies and tea plantations were damaged in the flood, and that some families lost their pigs —a significant source of their livelihood.
Meanwhile, Chaithawat Chomti, another community member, said he was in Chiang Mai when he learned about the flood. In the weeks after, he was responsible for coordinating a command center overseeing the relief effort. The road up to Huai Hin Lad Nai was blocked. There was no running water, and phone signals were disrupted while the rain continued.
Once the community has recovered, Chaithawat said, they would have to use what they learned during the disaster and come up with a long-term monitoring system. He would also like Huai Hin Lad Nai to become a model community in disaster response and for them to share information with other communities living in high-risk areas.
Climate change and the lingering effects of past logging concessions are probably responsible for the landslides, according to a research project presented at a February 2025 event organized by the Huai Hin Lad Nai community and several organizations and institutions.
Jatuporn Teanma, lecturer at Maha Sarakham University’s Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies, said that a La Niña weather pattern caused heavy rain in northern Thailand at the time of the floods. He also noted that a monsoon that should have moved into Myanmar stopped in Chiang Rai, causing continuous rain in the area.
Jatuporn also said that landslides occurred in areas previously open to logging concessions before 1989. He said that this is why the remaining trees in these areas are mostly softwoods, which are not economically valuable and less resiliant to softened soil.
The research also found that the landslides occurred in forest areas protected by the community, which were not used for farming.
Community leader Preecha Siri, 70, explained that there are often warning signs before heavy rain. Big-headed turtles and crabs in nearby streams would move to higher ground — all of which he noticed in the days before the flood. He also said that it was unusually hot.
Since the landslides, Nivate said that community members have kept watch around the village to guard against further incidents. Following knowledge passed down among their community, they observe the activities of animals, like insects and turtles. Animals moving to higher ground means a storm is coming, Nivate said.
In additional to traditional knowledge, Siri added that the community should be utilizing technology and science to come up with a response plan. He would like information to be collected and passed from generation to generation.
But many of Thailand’s Indigenous communities are now unable to fully utilize their traditional wisdom. Prohibitive conservation laws and the public bias against Indigenous communities living in forest areas mean that they are no longer able to live according to their traditional way of life, and despite being a signatory to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Thailand has never officially recognized any community as Indigenous.
Suwichan Phatthanaphraiwan, a lecturer at Mae Fa Luang University’s Liberal Arts School, said that the traditional way of life of Indigenous Karen communities, from how they build their houses to farming methods and predicting the weather from animal behavior, lends itself to disaster response and relief.
Traditional houses, often single-storey and built on stilts to avoid flooding, are often seen as temporary by officials. Karen people are, therefore, denied permanent addresses and do not have access to basic infrastructure like electricity and water, leading communities to turn to modern designs so they can gain access to these necessities.
And while in the past, communities have learned from history and move from place to place to avoid disaster, they are now unable to do so. Suwichan said that conservation laws now control the communities’ way of life, and they are forced to remain in areas they know are at risk. Some no longer let their animals roam the forest, partly out of fear that they would face prosecution, which means that they have less opportunity to patrol the forest and observe the signs that would warn them that danger is coming.
For Songkrant Pongboonjan, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Law, the obstacle lies in Thailand’s legal system. He explained that Thai law does not recognize communal ownership, although this has always been part of the Karen culture. Resources are therefore either privately-owned or state-owned, and the state-owned ones are completely managed by the government. Thai forestry and conservation laws are written to give the government total control of forest lands and resources, and even communities that have lived on the land before laws were enacted have no right to them.
Not only are systems of communal ownership incompatible with existing legislation, but the general public also often has pre-conceived biases against Indigenous ways of life. Songkrant noted how textbooks have perpetuated the idea that Indigenous communities caused deforestation by practicing “slash-and-burn” farming when, in reality, they practice a rotational farming method where they rotate around designated plots of land, allowing the soil to recover during the rotation and reducing the risk of soil erosion.
Centralization is part of the problem, Songkrant said. Such a system, Songkrant said, is inefficient. The fact that local governments are not authorized to respond to emergent situations and have to wait for an agency in Bangkok to act means disaster response takes time. Meanwhile, as natural disasters become more extreme, it becomes more apparent that the current system cannot handle them.
Activists are asking for constitutional amendments to fix the root of the issues. The 1997 Constitution, which was said to be one of the most progressive, was repealed after Thailand’s 2006 military coup. It protected the rights of communities and individuals to participate in the management of natural resources and the environment.
As the fundamental document that serves as the basis for other legislation, Songkrant said that the Constitution should clarify that natural resources belong to every citizen, not the state.
Songkrant said that if community rights to resources are protected, then it cannot be illegal for them to utilize these resources. Noting that he does not disagree with implementing strict measures to protect uninhabited forest areas with sensitive ecosystems, Songkrant said that it would be unfair to communities already living in forest areas if they are evicted or prohibited from using their ancestral land, and there needs to be different measures for these areas.
(SY)
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