Academic literature on the topic 'Natural resources Thailand'

Throughout this thesis I have laid out several factors that have contributed to the sustainability of shrimp farming in Thailand, and if sustainability whilst maintaining production can ever be achieved. To find out the current situation of shrimp farming in Thailand, the history of global and Thai shrimp farming is described. The social and environmental problems of the unsustainable history of shrimp farming in Thailand is then considered. Solutions to these effects conclude that it is up to the consumer to demand for better regulations from the government and the shrimp companies to ensure a sustainable future for shrimp farming both globally and in Thailand.

The literature suggests that a subtle relationship exists for communities between the meaning of water and sense of place, making fertile ground for systematic investigation. The relationship has obvious importance in today’s world, where people’s reliance on water, and the need for reliable supplies, form part of a common discourse in natural resource management. Yet, there has been much less discussion of what water means to people, how it connects with peoples’ sense of place, and what that might mean for the way people interact with their surroundings. The methodology of constructivist grounded theory was therefore appropriate to investigate this issue, and to derive a conceptual framework from the perspectives, the feelings, the experiences, and the actions of local insiders to water and to a place in which they lived. A systematic application of this methodology allowed me to constantly interact with data, create descriptions, and build conceptual frameworks from the ground. This process was conducted in particular settings: at Pok and Pang Jum Pee Villages near Chiang Mai City in the north of Thailand, where people interacted and relied on forests and the Mae Lai Noi stream in that forested mountain area. Two explanatory frameworks were derived from these settings. One sought to understand the constant features of the relationship between water, forests and livelihoods of community members during historical periods, driven by external and internal changes. Another examined the role of Buddhist rituals during, and as a consequence of, these changes, and how the rituals stimulated attitudes to, and actions of, forest and water conservation. The explanatory frameworks enabled the construction of a conceptual framework, proposed to explain the dynamic relationship between meaning of water and sense of place. The conceptual framework shows how a local reciprocity found in this relationship is consistent with the interaction between people, water, and place in the context of local communities. This relationship appears in particular settings and local contexts: in this case, where forest was meaningful as the pivotal physical setting and water was a part of forest. Additionally, economic well-being of local communities relied on both the forest and water, and people’s interaction influenced the nature of both water and forest. Together, sense of place or belongingness to a physical setting (forest) and the recognition of the meaning of water are vulnerable to loss. This responds to changing economic needs in local communities which themselves rely upon ecological conditions and connect with cultural and socio-political circumstances. Leadership plays an essential role, when such vulnerabilities are present, to evoke a sense of place and make explicit the meaning of water, driving the collective requirement for, and actions to protect and manage, water and place. Overall, the conceptual framework presented in this study provides a holistic and systematic perspective for investigating the relationship between the meaning of water and sense of place and may contribute to academic discourse and to natural resource management. This framework, however, requires verification and theoretical saturation in further research to be applicable when explaining the relationship between the meaning of water and sense of place in other settings or situations.

Based on comparative case studies drawn from rural communities in both northern Thailand and southern Yunnan, China, this study associates institutional transformation during the transition period with reformed resource management practices at the local level. Evidence from this study shows that accountable, adaptive and inclusive local institutions equipped with good social capital, clear property rights and strong enforcement, have great potential in establishing locally-adopted resource governance mechanisms. With an ambiguous definition of property rights and weak local institutional capability to claim and practise these rights, the local actors in the rural Chinese communities were hardly able to negotiate with other stakeholders and involve themselves in market-oriented NRM practices as significant players. In Thailand, although local institutions enjoyed a better degree of autonomy and more negotiation power in terms of locally-based NRM practices, customary tenure without official legal protection undermined the local actor’s ability to better benefit from the extension of the market economy and globalization. In both of the two countries, the extension of individualism and opportunism brought forth by market-oriented values and privatization policies threatened the functioning of the local institutions. Rekindling local institutions and integrating with formal decentralized institutional innovations in order to build up a pluralist institutional framework, were critical

Inland water bodies provide important fisheries resources in Thailand and elsewhere in south-east Asia, yet there is limited information on the biology of important species and catch rates in fisheries, and limited assessment of management strategies such as Freshwater Protected Areas. This study has provided important information on aspects of the biology of knifefish (Notopterus notopterus) and catopra (Pristolepis fasciatus), two dominant freshwater fish species in Thailand, as well as catch and effort trends in the trap fishery and the influence of a Freshwater Protected Area (FPA) on fish communities in Beung Borapet, a large freshwater swamp and an international important wetland in Central Thailand (15ºN; 100ºE). Both N. notopterus and P. fasciatus were shown to be the most dominant species using traps in fisheries-independent (18.3 and 23.2%, respectively) and fisheries dependent (31.2 and 22.9%, respectively) studies, and were therefore shown to be important species in Beung Borapet. Female N. notopterus reached maturity at 178 mm TL, while female P. fasciatus reached maturity at about 70 mm TL. Both species spawned throughout most of the year, with peak spawning between June and August when rainfall peaked and water levels were rising for N. notopterus and between April and September when water temperature and daylight length were peaking for P. fasciatus. Furthermore, both species are multiple spawners, with the former exhibiting low batch fecundity (approximately 113 and 864 eggs) and the latter showing high batch fecundiy (approximately 10,000 and 62,000 eggs). The high batch fecundity and the daily spawning of P. fasciatus is would result in a high total fecundity for the species. The sex ratio of P. fasciatus exhibited a slight male bias in fish <100 mm, but this reverse to a clear female bias in larger fish. For both species, growth parameters could not be determined using either cohort analyses from length frequency data, or length-at age data from growth increments in hard structures such as scales and otoliths. The catch composition of the trap and gillnet fishery in Beung Borapet was dominated by five species, namely P. fasciatus, N. notopterus, Oreochromis niloticus, Cyclocheilichthys repasson and Cyclocheilichthys apogon. Traps tended to catch larger fish of more marketable size than gill nets, especially for N. notopterus and O. niloticus. The trap fishery yielded approximately 92 tonnes (2.9 kg/hectare) of fish per year, which was valued at nearly 3 Million Baht (~$US 80,000), which provided an average net income of 83,000 Baht (~$US 2,100) for a fulltime trap fisher in Beung Borapet. Spatial closure management is a strategy used throughout the world for protecting aquatic biodiversity and promoting fish production. The FPA in Beung Borapet contained lower overall densities and biomass of fish than the fished area, but there were inconsistent patterns among fish species. Some dominant species, such as Cyclocheilichthys enoplos and Amblyrhynchichthys truncatus, had higher densities, while others, such as P. fasciatus and O. niloticus, had lower densities in the FPA. Furthermore, larger sizes of only a few dominant species were observed in the protected zone, e.g. P. fasciatus and N. notopterus. The benefits of the FPA for fisheries enhancement and conservation of biodiversity appear to be limited due to observed illegal fishing activities in the zone as well as higher turbidity related to point-source impacts observed in other studies. Management of the conservation zone in the region requires a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches and scientific information to improve the effectiveness of FPAs. Fisheries management needs to focus on both the resources and the stakeholders to minimize conflict among different stakeholders and inform them of conservation issues for their natural resources to promote their participation in the management strategies.

Kyoto University (京都大学)<br>0048<br>新制・課程博士<br>博士(地域研究)<br>甲第12432号<br>地博第31号<br>新制||地||10(附属図書館)<br>24268<br>UT51-2006-J423<br>京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科東南アジア地域研究専攻<br>(主査)教授 速水 洋子, 教授 河野 泰之, 教授 田中 耕司<br>学位規則第4条第1項該当

<p>Resilience is an essential and highly desired characteristic of a social-ecological system’s ability to adapt and adjust to various stresses and shocks that cause disruption. As social and ecological systems are intertwined and continually experiencing changes and disturbances, a major challenge appears revolving around the ways in which this resilience can be built and investigated. Social-ecological resilience can be defined as the amount of stress or disturbance that a particular system can tolerate, while still maintaining the same functions and identity. This paper uses social-ecological resilience concepts as a research framework, and examines three main themes that allow for the building of water management resilience to occur. These themes include learning to live with change, nurturing the ability to adapt/adjust to changes, and also on creating opportunities for self-organization. Two ethnic minority villages in Northern Thailand were chosen as research sites, in which the village water management practices were studied within a specific time period. Varying degrees of quantity and quality water issues within both villages have brought about stress and disturbances within their water management practices and increased the need to deal with these problems. Research was conducted at a community scale and resilience analysis pertains only to this specific level. Through the utilization of focus groups and interviews, qualitative data was collected and analyzed within a SE resilience context. This paper sets out to explore how social-ecological resilience has been built or not, and to what degree this has occurred within these two villages water management practices. The analysis indicates how complex and interconnected the social and ecological systems are and how the water management practices of these two communities play a role in this complex, dynamic process. Conclusions drawn are not limited to these two communities, but can be applied to the wider Northern Thailand region.</p>