抄録
There are many claims that the large-scale plantation monoculture of trees is accompanied by negative social and environmental impacts such as ecological disturbances and infringement of human rights. In this sense the recent structural shift in the Thai forestry sector, most typically in the pulp industry, deserves attention. This paper examines how the pulp industry in Thailand has developed a farm-based supply system for its raw material, namely eucalyptus, and how at the same time the industry’s intrinsic dilemma has developed within a free market economy. The relevant actors—the government, firms and villagers—are discussed according to their strategies and responses to their socioeconomic situations.
The high social costs that resulted from the anti-eucalyptus movements during the late 1980s pushed aside the first strategy used by the business sector and the government to ensure a stable supply of eucalyptus, i.e. that of a ‘plantation-based’ supply system. By the early 1990s, the second-best strategy, a‘ farm-based’ supply system, had been chosen. The sociopolitical situation after the ‘Bloody May’ events in 1992, which led to the creation of Anand Panyarachun’s second government, contributed significantly to this shift. Given their situation, some farmers agreed to plant eucalyptus in response to the rapid rural socioeconomic changes.Thus it seems that the difficulty of further land reclamation by farmers and the sociopolitical situation in Thailand during the early 1990s, including the development of civil society, triggered a ‘voice’ that had some affect on governmental policies and the behavior of firms. Such changes did not occur in other countries such as Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia, where the industry manages its own plantations to ensure a stable supply of raw material. It may even be said that a unique market system, which, to some extent, reduces the negative social and environmental impacts of the industry, have emerged in Thailand as a result of social pressure, as suggested by ecological modernization theory.
This system, however, had a serious flaw in terms of economies of scale in the case of both eucalyptus and pulp production. A case study suggests that a differentiation of eucalyptus management has been in progress in the villages. Market saturation and the 1997 economic crisis also worsened market conditions for planters. Even pulp mills faced constraints in increasing their production capacities because of their own raw material supply systems. Thus, firms in the Thai pulp industry face a choice of whether to follow a ‘plantation-based’ or a ‘farm-based’ system, and their choice is influenced by the tradeoff between social costs and economies of scale.
