Chiang Rai is Thailand’s northern most province, bordering both Burma to the Northwest and Laos to the Northeast. It is currently ranked at a lowly 65 out of 76 provinces in Thailand in terms of the UNDP Human Achievement Index (HAI; Thailand Human Development Report 2007; UNDP) a composite index of 40 indicators covering 8 aspects of Human development (health, education, employment, income, housing, living environment, family and community life, transport and communication). Even this lowly ranking in HAI still masks the wide gap between the lowland ethnic Thai dwellers on the fertile soils of the Mae Kok river plain in the northwest of the province with the upland and highland dwelling ethnic minority hill-tribe peoples in the remainder of the province. 

Over 20% of the provincial population are hill tribe groups, comprising Karen, Hmong, Akha, Lahu, Lisu, Luwa and Mien.  A very high proportion of the hill-tribe population have household incomes below the national poverty line of 56 Thai Baht (equivalent to USD 1.60) / person / day.  Many of these hill tribe peoples still are without full citizenship and/or land rights due to very poor literacy, limited knowledge of Thai law, and being outside of the range of government services and hence comparatively neglected. Lack of full citizenship limits access to medical care, property ownership rights, education, and the right to travel outside of their district of residence, all of which further contributes to long-term poverty.

Livelihood and Environmental Issues

The traditional livelihood base of the hill tribe communities has eroded due to expanding population pressure on traditional rotational shifting cultivation systems.  This has triggered a recent conversion to intensive continuous land-use regimes on unsuitable, formerly forested steep slope land. There now exists expanding areas of mono-culture corn cash crops for ethanol or livestock feed production (It is estimated that forest cover has declined by 20% over the last 5 years in upland hill areas of northern Thailand as a result of expanding corn production for industrial uses) It is ironic that whilst the purpose of the corn is to produce ethanol to reduce consumption of fossil carbon, the farming techniques produce a dramatic release of carbon into the atmosphere by burning cleared forests [see Photos page). This has led to top soil loss in the hills, silting in dams and streams, and more frequent flooding (both flash flooding in the mountain valleys and larger scale flooding in the central plains). Top soil loss results in a vicious cycle of declining productivity per unit of land and labour.  Hence the use of agricultural chemical inputs (pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer) has expanded rapidly in recent years, in the chase for short term productivity recovery. Unprotected exposure to these chemicals leads to health, safety and environmental issues even in the remoter hill districts.  Many hill tribe communities are locked into an ever increasing debt cycle as chemical input prices and volumes required for corn production keep increasing, while yields remain static or decline with continuing loss of top soil to erosion in steep slope areas.  To make matters worse, the chemical inputs are often supplied on credit by agricultural supply companies, requiring that the crop be sold back to them at below market prices, as a service charge for the supply of credit, further depriving farmers of the ability to get out of debt.

Human Trafficking

Due to poverty, debt, and lack of knowledge / information, the hill tribe communities are targeted by human traffickers, offering employment in local towns for girls / young women as maids, shop assistants, waitresses etc., with up-front lump sum payments to parents that the girls have to work off.  For families in debt this is often an attractive offer.  However many of these girls / young women are then trafficked and coerced into the commercial sex industry far from their home districts / province.  Those that eventually make it back home often are infected with HIV.

Needs Identified from Surveys of Targeted Villages

To determine needs, and assess accurately poverty levels and priority areas of action, surveys (including household and village level questionnaires) and community consultations were conducted in 15 hill-tribe villages of the Mae Tam and Mae Yang Min mountain valleys or “catchments”.

The key identified issues in these communities from these surveys and consultations were:

• A high proportion of households (79.9%) have incomes below the national poverty line of 56 Thai Baht/day/person (USD 1.60/day/person) in the 15 target villages.
• Lack of clean water supply and water shortages during the dry season in many of the villages
• Lack of sanitation facilities (hygienic latrines): an average of 21% of households do not have latrines (range: 0 to 57% between villages)
• Lack of hygiene / nutrition / disease prevention knowledge and practice (including HIV)
• Distance from medical services / difficult access to medical care
• Degraded farm land and declining agricultural productivity due to unsustainable farming practices on steep slopes that leads to soil erosion, significantly affecting livelihoods
• Insecure land tenure due to lack of official land-use / land occupancy rights, reducing incentive for investment in long term land development
• Indebtedness due to current high cost of chemical inputs for commercial corn production combined with declining /manipulated prices for corn (average debt per household in the villages is THB 21,520 equivalent to USD 636)
• Lack of full Thai Citizenship rights for a significant proportion of the population:

13% (range of 5-41% between villages) of the population of the Mae Tam valley, and
16% (range of 2-38% between villages) of the Mae Yang Min valley do not have full Thai Citizenship.

A lack of community wide and valley wide community based development coordination / advocacy networks