Urban Development Discourses, Environmental Management and Public Participation: The Case of the Mae Kha Canal in Chiang Mai, Thailand (G. Ribeiro & A. Srisuwan)

Ribeiro, Gustavo & Angunthip Srisuwan. ‘Urban Development Discourses, Environmental Management and Public Participation: the Case of the Mae Kha Canal in Chiang Mai, Thailand’, in Environment & Urbanization, Vol. 17, No. 1, April 2005, pp. 171-182.

ABSTRACT

Projects that target problems of environmental degradation can be seen as platforms for interaction between different social groups and stakeholders and they risk therefore becoming the stage for power struggles and social conflict. The paper discusses the case of a low-income settlement in the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand in a context of environmental deterioration where low-income communities have squatted on land owned by the government. It has become ground for social conflict between low-income communities fighting for the right to stay on squatted land and government authorities who attempt to evict them.

Chiang Mai was selected as the main urban centre for economic development in the northern region, attracting poor rural migrants who settled in informal settlements, some of which where located on the banks of the Mae Kha canal. This is the case of Kampaeng Ngam community, which has settled in an area between the Mae Kha canal and Kampaeng Din. Shantytown dwellers had very limmited access to education. They are mostly employed as non-secialized labour and have limited earning capacity. Local people have limited opportunity to own land.

In 1997, 17 informal settlements along the Mae Kha canal were identified. Seven were designated as squatter settlements located on public land. The Kampaeng  Ngam community is located on land owned by the Department of Fine Arts (DFA) in charge of the protection and restoration of historic monuments. Kampaeng  Ngam has no sewage nor garbage collection.

Mae Kha canal was already heavily polluted in 1978 and the waste produced by informal settlements contributes only marginally to its pollution. The main sources of pollution were private companies. and the city centre.

Kampaeng  Ngam has been under increasing threat of eviction. This situation has stimulated the involvement of several interest groups and organisations. Among these are:

– Municipality: The services are not provided by the municipality. Kampaeng  Ngam community has been given financial support by the municipality for improvements. A master plan for the area was developed in 2002 but the major stated that he would work for the right of this community to stay in their current location.

– DFA: Has commissioned studies for the rehabilitation of the city, which includes a proposal for the restoration of the canals. The communities are located in an historical site and the DFA’s policy is to evict them but Kampaeng  Ngam was allowed to remain in the current location on condition that some dwellings were moved. However, in the long term they were going to be evicted.

– Lanna Architects: Consultant to the municipality in the elaboration of a 30-year master plan. Community participation is built into the planning of the project through the inclusion of public hearings.

– CODI: Under the National Housing Authority (NHA) implemented community development programmes that adopt a bottom-up approach to improve the living conditions of urban poor communities and to strenghten their organisational capacity through the organisation of saving groups to loans for housing improvement and income generation. CODI has been a catalyst in a process of social change, which aims to promote a large scale community-driven development movement and places the decision making and management of responsibilities with community networks.

The Urban Community Environmental Activities (UCEA) project included grants to urban communities that are actively involved in environmental improvements, self-managed development in the communities, community-driven participatory processes, mechanisms for coordination and mutual decision-making between communities and local authorities and developing and promoting coordination among communities. Environmental improvement is seen not as an end itself but, rather, as means of promoting social change. UCEA adopts a bottom-up approach in which communities are the main actors in the processes of problem identification, project design, decision-making, budget management and imlementation to create ownership of interventions.

– People’s Organisation for Participation (POP): CODI’s main partner in imlementing UCEA has been the POP. They have worked organising events such as canal-cleaning weekends, placing the communities in a stronger position in their fight against evictions.

UCEA has stood as an alternative approach to dealing with environmental issues focused on empowerment and education of poor urban communities in environmental management, beyond short-term political agendas. But it has also remained an isolated initiative. The process of urban development and environmental management in Chiang Mai is dominated by struggles at the political, economic and cultural levels, between central and local governments and civic representation. Housing conditions in squatter communities along the Mae Kha canal, is being shaped by conceptions of environmental management in terms of promotion of tourism which has led to accelerated economic growth and a continuous depletion of the environment. Environmental management takes the form of beautification and preservation of historical identity, however fail to consider the contradictions implicit in mass tourism, economic and infrastructure development, environmental decay and historical identity.

ACTORS

Chiang Mai Municipality, CODI, POP, DFA, Lanna Architects

The Village of the Poor Confronts the State: A Geography of Protest in the Assembly of the Poor (B. Missingham)

Missingham, Bruce. ‘The Village of the Poor Confronts the State: A Geography of Protest in the Assembly of the Poor’, in Urban Studies, Vol. 39, No. 9, 2002, pp. 1647-1663.

ABSTRACT

In January 1997 the Assembly of the Poor, a national coalition of rural villagers, urban slum.dwellers and NGOs mobilised over 25,000 people in a mass demosntration, refusing to move for three months wining compensation for people adversely affected by large-scale development projects. The Assembly transformed the streets into the ‘Village of the Poor’. The Assembly mobilises in mass demonstrations because its members have been excluded from institutionalised avenues of participation or influence on state decision-making. Mass protest actions are often intense and moving experiences of participants. Predominantly rural protesters left their localities and homes to occupy spaces where they usually do not belong. The Assembly brought the rural village into the heart of the city and problematised the complex relationship between the two spaces.

Formulation and articulation of collective identity are always involved when subordinated people attempt to redefine their position in the social order. The rally necessarily involved the Assembly in a struggle to assert and legitimise its political identity. The Assembly gave new meanings to the streets creating a symbolic place as common ground for collective identity against the state. The rural protesters relied on being able to sustain its protest for a long period of time and win support in the media and civil society organisations.

The Assembly of the Poor is the forst national association representing the interests of the rural poor. The movement became famous in hailand for its demonstrations on the streets of Bangkok.Every group that joins in a protest rally is motivated by material benefits, for example adequate compensation for livelihoods destroyed by large projects.

The chosen sotes of struggle were highly significant. The occupied a dense network of places where power is institutionalised, practised and symbolised. Most of the villagers rally together in large numbers to force the government to listen to them. They hold the principle of nonviolence. A village leader said: “We have only our feet. We must join together in large number, for long periods of time, before they will listen to us. Rallying together is the only power that people possess“. The assembly strategically chose to occupy streets that were highly visible, but without causing much disruption to Bangkok residents, without blocking the main traffic. They were highly visible to the public.

One of the first things the Assembly did was to name the rally site ‘Village of the Poor’ and proclaim this through rituals, banners and press releases. Spaces were utterly transformed and given new meanings by the protesters. The Village of the Poorr served for three important purposes for the political impact of the protest: unifying political identity, suggesting social order and symbolising a community in crisis. The Assembly promoted an ideological identity and culture of solidarity and the rally itself created a site for the articulation and negotiation of these discourses of solidarity and political identity. The sense of belonging and shared identity was promoted by the high level of organisation and division of labour that was instituted within the rally.

The protesters worked at creating a community, trying to present a ‘good image’ because it was crucial to sustain the protest for a long period of time. Sophisticated organisation and division of labour was put into practice during the protest rally. They relied on a system of collective leadership through meetings of elected villagers’ representatives. The NGO advisers joined their meetings and provided technical, secretarial and material support, as well as co-ordinating with other allied organisations and the media. The Village of the Poor combined domestic activities of villagers with the signs and symbols of public protest. There was a constant turn-around between the village and the protest site. This flow of people and resources link the rally with communities of migrant workers in Bangkok who provided sopport for the Assembly’s rally.

The Village of the Poor simbolically brought city-dwellers face-to-face with poverty and represented a community threatened by development and economic growth. When the rally concluded, the government considered all the grievances petitioned, but when the government coalition fell apart in November 1997 the process ground to a halt once again.

ACTORS

Assembly of the Poor (AOP), Central Government