Pathway to legal timber harvesting on public land clarified in Thailand

Sustainable timber production and harvesting on public land in Thailand is central to national efforts to promote economic forestry and achieve the 15 percent increase in forest cover to reach the Thai government’s commitment of 40 percent coverage.  However, many operators on public land are de facto operating illegally due to unclear laws and regulations, complex permission processes and the lack of legal clarity on timber harvesting in certain types of tenured public lands. These difficulties disproportionately impact poor farmers who had expected to economically benefit from harvesting their planted trees.  

The FAO-EU FLEGT Programme has been supporting RECOFTC to address these issues since 2016 via a series of projects to foster an enabling environment for small-scale timber operators to produce legal timber on public land and comply with legality and supply chain control requirements. After several years of dedicated work, RECOFTC has equipped farmers operating on agricultural land reform (Sor Por Kor) land with the knowledge and understanding to register their own land under the Forest Plantation Act.

As part of RECOFTC’s FLOURISH project, we work with communities and the private sector to generate sustainable forest products, services and commodities that will in turn help to guarantee forest protection. Through RECOFTC's implementation of the Voices for Mekong Forests (V4MF) project, RECOFTC and other partners work to improve forest governance across the Mekong region. In this story from the field, FLOURISH supported the discussions with the private sector and the smallholders in Nan Province, Thailand, and V4MF supported civil society organizations participating in the negotiation for the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between Thailand and the European Union. V4MF also helped establish a system for recording tree data to help track tree tenure.

Read the full story on the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme website.