Societal change and the control of deforestation in Thailand

Thailand underwent a major shift in forest policy in the second half of the 1980s to promote sustainable management and control of deforestation. This paper puts this in the context of earlier changes in forest policy and analyses the underlying causes of the shift by analysing changes in the relative strength of different interest groups within the framework of a policy pressures model. Internal pressures had a stronger impact on Thai forest policy than external pressures. Protectionist groups became more numerous and more powerful in Thailand in the 1980s in relation to exploitative groups, and their rise in influence was facilitated by continuing progress in democratization and pluralization, linked to the consequences of economic development. Such political change could help to explain the apparent link between better environmental management and economic development shown in the Environmental Kuznets Curve.