I’m sorry if my comment was not 100% accurate because I said it from memory. The part about “the king never rejected the petition from those who got death penalty from the court” I got this from Dr. Thongthong Chandrarangsu who said this in front of a class around the year 1993 (I’m one of the students at that time). He said that HMK did not want to give death to anyone even they were the criminals. My impression from that statement was we have no executions in the current reign for very long time (today I checked http://www.correct.go.th/eng/deathpenalty.htm, it was 8 years absent of executions from 1988-1995). After that I recall that I was surprised when I read the first execution news from newspaper. In my mind it was recently because I can remember it well but in fact it was 1996. So I accept my mistake, but I felt that it did not devalue my comment much as a whole.
Fact is the king did not approved executions for quite a long period. When he started approval of it again, it was direct to drug criminals more than other crimes. In this year 60th golden jubilee celebration, there were releasing the prisoners and reduction of sentence for all convicted prisoners (may I conclude that it including murderers) except those who got more than 8 years of sentence in narcotic law. What do you think when he forgave murderers but not drugs-dealers?
My point is that if you bring the king’s standpoint on drugs issue into consideration, when you read his 2003 speech again, you should see that he did not condemned Thaksin as in Vichai N interpreted.
PS. I did not say that the king support extrajudicial killing, don’t accuse me of that.
I’m not sure if you know about the so-called prophecy. I heard this from respected source many years ago, back when all this mess was unimaginable. It tells of ten reigns in the present royal house. The last two are worth special attention. The 9th Reign is called ‘Thin Ga Khao’, or said to mean literally, ‘land of the white crow’, or metaphorically, white crow could mean, ‘caucasian foreigners’. The 10th Reign is called ‘Chao Si Vi Lai’, or the age of the civilized people, so to speak. Anyhow, another story associated with this is that, there are two ways of counting the number of sovereigns, because Rama IV ruled jointly with Pra Pinklao for some time. So, some people will count Pra Pinklao in and hence, the present is the 10th.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. I think it is interesting when people really believe in these supernatural things on a massive scale like in Thailand. I suspect they might start to act in such a way as to make the prophecy self-fulfilling.
Thaksin is an interesting example. It is said that he’s quite superstitious and a lot of what he did was motivated by the fortune tellers. Well, it turns out it is his ceremony in the hall of the emerald buddha that gave traction to Sondhi’s allegation, and that ceremony was supposed to help him fix his bad fortune, or so we’re told. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s quite clear that Thaksin could have nip Sondhi in the bud early but somehow didn’t and that prove to be his undoing.
In any case, a good fortune teller (if ever there is one) does not equal a good fortune fixer. Given that the fame of famous fortune tellers are spread by word of month, I think it’s almost gauranteed that a good fortune teller sucks at fixing your fortune. It is a predicted misfortune that happened despite corrective action that makes people believe the fortune teller is any good. Thus, a misfortune that doesn’t happen means your life goes on as usual and is readily interpreted as inaccurate prediction, and hence a good fortune teller/fixer will have a hard time reaching superstar status.
A very interesting combination of astrology combined with political commentary… I particularly like the idea that Sao Lak Muang have been replaced by the constitution as the centre of temporal power and in the absence of a constitution the land is in peril….that in the final concluding comments after we have been told to have faith in Phra Siam Thewathirat we (Thai people ) need to remember tham dee dai dee etc is a strangely familiar and yet somewhat discordant closing thought…is this sufficiency spirituality?
“On October 19, 2003, after 68 years and 319 lives (316 men and three women) taken by the firing squad, Thailand marked the introduction of lethal injection as a means of execution by a solemn ceremony at the Bang Kwang jail – notoriously known as the ‘Bangkok Hilton’. The firing squad had replaced decapitation as the method of execution in 1935.
On December 12, 2003, Thailand carried out its first executions by lethal injection, putting to death three people convicted of drug trafficking and one of murder at the Bang Kwang jail. Three drugs were used in the executions – the first sedated the convict, the second relaxed the muscles and the third stopped the heart.
These were the only executions in 2003. Nine people had been put to death in 2002 and 18 in 2001.
For the second consecutive year, since the last ten years, no executions were registered in Thailand in 2005.”
(Source: Hands off Cain – Against Death Penalty in the World)
———————————-
But even if there were executions, I have no fight with that. Those were JUDICIALLY carried out according to due process of laws.
But of course Assany the King support the ‘war against drugs’, and, the King was strongly against the drug trade. Nobody refutes this as a fact.
But the war agaist drugs have to carried out according to the rules of law, with due process to all suspects, according to the Thai constitution.
I haven’t read all of Austrialia’s carbon accounting framework, but it is based on satellite imagery, which presents a serious problem in using it as a model for Burma. The thing is, you need to “groundtruth” your imagery. You have to check a part of the area covered by the image to see if what you think you are seeing is in fact what you are seeing. In other words, if you say you are seeing teak forest, you need to visit part of the area and see if it really is teak, and not some other hardwood, or bamboo.
What are the chances that the Burmese regime would allow access to the country to calibrate the imagery with what is there on the ground?
In a previous post I referred to the 2004 elections. I must have been hallucinating at the time. There weren’t any elections in 2004 – they were held in early February 2005. I apologise if I mislead anybody.
My story about ‘local electoral culture’ is about the local Mahachon Party candidate. In a previous post I’ve written about his ‘caravan’ and the fantastic morlum concert/election rally he put on (which absolutely everybody went too) and the visibility of his campaign (in terms of election posters plastered on everything that didn’t move and reflective stickers stuck on everything that did). He is the son of a well-connected and extremely rich Sino-Thai rice miller/money lender and seemed to have the financial and/or physical support of many of the Sino-Thai businessmen in the district – including Mr. WT the headman of the local tambon. Late in the campaign the candidate was being lead around from house to house in the village by Mr. WT who performed the introduction and ‘broke the ice’. The Marhachon Party candidate seemed like a nice young fella, he was extremely polite and appeared genuinely responsive to voters concerns. Prominent amongst many ‘issues’ that the villagers brought up concerned the surfacing of the village roads. Only a small stretch had been concreted in the past and the amount of dust/particulate matter floating around in the air was causing lots of eye/lung infections amongst the kids. The candidate promised to ‘fight’ to get money for the village to fix the problem. Other prominent issues were the price they were getting for their rice, the revolving village fund and ‘universal’ health care. The candidate promised that he would match the scheme that TRT was putting forward to guarantee a ‘floor price’ for rice and would ‘fight’ to retain ‘universal’ health care and the village fund. All pretty boring and straight forward electioneering really.
The ‘hua khanang, Mr. WT, was I think, hired to help with the electioneering for the duration of the campaign. (I ran into him at the rice mill when some of the villagers were selling some of their rice a week or two before). I’m not sure how tambon heads are get their position – if they are appointed by Bangkok or chosen by and from the ‘collective’ of village leaders. However, the gossip (and that’s all it could be) around the village is that he ‘bought’ the job off the previous the tambon head so that he could have a monthly wage. Mr. WT is a pretty interesting fella. He proudly identifies himself as Sino-Thai and associates himself with other Sino-Thai businessmen in the district. However, I don’t think that life has always been too easy. Like a lot of the 40 + year old men in the tambon, he spent a number of years working in Iraq as a ‘foreman’ (everyone who went to Iraq tells you that they were a ‘foreman’ – but I actually believe this guy) of a steel tying/concreting gang building the power stations, bridges, hospitals etc. that were later demolished by ‘the collation of the willing’. On his return from Iraq he had either saved enough money, or could borrow enough, to somehow got his hands on an old ‘back-hoe’ and four older dump trucks and set him self up in as an ‘earth mover’. You find these types of businesses working all over the northeast in the dry season. They buy and sometimes steal ‘top soil’ from the rice fields and then sell it to the villagers who use it to build up the soil around their house – this soil then gets washed away again during the wet season and finds its way down the Mun and Mekong River and eventually, I guess, into the South China Sea. He also built himself a huge modernist style concrete house/bunker; an architectural type typically associated with Sino-Thai living in the northeast. But that was 20 or so years ago and the house is showing signs of decay and in need of renovation.
While the candidate was having ‘polite’ discussion with some of the householders Mr. WT turned his attention to me. Being the headman of the tambon I always try to engage him as a potential informant; as some one with a lot of local knowledge. However, perhaps just because I’m a white fella (and that he thinks that this is what white fellas want to hear), he always very quickly steers the conservation towards his sexual prowess and problems with the ‘Thai’ character that prevents economic development taking off. I’m still working on strategies to get the conservation past this point and then I can, hopefully, get a better idea of what he is about.
We had to return to Australia a week or so before the election so I can’t offer any observations of what went on during this time. However, I’m sure Mr WT would love to be in a position of power and influence, and when it comes to tambon business I’m sure that he has. People treat him with smiles and respect when he is around and gossip about him a fair bit when he is not. But, when it came to convincing voters of whom to vote for on Election Day the evidence was, as expressed by the amount of votes the Mahachon Party candidate received, that his influence did not extend to this act.
BTW. By the time we had returned in May 2006 most the streets in the village had been sealed (all the busy ones at least) and the rate of eye and lung infections amongst the kids had been reduced remarkably. I guess that TRT was making the same promises.
thanks for your comments. Incentives for avoided deforestation is a really big topic right now under the UNFCCC (Climate Change Convention) negotiations. Hence the recent World Bank report.
There’s a sizeable research/policy development process going on right now that sheds light on some of the questions. Some of it was discussed at a UNFCCC workshop in Rome in September, see http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/lulucf/items/3745.php.
My humble self and a few forest policy buffs have a paper on this coming out in the journal Climate Policy – not online yet but happy to send you the paper.
Very little or none of this work is on Burma, I suspect. It’s either generic, or focussed on Latin America, Indonesia and sometimes PNG.
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement at the time. […]
[…] Back in June – when a coup was almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh – I wrote my very first piece for New Mandala. It was published on 20 June 2006. I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
[…] In a bizaarre turn of events, about which I claim no special insight or voodoo-induced perception, something special happened almost exactly 3 months after I wrote this post.┬ On 20┬ September 2006, Thailand woke up to┬ the news that a coup had occurred and a Royalist, military government was in control.┬ Yellow t-shirts were, I understand, still┬ worn that day, exactly three months after my original post.┬ […]
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time. […]
[…] For New Mandala readers keen to learn more about carbon trading and its relationship to logging in Burma, the Australian government’s National Carbon Accounting System website provides a wealth of detailed information.┬ It can, among other things,┬ give you an idea of how carbon accounting┬ calculations can be made, based largely on analysing “land-based sources and sinks”. It shows┬ how some governments are beginning to conceive their place in the global carbon economy.┬ This Australian system, with its national-level modeling,┬ is some years in front of┬ what┬ I imagine is┬ possible┬ for Burma.┬ I don’t think that such detailed modeling has even yet been attempted for the Burmese case.┬ […]
From your very different perspectives you have both made key points that seem to further undermine Butler\’s argument. These points hold for Burma, and I guess for other places too. Frank shows that rental payments would lead to far lower transfers than Butler suggests and Aiontay shows that many people will still use the forests for the basic goods that sustain life. Thanks for these great contributions.
In my mind, your extra criticisms all beg another big set of of questions. Simply, is there a better approach than the model Butler suggests? Are there other ways of doing what he seeks to do? Or is his unworkable scheme still the best (or only?) option?
In Burma, his plans for \”avoided deforestation\” just seem impossible – at least under current conditions. But are there other potential models that could actually work?
In my view, The King’s 2003 speech was support War on Drugs. The King was strongly against drug trade. Until recently there were no executions of the convicts in Thailand for many years, because the king never rejected the petition from those who got death penalty from the court. First who was executed after long absent was the drug trader, and most executions after that were also drug traders. I heard that he will not forgive any case about drug any more, because he think that drug crime is more serious than other crime since it destroy the society not only for individuals.
There does indeed seem a chance that there will be some sort of incentive system for avoided deforestation under the UN Climate Change Convention. The chance was missed under the Kyoto Protocol, and now the talks seem to be moving surprisingly fast.
BUT at a glance, the magnitudes won’t be anywhere near the total potentials that Butler calculates. That’s because…
Carbon payments of the magnitude assumed would only be made for ‘verifiable’, permanent emissions savings. So each country would have to somehow demonstrate that they indeed would have converted a given piece of land, if it hadn’t been for the carbon payments – and then guarantee that the forests will keep standing. That’s difficult or impossible. Certainly sounds difficult for Burma!
An alternative are ‘rental’ payments, where for example each year a small payment is made for forests that still stand. Deals with the permanence problem, but has the same problem of proving that forests would have been converted otherwise. And prices paid will be lower.
A more realistic outcome would be incentive or reward payments for policies and programmes aimed at reducing deforestation rates. Negotiate payments for defined actions, and perhaps (but not necessarily) defined outcomes. Perhaps even administered through the GEF…? Then the payments are likely to be much, much lower than computed in Butler’s price*quantity approach.
At any rate, the question needs to be asked: Will rich countries really be prepared to make financial transfers of tens of billions of dollars per year to tropical forest countries??
[…] Over the past few weeks there has been a vigorous debate going on among New Mandala readers about the Thaksin’s government’s so called “war on drugs” (much of it in the 55 comments to this post). We welcome the debate on this crucially important issue. But there has been a significant amount of repetition in many of the recent posts. In particular, various perspectives on the king’s views on the matter have been widely and thoroughly canvassed. Other readers now have, I think, more than enough information to make up their own minds on what the king did, or did not, say. Further comments on the “war on drugs” are encouraged. But we are looking for original contributions that provide new perspectives and insights into this crucially important issue. Re-statements of well rehearsed arguments are likely to fall foul of editorial discretion! […]
While I agree with all of the issues you raise regarding carbon trading, there is another aspect to deforestation in Burma, which is the dependence of the population, particularly in the mountainous areas where the logging takes place, on wood for fuel and construction. One village I visited north of Lashio made almost all of its income off charcoal production; we bought charcoal for our own use when we passed through the village. There was a whole series of kilns dug into the hillsides around the village. Also, many of the Kachin villagers derived part of their income during the down times in the agricultural season by cutting firewood.
Furthermore, what other construction material is there in the villages other than wood or bamboo? Brick, concrete, stone and other building materials are too expensive or just not available for the average person. In the Kachin villages, the only building not made of wood or bamboo that I saw would be the church. Then there are the hoes, plows, bee hive, mortars and pestles, and even the stoppers for the tubs at the hot springs in Lashio that are all made of wood.
Even if the benefits of carbon trading were to be redistributed down from the generals to the local populations (an extremely doubtful proposition, as you note), how could it be used to alleviate the need for wood by the population?
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Surayud to bring love, harmony and virtue (with strengthened military potential)!
I’m sorry if my comment was not 100% accurate because I said it from memory. The part about “the king never rejected the petition from those who got death penalty from the court” I got this from Dr. Thongthong Chandrarangsu who said this in front of a class around the year 1993 (I’m one of the students at that time). He said that HMK did not want to give death to anyone even they were the criminals. My impression from that statement was we have no executions in the current reign for very long time (today I checked http://www.correct.go.th/eng/deathpenalty.htm, it was 8 years absent of executions from 1988-1995). After that I recall that I was surprised when I read the first execution news from newspaper. In my mind it was recently because I can remember it well but in fact it was 1996. So I accept my mistake, but I felt that it did not devalue my comment much as a whole.
Fact is the king did not approved executions for quite a long period. When he started approval of it again, it was direct to drug criminals more than other crimes. In this year 60th golden jubilee celebration, there were releasing the prisoners and reduction of sentence for all convicted prisoners (may I conclude that it including murderers) except those who got more than 8 years of sentence in narcotic law. What do you think when he forgave murderers but not drugs-dealers?
My point is that if you bring the king’s standpoint on drugs issue into consideration, when you read his 2003 speech again, you should see that he did not condemned Thaksin as in Vichai N interpreted.
PS. I did not say that the king support extrajudicial killing, don’t accuse me of that.
Thai capital to shift (it’s in the stars)!
I’m not sure if you know about the so-called prophecy. I heard this from respected source many years ago, back when all this mess was unimaginable. It tells of ten reigns in the present royal house. The last two are worth special attention. The 9th Reign is called ‘Thin Ga Khao’, or said to mean literally, ‘land of the white crow’, or metaphorically, white crow could mean, ‘caucasian foreigners’. The 10th Reign is called ‘Chao Si Vi Lai’, or the age of the civilized people, so to speak. Anyhow, another story associated with this is that, there are two ways of counting the number of sovereigns, because Rama IV ruled jointly with Pra Pinklao for some time. So, some people will count Pra Pinklao in and hence, the present is the 10th.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. I think it is interesting when people really believe in these supernatural things on a massive scale like in Thailand. I suspect they might start to act in such a way as to make the prophecy self-fulfilling.
Thaksin is an interesting example. It is said that he’s quite superstitious and a lot of what he did was motivated by the fortune tellers. Well, it turns out it is his ceremony in the hall of the emerald buddha that gave traction to Sondhi’s allegation, and that ceremony was supposed to help him fix his bad fortune, or so we’re told. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s quite clear that Thaksin could have nip Sondhi in the bud early but somehow didn’t and that prove to be his undoing.
In any case, a good fortune teller (if ever there is one) does not equal a good fortune fixer. Given that the fame of famous fortune tellers are spread by word of month, I think it’s almost gauranteed that a good fortune teller sucks at fixing your fortune. It is a predicted misfortune that happened despite corrective action that makes people believe the fortune teller is any good. Thus, a misfortune that doesn’t happen means your life goes on as usual and is readily interpreted as inaccurate prediction, and hence a good fortune teller/fixer will have a hard time reaching superstar status.
Thai capital to shift (it’s in the stars)!
A very interesting combination of astrology combined with political commentary… I particularly like the idea that Sao Lak Muang have been replaced by the constitution as the centre of temporal power and in the absence of a constitution the land is in peril….that in the final concluding comments after we have been told to have faith in Phra Siam Thewathirat we (Thai people ) need to remember tham dee dai dee etc is a strangely familiar and yet somewhat discordant closing thought…is this sufficiency spirituality?
Surayud to bring love, harmony and virtue (with strengthened military potential)!
Assany – First let us get your facts right:
“On October 19, 2003, after 68 years and 319 lives (316 men and three women) taken by the firing squad, Thailand marked the introduction of lethal injection as a means of execution by a solemn ceremony at the Bang Kwang jail – notoriously known as the ‘Bangkok Hilton’. The firing squad had replaced decapitation as the method of execution in 1935.
On December 12, 2003, Thailand carried out its first executions by lethal injection, putting to death three people convicted of drug trafficking and one of murder at the Bang Kwang jail. Three drugs were used in the executions – the first sedated the convict, the second relaxed the muscles and the third stopped the heart.
These were the only executions in 2003. Nine people had been put to death in 2002 and 18 in 2001.
For the second consecutive year, since the last ten years, no executions were registered in Thailand in 2005.”
(Source: Hands off Cain – Against Death Penalty in the World)
———————————-
But even if there were executions, I have no fight with that. Those were JUDICIALLY carried out according to due process of laws.
But of course Assany the King support the ‘war against drugs’, and, the King was strongly against the drug trade. Nobody refutes this as a fact.
But the war agaist drugs have to carried out according to the rules of law, with due process to all suspects, according to the Thai constitution.
Carbon accounting in the Burmese scene
I haven’t read all of Austrialia’s carbon accounting framework, but it is based on satellite imagery, which presents a serious problem in using it as a model for Burma. The thing is, you need to “groundtruth” your imagery. You have to check a part of the area covered by the image to see if what you think you are seeing is in fact what you are seeing. In other words, if you say you are seeing teak forest, you need to visit part of the area and see if it really is teak, and not some other hardwood, or bamboo.
What are the chances that the Burmese regime would allow access to the country to calibrate the imagery with what is there on the ground?
Reminder – make your contribution on local electoral culture
Sorry – this is a long post.
In a previous post I referred to the 2004 elections. I must have been hallucinating at the time. There weren’t any elections in 2004 – they were held in early February 2005. I apologise if I mislead anybody.
My story about ‘local electoral culture’ is about the local Mahachon Party candidate. In a previous post I’ve written about his ‘caravan’ and the fantastic morlum concert/election rally he put on (which absolutely everybody went too) and the visibility of his campaign (in terms of election posters plastered on everything that didn’t move and reflective stickers stuck on everything that did). He is the son of a well-connected and extremely rich Sino-Thai rice miller/money lender and seemed to have the financial and/or physical support of many of the Sino-Thai businessmen in the district – including Mr. WT the headman of the local tambon. Late in the campaign the candidate was being lead around from house to house in the village by Mr. WT who performed the introduction and ‘broke the ice’. The Marhachon Party candidate seemed like a nice young fella, he was extremely polite and appeared genuinely responsive to voters concerns. Prominent amongst many ‘issues’ that the villagers brought up concerned the surfacing of the village roads. Only a small stretch had been concreted in the past and the amount of dust/particulate matter floating around in the air was causing lots of eye/lung infections amongst the kids. The candidate promised to ‘fight’ to get money for the village to fix the problem. Other prominent issues were the price they were getting for their rice, the revolving village fund and ‘universal’ health care. The candidate promised that he would match the scheme that TRT was putting forward to guarantee a ‘floor price’ for rice and would ‘fight’ to retain ‘universal’ health care and the village fund. All pretty boring and straight forward electioneering really.
The ‘hua khanang, Mr. WT, was I think, hired to help with the electioneering for the duration of the campaign. (I ran into him at the rice mill when some of the villagers were selling some of their rice a week or two before). I’m not sure how tambon heads are get their position – if they are appointed by Bangkok or chosen by and from the ‘collective’ of village leaders. However, the gossip (and that’s all it could be) around the village is that he ‘bought’ the job off the previous the tambon head so that he could have a monthly wage. Mr. WT is a pretty interesting fella. He proudly identifies himself as Sino-Thai and associates himself with other Sino-Thai businessmen in the district. However, I don’t think that life has always been too easy. Like a lot of the 40 + year old men in the tambon, he spent a number of years working in Iraq as a ‘foreman’ (everyone who went to Iraq tells you that they were a ‘foreman’ – but I actually believe this guy) of a steel tying/concreting gang building the power stations, bridges, hospitals etc. that were later demolished by ‘the collation of the willing’. On his return from Iraq he had either saved enough money, or could borrow enough, to somehow got his hands on an old ‘back-hoe’ and four older dump trucks and set him self up in as an ‘earth mover’. You find these types of businesses working all over the northeast in the dry season. They buy and sometimes steal ‘top soil’ from the rice fields and then sell it to the villagers who use it to build up the soil around their house – this soil then gets washed away again during the wet season and finds its way down the Mun and Mekong River and eventually, I guess, into the South China Sea. He also built himself a huge modernist style concrete house/bunker; an architectural type typically associated with Sino-Thai living in the northeast. But that was 20 or so years ago and the house is showing signs of decay and in need of renovation.
While the candidate was having ‘polite’ discussion with some of the householders Mr. WT turned his attention to me. Being the headman of the tambon I always try to engage him as a potential informant; as some one with a lot of local knowledge. However, perhaps just because I’m a white fella (and that he thinks that this is what white fellas want to hear), he always very quickly steers the conservation towards his sexual prowess and problems with the ‘Thai’ character that prevents economic development taking off. I’m still working on strategies to get the conservation past this point and then I can, hopefully, get a better idea of what he is about.
We had to return to Australia a week or so before the election so I can’t offer any observations of what went on during this time. However, I’m sure Mr WT would love to be in a position of power and influence, and when it comes to tambon business I’m sure that he has. People treat him with smiles and respect when he is around and gossip about him a fair bit when he is not. But, when it came to convincing voters of whom to vote for on Election Day the evidence was, as expressed by the amount of votes the Mahachon Party candidate received, that his influence did not extend to this act.
BTW. By the time we had returned in May 2006 most the streets in the village had been sealed (all the busy ones at least) and the rate of eye and lung infections amongst the kids had been reduced remarkably. I guess that TRT was making the same promises.
Carbon trading up Burmese GDP?
Nicholas,
thanks for your comments. Incentives for avoided deforestation is a really big topic right now under the UNFCCC (Climate Change Convention) negotiations. Hence the recent World Bank report.
There’s a sizeable research/policy development process going on right now that sheds light on some of the questions. Some of it was discussed at a UNFCCC workshop in Rome in September, see http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/lulucf/items/3745.php.
My humble self and a few forest policy buffs have a paper on this coming out in the journal Climate Policy – not online yet but happy to send you the paper.
Very little or none of this work is on Burma, I suspect. It’s either generic, or focussed on Latin America, Indonesia and sometimes PNG.
A yellow revolution?
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement at the time. […]
Fisticuffs at Central World Plaza
[…] Back in June – when a coup was almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh – I wrote my very first piece for New Mandala. It was published on 20 June 2006. I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
Monday = Yellow
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
“Yes sir, I understood”
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time and had been struck by the yellow shirts that had become a ubiquitous social and political statement by then. […]
Extending the life of the junta
[…] In a bizaarre turn of events, about which I claim no special insight or voodoo-induced perception, something special happened almost exactly 3 months after I wrote this post.┬ On 20┬ September 2006, Thailand woke up to┬ the news that a coup had occurred and a Royalist, military government was in control.┬ Yellow t-shirts were, I understand, still┬ worn that day, exactly three months after my original post.┬ […]
Yellow Fever
[…] Back in June – when┬ a coup┬ was┬ almost unthinkable and when the afterglow of the royal celebrations was still fresh -┬ I┬ wrote my very┬ first piece for New Mandala.┬ It was published on┬ 20 June 2006.┬ I was in Bangkok at the time. […]
Carbon trading up Burmese GDP?
[…] For New Mandala readers keen to learn more about carbon trading and its relationship to logging in Burma, the Australian government’s National Carbon Accounting System website provides a wealth of detailed information.┬ It can, among other things,┬ give you an idea of how carbon accounting┬ calculations can be made, based largely on analysing “land-based sources and sinks”. It shows┬ how some governments are beginning to conceive their place in the global carbon economy.┬ This Australian system, with its national-level modeling,┬ is some years in front of┬ what┬ I imagine is┬ possible┬ for Burma.┬ I don’t think that such detailed modeling has even yet been attempted for the Burmese case.┬ […]
Carbon trading up Burmese GDP?
Thanks Aiontay and Frank –
From your very different perspectives you have both made key points that seem to further undermine Butler\’s argument. These points hold for Burma, and I guess for other places too. Frank shows that rental payments would lead to far lower transfers than Butler suggests and Aiontay shows that many people will still use the forests for the basic goods that sustain life. Thanks for these great contributions.
In my mind, your extra criticisms all beg another big set of of questions. Simply, is there a better approach than the model Butler suggests? Are there other ways of doing what he seeks to do? Or is his unworkable scheme still the best (or only?) option?
In Burma, his plans for \”avoided deforestation\” just seem impossible – at least under current conditions. But are there other potential models that could actually work?
Any thoughts?
Nich
Surayud to bring love, harmony and virtue (with strengthened military potential)!
In my view, The King’s 2003 speech was support War on Drugs. The King was strongly against drug trade. Until recently there were no executions of the convicts in Thailand for many years, because the king never rejected the petition from those who got death penalty from the court. First who was executed after long absent was the drug trader, and most executions after that were also drug traders. I heard that he will not forgive any case about drug any more, because he think that drug crime is more serious than other crime since it destroy the society not only for individuals.
Carbon trading up Burmese GDP?
There does indeed seem a chance that there will be some sort of incentive system for avoided deforestation under the UN Climate Change Convention. The chance was missed under the Kyoto Protocol, and now the talks seem to be moving surprisingly fast.
BUT at a glance, the magnitudes won’t be anywhere near the total potentials that Butler calculates. That’s because…
Carbon payments of the magnitude assumed would only be made for ‘verifiable’, permanent emissions savings. So each country would have to somehow demonstrate that they indeed would have converted a given piece of land, if it hadn’t been for the carbon payments – and then guarantee that the forests will keep standing. That’s difficult or impossible. Certainly sounds difficult for Burma!
An alternative are ‘rental’ payments, where for example each year a small payment is made for forests that still stand. Deals with the permanence problem, but has the same problem of proving that forests would have been converted otherwise. And prices paid will be lower.
A more realistic outcome would be incentive or reward payments for policies and programmes aimed at reducing deforestation rates. Negotiate payments for defined actions, and perhaps (but not necessarily) defined outcomes. Perhaps even administered through the GEF…? Then the payments are likely to be much, much lower than computed in Butler’s price*quantity approach.
At any rate, the question needs to be asked: Will rich countries really be prepared to make financial transfers of tens of billions of dollars per year to tropical forest countries??
Surayud to bring love, harmony and virtue (with strengthened military potential)!
[…] Over the past few weeks there has been a vigorous debate going on among New Mandala readers about the Thaksin’s government’s so called “war on drugs” (much of it in the 55 comments to this post). We welcome the debate on this crucially important issue. But there has been a significant amount of repetition in many of the recent posts. In particular, various perspectives on the king’s views on the matter have been widely and thoroughly canvassed. Other readers now have, I think, more than enough information to make up their own minds on what the king did, or did not, say. Further comments on the “war on drugs” are encouraged. But we are looking for original contributions that provide new perspectives and insights into this crucially important issue. Re-statements of well rehearsed arguments are likely to fall foul of editorial discretion! […]
Carbon trading up Burmese GDP?
While I agree with all of the issues you raise regarding carbon trading, there is another aspect to deforestation in Burma, which is the dependence of the population, particularly in the mountainous areas where the logging takes place, on wood for fuel and construction. One village I visited north of Lashio made almost all of its income off charcoal production; we bought charcoal for our own use when we passed through the village. There was a whole series of kilns dug into the hillsides around the village. Also, many of the Kachin villagers derived part of their income during the down times in the agricultural season by cutting firewood.
Furthermore, what other construction material is there in the villages other than wood or bamboo? Brick, concrete, stone and other building materials are too expensive or just not available for the average person. In the Kachin villages, the only building not made of wood or bamboo that I saw would be the church. Then there are the hoes, plows, bee hive, mortars and pestles, and even the stoppers for the tubs at the hot springs in Lashio that are all made of wood.
Even if the benefits of carbon trading were to be redistributed down from the generals to the local populations (an extremely doubtful proposition, as you note), how could it be used to alleviate the need for wood by the population?
Reminder – make your contribution on local electoral culture
Chris – let’s hear your story about the Mahachon candidate. And thanks for the reference tot he article. And Patiwat, thanks for your refernce too.