The Situation of Watershed forest Resource Management Under the Local Cultural Wisdom of the Karen People in the Royal Development Project, Chomthong District, Chiang Mai Province Thailand DOI:

Abstract

This article aims to study the situation of watershed forest resource management under the cultural wisdom of the Karen people according to the royal development guidelines in Chomthong District, Chiang Mai Province. The research methodology is qualitative. The instruments comprised the observation lists, the indebted interview, the interview and the cooperation workshop activities. The participants were local philosophy, leaders, villagers, academic people, and local developers. The data were presented through synthesis, interpretation, and description.

         The results shown 1) The condition under the Local Wisdom and Culture of watershed forest management in the community found that the history of community’s habitant has been longer than 200 years which their lives related to shifting cultivation for living in commercial agriculture afterward from the outside organizations in order to stop growing the opium. Moreover, this also supports growing the economic and state plants, and continuing the process of forest concession policy for the entrepreneurs, traders, and the state built the critical race theory on the power, knowledge, conflict, violent and various ethnic bias, for example, the mobile plantation from hilltribe people. Since the Queen Sirikit had built the farm under the Royal-Initiative Project to raise the communities’ lives and both preserve the forest and 2) the management of the watershed forest under the Royal-Initiative Project found that the idea of Sufficient Economy has related to the tradition and the local wisdom, for example, binding the trees (Deputoo), raising the gods of the wood (Luitapawa), raising ghosts of fire (Lujmeito). These ceremonies affected to the social and spiritual space