13 Indigenous Knowledge and the Use of Fallow Forests in Northern Thailand

Fallow forests, which have been generated by shifting cultivation, cover large parts of the highlands of Northern Thailand. This paper presents the case study of a village, in which a particularly sustainable form of shifting cultivation was practiced until the early 1990s. Secondary forests, which regenerate on the fallow swiddens of this village were found to be surprisingly rich in tree species and complex with respect to stand structure. Most of the species occurring in these forests are useful within the context of a traditional subsistence-oriented economy and there exists an extensive indigenous knowledge concerning the potential uses of these trees. Swidden cultivation is discouraged by authorities in Thailand and is increasingly being replaced by permanent farming. This change of land use causes a reduction in the area covered by fallow forests with negative consequences for the biodiversity and landscape ecology of the concerned region. In this paper, the argument will be put forward that fallow forests, which are ecologically more valuable than is usually supposed, could also play the role of an economic resource in the more commercially oriented economy that is currently developing in Northern Thailand. Indigenous management practices and indigenous knowledge of tree species could be the basis for devising land use systems for the utilisation of these fallow forests. Such a development has not been possible until recently within a political framework, which did not provide for the legal use of forests by village communities. The introduction of community forestry legislation, however, may provide a basis for the management of fallow forests with the aid of indigenous knowledge.