Speaker 1: This is a C. N. A podcast.
Speaker 1: Rainforests are a defining feature of many parts of Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: From the great green expanses of Borneo to cambodia's misty
Speaker 1: cardamom mountains. These ancient landscapes support so much life over
Speaker 1: the past few decades, much of this region's rain forests
Speaker 1: have been lost. But as we start to better appreciate
Speaker 1: what they do for the planet, those trends have reversed.
Speaker 1: Southeast. Asia is now leading global efforts to protect rainforests
Speaker 1: which are critical as a tool to fight climate change.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the climate conversations, I'm Jack Board and
Speaker 1: in this special series, Asia's Great Climate Frontiers, I bring
Speaker 1: you stories of ecosystems at risk if you haven't already
Speaker 1: do find the first four episodes of the series wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. This week, I'm in southern Thailand
Speaker 1: in a country where deforestation was once rife. I see
Speaker 1: firsthand the benefits communities can discover and nature is preserved
Speaker 1: rather than destroyed. This is AsIA's Great Climate Frontiers.
Speaker 1: I'm on patrol with a group of rangers from the
Speaker 1: Forest Protection unit of Khao Sok National Park from afar
Speaker 1: you could certainly mistake them for a military unit. The men,
Speaker 1: some experienced some as young as 19 where camouflage fatigues,
Speaker 1: they carry rifles and mean business,
Speaker 1: but their successes over recent years means they're more likely
Speaker 1: to be looking for elephants to monitor than poachers to catch.
Speaker 1: Today's patrol is shorter and the discoveries a bit more mundane,
Speaker 1: a plastic bottle here and there. Even these small things
Speaker 1: indicate human activity that will need to be recorded. The
Speaker 1: rangers leader is pancetta.
Speaker 1: He's been doing this for 20 years but his family
Speaker 1: has a much longer history in this rainforest.
Speaker 1: My name is, I am a forest protection official and
Speaker 1: central patrolling official for national park. I started working when
Speaker 1: I was 20 years old. I followed my father from
Speaker 1: when I was a child. We looked for things here
Speaker 1: and there. So I learned which spots had a lot
Speaker 1: of animals, which spots had resources such as fruit trees
Speaker 1: or seasonal plants that we can eat.
Speaker 1: It was knowledge passed from generation to generation. Originally every
Speaker 1: family here had fathers who were working like poachers. They
Speaker 1: weren't actual poachers but rather would search for food. We
Speaker 1: didn't have laws. So a national park at the time,
Speaker 1: they naturally had to feed themselves by foraging from the
Speaker 1: forest such as finding bamboo shoots wildlife for an area
Speaker 1: where they wanted to grow crops for the family. This
Speaker 1: is my home.
Speaker 1: If we don't take care of our home, then we
Speaker 1: can't hope for other people to take care of it.
Speaker 1: To write the rangers cover a huge area of the
Speaker 1: national park here in Surat Thani Province. Their patrols can
Speaker 1: last as long as 14 days as they venture deep
Speaker 1: into the wilderness. Most of Kawasaki consists of virgin rainforest,
Speaker 1: its dense and humid part of an ancient rainforest system
Speaker 1: that's older than the amazon and it's loud.
Speaker 1: But over the years has changed in the 1980s, the
Speaker 1: construction of a hydroelectric dam project flooded 165of forest reservoir
Speaker 1: that was created is enormous. Nearly a quarter the size
Speaker 1: of Singapore.
Speaker 1: Just two years earlier, the area had been decreed a
Speaker 1: national park meaning no logging or mining was permitted, but
Speaker 1: Thailand needed electricity and the dam project was made a priority.
Speaker 1: The flooding that resulted caused massive upheaval. Many animals drowned
Speaker 1: and everyone living in villages in the area was forced out. Sharon,
Speaker 1: ping john, now 78 years old, resides on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of the national Park.
Speaker 1: He remembers that time with sadness. One day the subdistrict
Speaker 1: chief said there would be a survey and a dam
Speaker 1: will be built. We needed to be prepared. We might
Speaker 1: not be able to live here in our old place.
Speaker 1: The villages were wondering where we could go and we
Speaker 1: were told that the houses would be moved and we
Speaker 1: would be given cropland as well.
Speaker 1: We lived there until the rumors turned into real life.
Speaker 1: Once they started drilling the tunnel, we were certain that
Speaker 1: this was serious. I say that we lost everything. Whoever
Speaker 1: has to leave the place, they used to live the bed,
Speaker 1: they used to sleep, the house they used to stay in.
Speaker 1: What would they feel? We cannot find the words that
Speaker 1: describe it all.
Speaker 1: Despite the lingering memories of life before the dam today,
Speaker 1: cal is a beacon for eco tourism in southern Thailand.
Speaker 1: International visitors are drawn to forest trekking and exploring the
Speaker 1: aqua marine waters and dramatic limestone peaks. The place has
Speaker 1: been labeled the Gui lin of Thailand for its similarities
Speaker 1: to china's famous cast landscape. The influx of money to
Speaker 1: the area has been a catalyst for local behaviors to
Speaker 1: change as well. This is Ter Taekwondo, the chief of
Speaker 1: CAl national Park.
Speaker 1: The direct benefit is that villagers now work as tour
Speaker 1: guides and lead tourists to different spots in the National Park. 80%
Speaker 1: of the tour guides are from the local area. When
Speaker 1: former poachers so that there were a lot of tourists coming,
Speaker 1: they switch from wildlife hunting to become tour guides and
Speaker 1: boat operators. They also open restaurants or shops. This means
Speaker 1: they can earn a direct income and it isn't illegal.
Speaker 1: This makes people help with conservation of nature. Life here
Speaker 1: is a lot different than in the past. They've joined
Speaker 1: us and cooperate in taking care of the forests and
Speaker 1: wildlife and this is why incidents of encroaching destruction of
Speaker 1: resources and poaching of wildlife is now zero. After listening
Speaker 1: to to tie, I'm wondering how important eco tourism can
Speaker 1: be as a tool to promote forest protection in Thailand.
Speaker 2: Eco tourism is one of a bundle or a portfolio
Speaker 2: of potential strategies that we can use to reward, to compensate,
Speaker 2: to incentivize local communities to in a lot of cases
Speaker 2: continue doing the good work that they've already been doing
Speaker 2: in terms of taking care of their force and their
Speaker 2: natural resources.
Speaker 1: That's Regan Pyro Ma Hackett, a senior program officer at rico,
Speaker 1: an international not for profit assisting local communities to actively
Speaker 1: manage forests in Asia and the pacific. She says ecotourism
Speaker 1: is just one of the tools in the kit.
Speaker 2: People are confronted with difficult choices and tradeoffs and when
Speaker 2: you want to send grandma to the hospital and your
Speaker 2: kids to school, it takes money.
Speaker 2: And a lot of indigenous people and local communities that
Speaker 2: live in and around forests have long relied on subsistence
Speaker 2: type of economies that are not cash based. So this
Speaker 2: puts them in a difficult position to try and acquire
Speaker 2: hard currency and the forest has become
Speaker 2: the go to place for that. If we can offer
Speaker 2: them alternative benefits, including direct payments or direct financing, I
Speaker 2: think it's essential in allowing them the same basic rights
Speaker 2: that anybody else would expect to be able to take
Speaker 2: care of the
Speaker 2: families and improve their own livelihoods. This can be through
Speaker 2: equal tourism. This can be through supporting local supply chains.
Speaker 2: For example, either timber, non timber forest products, it can
Speaker 2: also be through new and emerging markets, both for carbon
Speaker 2: as well as for biodiversity. I see personally
Speaker 2: great promise and something really transformative as we start to
Speaker 2: see markets offering incentives and recognizing these really marginalized historically,
Speaker 2: impoverished groups for the ad
Speaker 2: absolutely vital role that they play in protecting the remaining
Speaker 2: shreds of ecosystems that we rely on as a global
Speaker 2: community for our survival
Speaker 1: Thailand's forests are on a more hopeful path. Just like
Speaker 1: several of its Asean counterparts, the country recently joined an
Speaker 1: international coalition pledging support for a global goal to protect
Speaker 1: or conserve at least 30% of the planet's land and ocean.
Speaker 1: By the end of the decade,
Speaker 1: Regan says it's a viable goal and a good one
Speaker 1: to target given the critical role of rainforests in combating
Speaker 1: climate change.
Speaker 2: So climate change is obviously a massive global threat and
Speaker 2: it's particularly a threat in Southeast Asia, where population densities
Speaker 2: are very high, high percentages of the most vulnerable countries
Speaker 2: to climate change are within this region.
Speaker 2: We're seeing a series of different climatic threats involving typhoons,
Speaker 2: Storm surges, drought, heavy rainfall, flooding wildfires as major phenomena
Speaker 2: throughout the entire region. The relationship with tropical and subtropical
Speaker 2: forests is obviously, it will be affected by climate change,
Speaker 2: but also their vital role as carbon sinks. So they're
Speaker 2: one of the most high carbon sequestering forest types that
Speaker 2: exists there relatively more resilient in the face of climate change.
Speaker 2: As opposed to say, the dry deciduous forests in northern
Speaker 2: parts of these countries which are much more subject to drought,
Speaker 2: as well as wildfires, but I think they are no
Speaker 2: less essential as critical when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 2: Tropical
Speaker 2: forests are oftentimes the traditional ancestral domains and territories of
Speaker 2: a lot of indigenous people and local communities who are
Speaker 2: also some of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. Therefore
Speaker 2: the intersection between tropical rain forests and indigenous people. Local
Speaker 2: communities makes them an absolutely essential geography for policymakers and
Speaker 2: for the global community to consider with regards to climate
Speaker 2: change and land use planning,
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Speaker 1: back in the south after a long day in the
Speaker 1: forest with the rangers, I'm happy to see the site
Speaker 1: of my accommodation and Iraq community lodge is on the
Speaker 1: edge of the national park. It's surrounded by jungle, but
Speaker 1: most of its grounds are quite different. It's full of
Speaker 1: palm oil trees. This land used to be a plantation,
Speaker 1: which is actually a pretty common sight in the area.
Speaker 1: It's an example of economic land use changes here as
Speaker 1: locals sought ways to make a living
Speaker 1: in years gone by forest was turned into various types
Speaker 1: of concessions. Palm oil rubber, coffee, pineapples
Speaker 1: At Anorak things are turning back to nature though. The
Speaker 1: man who used to own this land is 48 year
Speaker 1: old Natalie Wood. He sold it to the current owners
Speaker 1: but now works at the lodge. He takes visitors on
Speaker 1: hikes and is in charge of one of anoraks programs
Speaker 1: to reforest this land. Slowly. The palm trees are being
Speaker 1: replaced by indigenous trees. We took care of this land
Speaker 1: for around 70 or 80 years after migrating here. Since
Speaker 1: the generation of our ancestors, they grew ram batons and coffees,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't fruitful. So they planted palm oil trees instead.
Speaker 1: There's still palm oil's now. Reforestation has started in the
Speaker 1: next 10 years, it will definitely look like the forest
Speaker 1: in the old days, a lot of trees have been
Speaker 1: planted
Speaker 1: in the future. I think that nature will be so
Speaker 1: abundant like in the past and everybody will understand about
Speaker 1: conserving nature for the next generations. And if we can
Speaker 1: conserve more nature tourism will be sustainable too.
Speaker 1: It's not everywhere that you can find a healthy mix
Speaker 1: of rainforest protection and a lively local economy around though
Speaker 1: things seem to be on track. I can't help but
Speaker 1: worry about how mass tourism here could end up spoiling
Speaker 1: well made plans, especially outside protected areas
Speaker 1: if more locals, the ones who truly treasure this landscape
Speaker 1: are empowered to shape the future of cal so hopefully
Speaker 1: that can be avoided and everyone can still enjoy what
Speaker 1: is a special place.
Speaker 1: This has been Jack board, thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: this special episode of the climate conversations. The team behind
Speaker 1: this podcast are Christina, robert, Jacqueline chan, C Win, Joanne
Speaker 1: chan and Tiffany.