Landnutzungsentscheidungen ethnischer Minderheiten im Kontext der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen Nordthailands
- Publikations-Art
- Arbeitspapier/Diskussionspapier
- Autoren
- Knüpfer, Judith
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 2001
- Veröffentlicht in
- Landnutzungsentscheidungen ethnischer Minderheiten im Kontext der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen Nordthailands
- Herausgeber
- Department of Agricultural Development Theory and Policy
- Serie/Bezeichnung
- Forschung zur Entwicklungsökonomie und -politik Research in Development Economics and Policy
- ISBN / ISSN / eISSN
- ISSN 1439-4952
- Seite (von - bis)
- 29
- Schlagworte
- Bodenrecht
Farmers¿ decisions about land use in the highlands of northern Thailand are strongly influenced by the present situation of land tenure insecurity. The property rights concept of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) predicts a negative influence of land tenure insecurity on the sustainability of the land use. Primary data from a field study in Chiang Rai province analysed in this paper could not confirm this hypothesis. On the opposite, it found the land tenure insecurity together with other limiting factors, like influential institutions and organisations, lead to land use systems that are considered sustainable. Farmers gave up their traditional fallow systems and introduced permanent crops like fruit trees and tea instead. Also, they adopted measures against erosion. Within a few years these new patterns of land use have spread and are now determining the land use of the whole region. However, the observed soil protection measures are based on a strategic behaviour of the farmers who want to protect their land against expropriation through the adoption of so called sustainable land use systems. This behaviour can be explained by combining the ideas of the NIE together with models borrowed from psychological research. The seeming contradiction of a combination of insecure land tenure and sustainability is thereby dissolved. In the end the question arises what the possible outcomes concerning land use decisions could be when these hilltribe farmers are given ownership rights (as well as citizenship) by the Thai government.