Seeing Forests for Trees: Environment and Environmentalism in Thailand

In Thailand today environmental concern has to do with problems connected to livelihoods and quality of life, the impact of rapid economic growth and cultural change. Thailand's environment has become an issue of local, national and international concern.

Environmentalists in Thailand work in diverse settings and have different—sometimes competing—objectives. The environment in Thailand is not a singular or unambiguous concept and environmentalism is a complex and multi­farious phenomenon.

Seeing Forests for Trees examines various modes of response to environmental degradation in Thailand in order to show how comprehensively environmentalism has become woven into the country's social, political, and economic fabric. It finds environmental awareness, action, and activism to be as differentiated as Thai society itself.

Philip Hirsch is a senior lecturer in geography at Sydney University. He has taught and researched in Thailand for more than a decade. Among his several books are Political Economy of Environment in Thailand (1993), Asia-Pacific Focus: People and Environment in Change (1991) and Development Dilemmas in Rural Thailand (1990). His current research focus is community-based resource management in the context of economic restructuring in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.