Development Community Plan

Community Forum’s Slide Show

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE KINGDOM OF THAILAND 2007

SOMDETPHRA PARAMINTHARAMAHABHUMIBOL ADULYADEJ SAYAMMINTHARATHIRAT BOROMMANATTHABOPHIT

Enacted on the 24th Day of August B.E. 2550; Being the 62 Year of the Present Reign.

May there be virtue. Today is the eleventh day of the waxing moon in the ninth month of the year of the Pig under the lunar calendar, being Friday, the twenty-forth day of August under the solar calendar, in the 2550th year of the Buddhist Era.

Phrabat Somdet Phra Paramintharamaha Bhumibol Adulyadej Mahitalathibet Ramathibodi Chakkri Narubodin Sayammintharathirat Borommanatthabophit is graciously pleased to proclaim that the President of the National Legislative Assembly addresses royalty that the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State has been evolved in Thailand for more than seventy five years and, through this period of time, the Constitutions had been promulgated, repealed and amended for the compliance with the situation of the nation and the changing circumstances and that the Constituent Assembly and the Constitution Drafting Commission have been established by the provisions of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand (Interim), B.E. 2549 so as to prepare the new Constitution for the compatibility of the administration of State affairs in the forthcoming period with due regard to opinions of the public at all steps through the extensive public consultation and all invaluable opinions have been introduced incessantly into drafting process and to the consideration of motions thereon.

more : Thailand Constitution 2007

“…with righteousness for the benefit and happiness of the Siamese people…”

“…the well-being and happiness of the people are a benefit that is difficult to be measured in terms of money…”

Royal Speech on the occasion of the Royal Birthday Anniversary (1991)

There is no other palace in the world like Chitralada Palace. Dotted with diverse agricultural projects-fish ponds, rice fields, a diary farm-it looks more like and experimental agricultural village than a king’s residence.

Foreign visitors may find this puzzling, but the Thai people know the answer well. Indeed they consider themselves fortunate to have a king such as His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose compassion and concern for their welfare is well known. His Majestic fully realizes that Thailand is an agricultural country and that its people are mainly farmers. Hence his determination to develop agricultural and processing enterprises so as to improve his people’s wellbeing.

To solve various problems besetting the farmers, His Majesty has allocated and area within the compound of his residence for use in agricultural research and experimentation, in order that he may closely study and find the correct ways to remove the constraints.

The Royal Chitralada Projects are there for research and experimentation projects aimed at agricultural development. Data and research results are collected and made available to farmers and all people interested in agriculture. The projects are more concerned with obtaining results of true value than with the time and funds required. They strive to adapt basic scientific knowledge and modern technology to the available local agricultural resources and environment. An example is tissue culture for rattan propagation in order to provide materials to meet both domestic and export demands for handi crafts and furniture, and to prevent the extinction of this plant of economic value.

In The Royal Chitralada Projects, emphasis is placed on making maximum combined use of agricultural inputs and wastes, and thereby reducing considerably the cost of production, for example the soilless culture of plants using locally-available materials such as rice husks and coconut coir as substrates, and plastic sheets as containers.

Farmers are often faced with the problem of falling prices of their produce owing to a glut in the market. Producers of perishables such as vegetables and fruits are the most vulnerable. To solve the marketing problem, the Royal Chitralada Projects encourage farmers to form agricultural cooperatives so as to acquire more bargaining power, or to be able to bypass middlemen by selling their products directly to consumers. By forming themselves into groups, farmers can pool their resources to set up semi-industrial plants of process their produce, which could then be kept longer for sale according to market demand.

Medium-sized agro-industry is suitable for the country as it does not require heavy investment and allow a “full-cycle production”. The Royal Chitralada Projects in the diary field are a good example of this. Dairy farmers may start with raising cows in a small area of land, then form themselves into groups along the lines of a cooperative and set up a small plant to process their milk. The manure, a by-product, can be utilized to fertilize the fodder grass or to produce biogas.

The Royal Chitralada Projects also serve demonstration purposes. His Majesty the King has given his permission for all interested members of the public to visit the Projects at all time, as may be seen in the following excerpt from his speech, given on the occasion of the opening of the Dusit Milk Power Plant in 1969;

“…Consider this Plant as a model plant, Who ever wishes to acquire knowledge, or to make a dairy business successful and beneficial for the people and for the national economy as a whole, may come and observe the activities of the Plant any time He may ask questions and offer ideas, for some may get ideas that are of benefit to the people at large, ideas that we, on our side,may not have thought of. Pooling our thoughts would contribute to the progress of the dairy business in Thailand…”

Each year the Royal Chitralada Projects are visit by more than twelve thousand people, The number can even reach twenty thousand in certain years. This visitors include heads of states, farmers’ leaders, royalty, district and village chiefts, members of the diplomatic corps, school students, delegates to international meeting held in Bangkok, religious leaders, private companies (foreign and local), foreign correspondents, foreign technical experts, and government officials fro various agencies.

The Royal Chitralada Projects have proved to be useful for research, education and training as well. One graduate from Hohenheim University in Germany has chosen the Projects as subject of this thesis. Another from the same University is conducting research on one of the Projects. A Canadian from the British Columbia Institute of Technology has received training at the Projects, which also dispense training in various fields for 50 to 64 Thai students each year.

Many government agencies and the private sector, both within outside the country, have volunteered their technical and financial support for the Projects, owing to their common awareness that the Projects’ raison d’ e^tre is the improvement of the welfare of the people of the entire nation.

The Projects are divided into two types, viz.:

• non-commercial projects, such as the aquaculture, experimental rice fields, biogas, tissue culture projects, etc.; and
• semi-commercial projects, which have receipts and expenditures but of which the profits are ploughed back into the Royal Chitralada Projects for their further development:these include the dairy farm, milk power plant, experimental rice mill projects,etc.

The basic approach is to “reflect first” and then to set about “solving all the problems”. As His Majesty says: “Our objective is for village to be able to be their own masters. What we seek to do is…to safeguard all that is worthwhile and has helped to sustain our nation to this day.”

more : Suan Chitralada

My Thesis : Abstract

A Research on the Creation of the Community Development Strategy by Participant Community Planning : The Case of Tambon Maetha, Amphoe Maetha, Changwat Lampang

The objectives of this research were

(1) to create the development strategy in order to design community plan for Tambon Maetha, Amphoe Maetha, Changwat Lampang,

(2) to experiment of the plan design,

(3) to evaluate the experiment of the plan design

with the six community forums to

(1) get the community ready,

(2) collect data from the community,

(3) analysis the data and create a village community plan,

(4) design a tambon community plan,

(5) arrange a field activity, and

(6) launch a public hearing on the community plans created.

Data collecting has been done by means of observation, interview, context survey, making record of household income, expenses and debts, and initiating a monthly book-keeping activity of each household in and attempt to improve the capacity as well as the community capacity by creating the community plans which involved the gathering of the villages in order to set up the career groups to get more household income. The result in the 13 career groups for a variety of products and activities, namely

(1) making organic fertilizer,

(2) making Thong Muan (a kind of Thai dessert made from rice),

(3) raising fishing in net containers,

(4) making soy bean milk,

(5) cultivating rice,

(6) raising cows,

(7) raising fishing in public ponds,

(8) making artificial flowers,

(9) making dishwashing liquid,

(10) raising native chickens,

(11) raising pigs,

(12) making Dorkmie Jun (flower – look – alike design used in the ritual of a Thai way of cramation), and

(13) making pickled pork.

After experimenting and evaluating the career group which produced native chickens, it was found that every member of the group was satisfied and believed that it was the right way to increase their income and this could solve the problem of an unbalance between the income and the expenses. This could confirm that the strategy was practically able to solve the community’s problems and needs as a whole.

It was recommended in this research that one should schedule the proper time for the community forums by putting factors related to the seasons and the people’s convenience in to consideration. Moreover, the duration between each forum should not be left too far apart from one another, since it was hard for the gatherings of the people involved. This research should be extended by making use of plans or projects which had been implemented successfully and improved until each of them became a Small and Micro Community Enterprise (SMCE).

Furthermore, we should make a community plan by putting social, economic and political perspectives into account because these in turn would affect and connect with another. And we should also connect a tambon community plan with the amphoe strategic plan and changwat strategic plan one, respectively in order for the tambon to gain a strong support in the forms of academics and budgets from both the amphoe and the changwat offices. However, one should be well aware that he/she should not initiate the feeling among the villagers that they should have been officially supported by the government sector and consequently requested for the assistance from it rather than relied on themselves in a subsistent way.

Six Community Forums To Create Developing Plan

The objectives of my thesis were

(1) to create the development strategy in order to design community plan for Tambon Maetha, Amphoe Maetha, Changwat Lampang,

(2) to experiment of the plan design,

(3) to evaluate the experiment of the plan design

with the six community forums to

(1) get the community ready,

(2) collect data from the community,

(3) analysis the data and create a village community plan,

(4) design a tambon community plan,

(5) arrange a field activity, and

(6) launch a public hearing on the community plans created.

Get the Community Ready;

be seminar leaders community village to understand in the project , learn the idea and the way work for relay to a person in the community that were chosen or , volunteer come in work with the project, these person was called that , community researcher , for responsible to collect community data.

Collect Data from the Community;

data collecting by means of observation, interview, context survey, making record of household income, expenses and debts, and initiating a monthly book-keeping activity of each household in and attempt to improve the community capacity.

Analysis the Data and Create a Village Community Plan;

analysis the community capacity data for create a village community plan for the suitable and correspond knowledge, wisdom and resource that have in each a village.The village community plan has career groups, which, have a condition as follows;

1. to set up the career groups by the result in analysis the community capacity data that have in each of the community,

2. use the resource that have in the community,

3. there is the gathering for work with many people,

4. there is member has knowledge and wisdom in a career that does, and

5. have support from community leaders, especially, the District Administrative Organization.

Design a Tambon Community Plan;

total up community plan of each a village, to create a Tambon community plan by don’t have duplicate of career groups because , will cause a problem has in produce sale that much more than demand.

Arrange a Field Activity;

take the mainstay of each the career group to arrange a field activities career group which had been successfully to exchange knowledge and experience about their career group will to establish.

Launch a Public Hearing on the Community Plans Created;

be voting of a person in the community , for acceptance, or deny, or adjust in Tambon community plan before implementation.

more : slide shows

Organic Fertilizer Group

Career group in Tambon Maetha, Amphoe Maetha, Changwat Lampang

In each year majority agriculturist must pay for expenses in earn a living is a lot of money , especially for chemical fertilizer, which, have an affect on health of agriculturist and environment , then the agriculturist in Tambon Maetha, Amphoe Maetha, Changwat Lampang is formed establish the group produces organic fertilizer for use to cultivating in member group and sell other agriculturist in the area around.

By take Organic waste, such as rice straw , corncob , vegetable leavings , fruit leavings, etc., pretend the compost by use air addition gives with compost stack for hurries the reaction of the bacteria does digesting can crumble fast go up, that be known that, “Aerated Static Pile Composting System”. This way will can make the compost about 1-2 month , be formed type for relied on themselves in a subsistent way.

more : slide shows

more : Aerated Static Pile Composting System

Biodiversity

“If we continue at the current rate of deforestation and destruction of major ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs, where most of the biodiversity is concentrated, we will surely lose more than half of all the species of plants and animals on Earth by the end of the 21st Century.”

E.O. Wilson, renowned biologist who popularise the term “biodiversity”.

As a boy fishing, Edward Wilson was struck by the dorsal fin of a spiny fish in his eye – the injury he sustained changed the way he explored the world of nature. Today, the Foundation brings together everything Ed has worked for during his lifetime.

Edward O. Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in a series of towns in Alabama and Florida as well as Washington, D.C. After earning a B.S. and M.S. in biology at the University of Alabama, he joined the graduate program at University of Tennessee for a year. He then transferred to Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1955. From 1953 to 1956 he was a Junior Fellow in Harvard’s Society of Fellows. During this period he commenced a series of research field-trips that were to take him, to many parts of the South Pacific and New World tropics. In 1956 he joined the Harvard faculty, where he is now Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology.

Early in his career, Wilson conducted work on the classification and ecology of ants in New Guinea and other Pacific islands, and in the American tropics. In 1963 his work and his conception of species equilibrium led him to the theory of island biogeography, which he developed with the late Robert H. MacArthur of Princeton University. In their theory, immigration and extinction, the determinants of biodiversity at the species level, were tied to area (distance of islands from source regions) and the basic properties of ecology and demography. The work culminated in their 1967 book The Theory of Island Biogeography, which has been a standard reference work ever since. The theory greatly influenced the discipline of ecology and became a cornerstone of conservation biology. Applied to “habitat islands,” such as forests in a sea of agricultural land, it has influenced the planning and assessment of parks and reserves around the world. In the late 1960s Wilson, with Daniel Simberloff, conducted experiments in the Florida Keys that documented the basic principles of island biogeographic theory.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Wilson played a key role in the development of the new field of chemical ecology. With several collaborators he worked out much of the pheromone language of ants, and with William H. Bossert of Harvard University he created the first general theory of properties of chemical communication. Because all plants and microorganisms, as well as the vast majority of animals, communicate primarily or entirely by pheromones, the importance of this work is considerable.

By the late 1970s, Wilson was actively involved in global conservation, adding to both original research and the promotion of biodiversity research. In 1984 he published Biophilia, which explored the evolutionary and psychological basis of humanity’s attraction to the natural environment. This work introduced the word biophilia into the language, and has been influential in the shaping of the modern conservation ethic. In 1988 Wilson edited the volume BioDiversity, based on the proceedings of the first United States national conference on the subject, which also introduced the term biodiversity to the language, now in universal usage. This work was very influential in creating the modern field of biodiversity studies. In 1992 Wilson published Diversity of Life, which synthesized the principles and most important practical issues of biodiversity; this, too, became a standard work. His 2002 work The Future of Life has become equally influential. In 2003, he published Pheidole in the New World, A Dominant, Hyperdiverse Ant Genus, a monograph of 19 percent of the known ant species of the Western Hemisphere. Of the 624 species thus covered, 337 were new to science.

While continuing his research on the systematics and biogeography of ants, Wilson has become increasingly involved in the global conservation movement. In addition to authoring other books and articles on the subject, and lecturing in many countries, he has served on the boards of directors of the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund, and has been a key consultant of the New York Botanical Garden, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and many other environmental and scientific organizations.

In 1971 Wilson published his second major synthesis, The Insect Societies, which formulated the existing knowledge of the behavior of ants, social bees, social wasps, and termites, on a foundation of population biology. In it he introduced the concept of a new discipline of sociobiology, the systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior in all kinds of organisms. In 1975 he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which extended the subject to vertebrates and united it more closely to evolutionary biology. The foundational discoveries of sociobiology are generally recognized to be the analysis of animal communication and division of labor, in which Wilson played a principal role, and the genetic theory of the origin of social behavior, which he helped to promote and apply in his 1971 and 1975 syntheses. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis was later ranked in a poll of the officers and fellows of the international Animal Behaviour Society as the most important book on animal behavior of all time, and is regarded today as the founding text of sociobiology and its offshoot, evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis also included a brief analysis of the origins of human nature. This stirred a bitter controversy on the role of biology in human behavior, which has now been largely resolved in favor of the sociobiological view. To more fully cover the subject of culture and answer scientific (as opposed to political) criticism, Wilson published the widely acclaimed On Human Nature in 1978. With Charles Lumsden he developed the first general theory of gene-culture coevolution (and introduced the term) in the 1981 work Genes, Mind, and Culture.

In 1998 Wilson extended his program of evolutionary thought in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which argues for a reversal of the current fragmentation of knowledge and postmodernist ideologies and a return to the ideals of the original Enlightenment, including bridging of the sciences and humanities. He is currently working on books on the theory of evolutionary forces and (with Bert Hölldobler) the biology of superorganisms, as well as conducting field research on the ecology and biogeography of the West Indian ant fauna.

The more than 100 awards received by Wilson from around the world in science and letters include the National Medal of Science, two Pulitzer Prizes for Non-fiction (for On Human Nature and, with Bert Hölldobler, The Ants), the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (given by the Academy in fields of science it does not cover by the Nobel Prize), Japan’s International Prize for Biology, the Prix de Institut de Vie, Paris, Italy’s presidential Medal and the Nonino Prize in science and letters, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the Gold Medal of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the Audubon Medal of the Audubon Society, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, and Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal International Prize for Science, and the Dominican Republic’s highest award, the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanches, and Mella. He also received both of the teaching prizes voted by the students of Harvard College. In 1995 he was named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time Magazine, and in 2000 one of the century’s 100 leading environmentalists by both Time and Audubon Magazine. In 2005 Foreign Policy named him one of the world’s 100 leading intellectuals.

Wilson lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife Irene. A daughter, Catherine, and her husband Jonathan, reside in nearby Stow.

more : E.O.Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

Threats to Thailand’s Biodiversity

Threats to biodiversity still occur continuously as we can see from the decreasing forest areas and changing use of wetlands. The primary threats result from human activities such as expanding agriculture, communities and many development projects. The obvious impacts are the decline of tigers, migratory birds and mangroves. Threats to wildlife habitats result in decreasing flora and fauna.

Recommendations

1. Research, explore and define biodiversity resources in Thailand in order to widen our knowledge and to develop technology which will enable us to identify biological resources.
2. Strengthen the coordination between government and private sectors to conserve bidoversity.
3. Distribute knowledge and create awareness among to the youth and the community through public relations.