Displacement and relocation redux: Stories from southeast Asia

Displacement and relocation from protected areas is an important concern in Asia. Policies to create new parks or strengthen enforcement in existing ones, nationalise forest reserves, and implement stricter conservation rules on private lands under the guise of biodiversity or watershed management, have been resulting in significant relocations and dislocations of people. In Thailand, for example, more than half a million hill-dwellers have been blamed for deforestation and damage to watersheds and threatened with relocation. Smaller scale resettlement projects, such as those around local protected areas, often affect hundreds to thousands of people every year in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. However, it is important to ask whether there is any evidence that relocation actually has a positive effect on the conservation of protected areas. Examples from Vietnam show that, in fact, relocation does not necessarily provide the grounds for better biological integrity. This is primarily because relocation of local populations has often entailed their being replaced by other groups—hunters and poachers, immigrants, or other business interests—that have a far greater negative impact on protected areas than the original populations.