Thai governments — be they Prayut Chan-o-cha’s or Srettha Thavisin’s — have hailed carbon credit programmes as vital to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, they can become wolves in sheep’s clothing if they favour businesses, leaving local communities and nature vulnerable to exploitation. Despite promises to mitigate greenhouse gases, carbon credit programmes often sideline local communities and worsen social and environmental injustices.
Forest communities fear history repeating itself. The government frequently uses “reforestation” to serve business interests, often violently evicting forest inhabitants.
It has happened before. The military government led by Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon wanted to evict over 10 million villagers in the Northeast for eucalyptus plantations for the pulp and paper industry under the guise of “reforestation”. A large-scale grassroots demonstration eventually stopped it during the Anand Panyarachun administration in 1992.
They fear this “reforestation” tactic will resurface under current carbon credit schemes, sparking a new wave of nationwide land rights conflicts.
Carbon credits are like certificates earned from projects that reduce or trap greenhouse gases, sold to businesses to offset their pollution.
Forest agencies are encouraging industries to join reforestation programmes to offset carbon emissions, enabling them to disregard their harmful production processes. This is sheer greenwashing.
The value of carbon credit trading in Thailand surged from 850,000 baht in 2016 to 129 million baht in 2022, with a trading volume of 1.19 million tonnes of carbon. This is expected to rise significantly with Prime Minister Srettha’s plan to expand forest coverage to 55% of the landmass by 2037. The aim is to increase the country’s carbon sink to 120 metric tonnes per year so Thailand can attain carbon neutrality by 2050.
In what Greenpeace Thailand called a “licence to pollute”, the Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation, the Royal Forest Department and the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources introduced benefit-sharing regulations with business partners, giving nine out of 10 carbon credits to investors.
Meanwhile, local communities that safeguard the forest are left out of the arrangement, although they are affected by carbon credit forest management and the possibility of forest