Autor: Gerry Marten
- Esta historia es un extracto de: Puntos de Inflexión Ecológica: Un Nuevo Paradigma para Restaurar la Seguridad Ambiental, Journal of Policy Studies (Japan), No.20 (July 2005), pages 75-87.
Hace tres décadas los recursos de las aldeas pesquera de la costa de la provincia Trang eran atacados por todos lados, desde botes pesqueros de arrastre que invadían sus aguas, hasta concesionarias carboneras que talaban sus manglares. Al caer la captura, la desesperación llevo a los pescadores a impactar aún más su pesquería al adoptar métodos destructivos de pesca, unirse a la tripulación de los botes de arrastre, o talar el mangle que quedaba. Yadfon, una pequeña organización de desarrollo, comenzó a trabajar con aldeanos para proteger los manglares restantes, lo cual detonó una regeneración de su sociedad, su economía y su pesquería.
Overview
Sometimes called ‘rainforests by the sea’, mangroves cover one-quarter of the world’s tropical and subtropical coastline, extending between 190 and 240 thousand square kilometers in 117 countries and territories in Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Indonesia has the largest area of mangrove forests, followed by Nigeria, Australia, Mexico and Malaysia.
The diverse mangrove ecosystems occupy two worlds, acting as an interface between land and sea. They thrive in the brackish inter-tidal zones of sheltered tropical shores, estuaries, river mouths, and even deep inland in the riverbanks’ fringes. The trees range in size from small bushes to trees up to forty meters high depending on the species and growing conditions. In the the region where this case is located there are some 70 species of mangrove. As the mangrove trees’ specially adapted aerial roots filter salt that is then excreted by the leaves, they are able to colonize saline wetlands where other life doesn’t survive.
Mangroves are important to humans in fundamental ways. First, they are vital for healthy coastal ecosystems which in turn support healthy fisheries. The fallen leaves and branches provide nutrients for a vibrant marine environment that supports a large variety of marine and terrestrial life. They are refuges and nurseries for juvenile fish, crabs, shrimp, and mollusks. They, and the flora found in mangrove forests, are prime nesting sites for migratory birds, and home to other species such as monkeys, sea turtles, mudskippers and monitor lizards.
Another important function of mangroves is to increase the resilience of the coastlines, protecting them from erosion, tropical storms and tidal waves. The trees and bushes trap sediment washing from the land, thereby protecting the seagrass beds and coral reefs from siltation. Mangroves co-exist with a wide variety of other plant life allowing them to function as a ‘supermarket’ stocked with fruits, honey, fuelwood, medicinal plants and construction material among other useful products.
But mangroves are among the most threatened habitats in the world, and their rate of disappearance is accelerating due to conversion of coastal lands for development, charcoal production, tourism, or the controversial practice of shrimp aquaculture. From 1975 to 1993, it is estimated that about half of Thailand’s mangroves along its 2,560 kilometer coastline have been lost.
The Setting
Trang Province is one of 76 provinces in Thailand. It is located in the middle of southern Thailand and includes 190 kilometers of coastline on the Andaman Sea and 46 islands offshore.
Its coasts are home to 65,000 fishing households. The inland region is mostly hilly. Two mountain ranges, the Khao Luang and Banthat, are the sources of its two major rivers, the 125 km long Trang and the 58 km long Paliam. Both drain into the Andaman sea. Nearly all of Thailand’s Muslim population is concentrated in the southern provinces.
Although 20 % of Trang province’s population is Muslim, the fishing villages where Yadfon works are 80% Muslim. Since 2004, the southernmost region of Thailand, part of which borders Trang Province, has seen a revival of a Muslim insurgency which began in the 1970s and died down in the 1990s. The movement has links to some of the larger Muslim separatist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah and the Free Aceh Movement. Thailand’s Muslim minority often complains of discrimination and lack of opportunities, less access to education and basic services.
The Narrative
In Trang province, most of the Muslim population lived in the fishing villages of the Sikao and Kantang districts along the coast. Up until the 1960s, these villages mainly subsisted on their once rich coastal fisheries in addition to other activities such as rubber tapping and some herding of goats and cows. They depended on the mangrove forests for medicinal plants and materials such as thatch for housing and fishing gear. However, in the 1960s, the villages’ natural and social capital was seriously undermined by the broad range of effects into motion by the mechanization of fishing. Large trawlers began fishing the coasts of southern Thailand, violating the 3km coastal zone and encroaching on the villagers fishing grounds. Their fishing gear and destructive methods damaged coral, scraped the seabed, and cleared out young fish which had not yet reproduced. But villagers were afraid to confront trawlers, given their powerful government (and assumed organized crime) connections.
At the same time, mangrove forests were opened up to concessionaires who began clearing them to make charcoal briquettes for barbecues. While the Forestry Act of 1941 had granted the private sector the right to log mangroves, in 1968, the concession system was expanded to allow concessionaires the right to harvest an area of 2,500-5,000 rai (400 – 800 hectares) of mangrove forest each year. The method stipulated by the government was that one strip was clear-cut, replanted, and the next year a new strip would be logged and replanted, and so on. In reality this was not followed and usually the entire concession would be logged immediately. This not only denied villagers the benefits of their common resources, but also left them to deal with all the costs of their decimation.
Meanwhile, some of the poorest villagers saw no other option than to accept low-paid, cash jobs, cutting mangroves for concessionaires or fishing on commercial trawlers. This in effect forced them to join in the destruction of their own resource base while remaining dependent on and exploited by those responsible for the destruction in the first place. Villagers also began clearing the mangroves themselves, with the attitude that ‘if I don’t cut them, someone else will’. This offers insight into one reason why subsistence communities destroy their own resource base. Because the clearing eroded their subsistence economy, the villagers became dependent on cash, which they looked for through two sources: either by working for the concessionaires, or by illegally logging the forests themselves. While they knew that what they were doing was clearly suicidal, the logic was something like, ‘why should they profit off our trees instead of us?’ or, ‘we should sell these remaining forests before they do’.
Women began to look for unskilled, low-paid work in factories, leaving children behind with aging grandparents in the village, further undermining the social fabric. As the fisheries declined, fishers had to go further out to find fish and spent more hours in their boats. To survive they resorted to more destructive methods to find dwindling numbers of fish, using dynamite, cyanide and pushnets. Pushnets are large nets attached by long poles at the bow of the boat, which, as the boats moved forward, scrape the ocean floor, damaging sea grass beds, coral reefs and other marine habitats. Moreover, the fishers faced the added burden of investing in higher-cost fishing gear in order to ‘keep up’ with others in the race for dwindling fish. Some began selling off land. In effect, these coastal communities were caught in a trap where day-to-day survival strategies eliminated or reduced their future options, and the result was a self-reinforcing downward spiral into increasing poverty, and social and environmental degradation.
Yadfon’s Intervention
In 1985, Pisit Charnsnoh, and his Ploenjai founded a small organization called Yadfon, which means ‘raindrop’ in Thai. Yadfon worked with impoverished coastal villagers in the province. Through their earlier work in various rural development projects, Charnsnoh noticed that the richer Thailand became, the more poverty increased.
They first visited the village of Ban Leam Markham in the Muang district (‘Ban’ means ‘village’ in Thai.) Over the next few months they talked to Bu Nuansri, the local imam, and the villagers. Conversations with villagers led them to identify and prioritize some things that were badly needed. Since the village was affected by droughts in the dry season, a plan was made to dig a community well. Yadfon provided the cement and other cheap materials while villagers made the design and provided the labor. Yadfon and the villagers also created a cooperative buying program. This enabled the fishers to buy fishing gear and engines for their boats and sell their daily catch at fair market prices, thereby reducing their dependence on middlemen. Before they had to trade fish to pay off debts owed to the middlemen who inevitably set the prices lower than fair market value.
Another economic project created a revolving fund available to the poorest, most indebted villagers. This helped them get small interest-free loans to set up small income generation projects such as small-scale aquaculture. They cultivated mussels, oysters, and grouper in small floating pens. At 80% the rate of repayment was very high. Additionally, their increase in income was an incentive for them to contribute part of their profits to the common village funds. While some of these projects brought mixed results, the importance of these experiments was the emergence of leaders in the villages, which was to become more important for later projects.
While these activities were being set up, villagers came up with the idea of reviving the badly degraded mangrove forests around the villages of Leam Markham and Thung Dase. In 1986, with Yadfon staff as the go-between, village representatives met with the Provincial forestry authorities whose permission was needed to create a community managed forest. A group of villages led by Bo Nuasri, established 95 hectares of community forest which covered Leam Markham and neighboring villages to create a 235-acre community-managed forest and sea-grass conservation zone, the first of its kind in Thailand. Boundaries of the zones were clearly marked on signs. No-fishing areas were created, and the practice of cyanide and dynamite were discouraged and pushnets banned. The network also petitioned the government to enforce the 3-km ban on trawlers. Sea grass was replanted in the lagoon, and mangrove seedlings were planted in degraded areas of the forest. The boundaries of the forest were clearly marked, and zones were divided up for different uses. During this time an inter-village network emerged that began meeting, sharing information and exchanging ideas.
Community mangrove forests (CMFs) are the cornerstone of Yadfon’s work with villages. Today, there are about ten CMFs modeled after Leam Markham, ranging in size from 12 to 700 hectares. Each forest is managed by the group of villages surrounding or depending on the forest. There are some 10-20 people on community forest managing committees, representing 80-200 families. Villages range in size from 600-1500 people. While each forest has its own rules of management, none of them allows shrimp farms within forest boundaries. There is general agreement that shrimp farms are dangerous to the mangroves, although there are many shrimp ponds government-managed forests. Over the years, the village managed mangrove forests have begun regenerating, and the coastal fishery has revived. Villages that are already managing CMFs have been active in advising those villages with newer community managed forests or those who want to create one.
Seagrass Beds
Southern Thailand’s sunny, clear, inshore waters beyond the mangrove zone are ideal conditions for the lush seagrass which provide ‘pastures’ for fish, crabs, prawns, mollusks, and most importantly, dugongs. The dugong was abundant in these large expanses of seagrass along Thailand’s southern shores, until pushnets and intrusion by trawlers began to damage the ocean floor. Gill nets, pollution, noise, and habitat destruction are blamed for the 75 dead dugongs which washed onto the districts’ shores between 1979 and 1998. When a dugong began to frequent the coastal waters along the regenerated sea grass bed of Ban Chao Mai village in 1995, it caused a stir in the media. Live dugongs had not been seen in a long time, and most young people had never seen one. The dugong, nicknamed Tone, being from a popular, ‘cute’ species, was instrumental in consolidating government support for the seagrass protections zones. They are mainly protected by government regulation in combination with village cooperation. For Yadfon, the dugong became a flagship for conservation in the area, and in Trang the dugong image can be seen on municipal property such as garbage cans.
Other Yadfon Projects
Education: Yadfon puts heavy emphasis on education, for both children and adults. Adult education is set up as a cooperative, interactive learning process. For example, large laminated photos of various plants found in the mangrove ecosystem are shown to villagers. The Yadfon teachers and the villagers share their knowledge about their uses, benefits, where they are found, and most importantly, their status. Is the plant increasing or decreasing, and if so, why? In this process, villagers often develop their own insights about disappearing resources, or rebounding ones, and are able to connect these changes to activities in the village or in the surrounding areas. This participatory process has been found to be a much more powerful learning tool than being lectured to by outsiders telling them ‘This or that species is disappearing. You have to protect it.’
School children are very much involved with the conservation process, and teachers do projects with them surveying and documenting the species of flora in the mangrove forests, and marking certain areas so they can record changes over time. School children also participate in planting seedlings. Schools are a focal point of community events.
Income generation: Village women’s groups have begun income generation projects using forest products to make handicrafts such as baskets, purses and glasses cases. Some of these products are sold through Yadfon’s channels (see photos). This has not only been an incentive to preserve the forest but also to refurbish and strengthen the local handicraft and artisanal traditions. In almost every village which has worked with Yadfon there is a women’s cooperative. The cooperatives generate funds to supplement household incomes and provide insurance during the monsoon when fishers cannot go out in their boats.
Extension work: As Yadfon worked on coastal regions, it began to realize that what happened inland in the mountains, forests, and both fresh and brackish wetlands, also affected the coasts. They slowly began moving upstream, focusing on preserving watersheds and key species such as the palms that are crucial to the villagers’ livelihood. The leaves of the Nypa palm, for example, are used to roll cigarettes, and the Sago palm, dominant in brackish wetlands, not only is an important food source, it also provides material for roof thatch, and is an important forest covering for water catchments.
Scaling up (Regional, National, Global): While Yadfon is small and focuses on the local region, it has been active at the national policy level, and in the international movement to preserve mangroves and stop shrimp farming. One of its most pressing political campaigns is to lobby for the Community Forest Act. This Act grants villages who properly manage their lands the right to continue to live and harvest their livelihood from them even if the land falls within a national park. With the support of Yadfon and other organizations, public forums have been held around the country to allow input from villagers. The act was written up by farmers and fishers around the country. When it was brought to parliament, the Act was unanimously accepted by the lower house. But when it was sent to the upper house, amendments were made which were deemed unacceptable to many of the act’s writers as it shifted power away from the user groups. The lower house held its ground and refused the changes. A compromise is currently in negotiation.
In 1992, Yadfon co-founded the Mangrove Action Project, an international network of some 800 conservation groups and academics from 60 countries working to conserve and promote mangrove conservation. It also co-founded the Industrial Shrimp Action Network which educates consumers on the impact of the shrimp market on poor fishing communities around the world.
Community Dynamics: An important by-product of the communally managed forest and related projects is the transformation of the passive, apathetic attitude among villagers to a newfound sense of engagement, solidarity, and confidence. Through the process, villagers are rediscovering their traditional ways of working together.
In a report on Yadfon on the Mangrove Action Project website, Pisit states that locals have knowledge, but no opportunities to share it. However, as the unity of villagers developed, leaders began to emerge, and the talents of others began to ‘shine’. This gave them the confidence and opportunity to develop further. Until they sit down together and then with others from other regions, they don’t know that these are shared problems. They may not have a sense that their problems are actually a symptom of much larger changes affecting not only fishing villages in the region, but other regions and other countries.
Successes have given villagers the confidence that they have the power to help themselves instead of perceiving themselves as victims of an unfair system, waiting for the government to rescue them from their lot. Shared successes have motivated villagers to seek other creative ways to improve their lives. Investing their time in building assets as a group has given them a sense of ownership. They now have the incentive to band together to protect these shared assets from outside interests. Fishers have begun confronting trawlers who violate the 3km coastal zone, something they never did before. A local corporation spilled poisonous palm oil into a local waterway, killing a large number of fish. The villagers carefully recorded information about the spill, including fish mortalities, documented it with photos and presented this evidence to provincial authorities. Eventually the company was forced to pay compensation to 100 families for the loss of the fish.
Normally, 40-60% of villagers participate in projects, but this is enough to generate results.
The Feedback Loops and Transition from Vicious to Virtuous Cycle
Vicious cycle: The negative tip came about with the invasion of the primary communal resources by commercial interests seen in the mechanization of fishing, and the appearance of the charcoal concessionaires in the mangrove forests. Both of these things happened in about the same time frame. The destruction of mangroves and the incursion of large trawlers into the fishing areas caused the number and variety of fish to decrease. To compensate for this, fishers began using more destructive fishing methods, spending more time on the water, and going out further. Dynamite, cyanide and pushnets further damaged the coral reefs and seagrass beds which marine animals needed to survive. Loss of mangroves also opened the coral reefs and seagrass beds to erosion and siltation.
The economy began to change from subsistence to cash-dependent. People went out of the villages to find work as day laborers, in factories, on large trawlers, or on concessions cutting mangroves. This, plus the reduced amount of time fishers were spending in the villages, had a negative impact on the social and cultural fabric. Increasingly impoverished villagers lost their sense of control and shared ownership over the mangroves, and clearing them was a way for them to get income before any outsiders did.
Virtuous cycle: The exact chronological chain of events is not clear, but the positive tipping point appears to be the creation of the communally managed mangrove forests. This derived from Yadfon’s work to improve the lives of fishers by reviving the coastal fisheries, of which the mangroves and seagrass beds were an integral part.
When villages began creating community mangrove forests and seagrass beds, the web of effects were in large part a reversal of the negative tip. The fisheries began to recover. A study frequently cited found that from 1991-1994 in a target group of 500 families from these villages, the total catch rose by 40%, the fishers were not going out as far and so spent 3-4 hours fewer in their boats, and their net income increased by 200%. By spending less time in their boats, they also saved on gas. Using simple wooden traps or nets, children can catch crabs in the mangroves and earn 250-300 baht in an afternoon. This was once a day’s earnings cutting mangrove trees. Villagers can also collect clams at 1 baht per clam. In the past, a day’s work cutting down mangroves would earn 120 baht. This means villagers could now make more money fishing or catching crabs or clams than if they worked for concessionaires.
Unexpected benefits also accrued. The regenerated seagrass beds attracted a threatened species, the Dugong. This became a national symbol for coastal conservation throughout Thailand, attracting needed media attention to the work of the villagers and Yadfon. (It should be noted that there has been no evidence that the numbers of dugong have risen, because there is no baseline data on numbers before YF began working in the region). Unity among villagers increased not only because urban migration was reduced but because villagers had learned – or re-learned – -how to work together, how to take control over their fate, and more importantly, how to stand up to outside commercial interests. These outside interests might be even stronger today than twenty years ago due to acceleration of the forces driving ‘development’ and globalization, and possibly because the increased richness of their fishery has attracted trawlers. However, villagers are also better equipped to protect their shared assets because they have invested their time and energy regenerating them. While villagers associated with Yadfon have not completely resisted the allure of shrimp farming, they do not allow farms inside their community mangrove forests. As the work of the villagers became publicized and Yadfon’s profile increased, visitors such as the media, delegations from other villages, domestic and foreign NGO’s and government officials, have come to visit the villages. This has emboldened villagers, bolstered their pride and strengthened their resolve.
Shrimp Farming
Known as ‘pink gold’, shrimp farming is the ultimate ‘boom and bust’ economic activity. It receives active support from various multilateral aid and lending agencies, despite the fact that the activity rarely meets their own stated ecological and social standards. It is a gambler’s dream: it brings high returns in the beginning, largely because initial inputs such as chemicals, feed, energy, and water are subsidized. However, as time goes on, mounting contamination of the soil, increasing costs and diminishing returns force farmers to abandon the ponds after a few years. They then move to pristine coastline elsewhere and start all over again. They leave behind a land and fishery which may take years to recover, if ever.
A fundamental problem with shrimp farming is that it has been introduced prematurely on an industrial scale. It is really still in its research and design phase. Shrimp aquaculture is water-intensive, often diverting freshwater supplies from neighboring villages. The ponds’ effluent is discharged into the rich brackish water ecosystem where the mangroves grow. It is laden with salt and chemical sludge from fertilizer, antibiotics, larvicides, shrimp feed and excrement. It has a huge negative impact on the fisheries on which the communities depend. Eventually, the area becomes so contaminated that after a few years the ponds self-destruct, leaving the environment, and the villagers, worse off than before. The shrimp ponds rarely generate significant benefits for the local communities especially as they bear disproportionate environmental and social costs when the shrimp farmers move on. Most shrimp farms follow this pattern of serial degradation all over the coasts of South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and recently Africa.
While it is widely recognized that mangrove forest soil is too acidic for farming, the mangroves themselves are good filters for wastewater, which is why many farms are llocated just behind them. Recently governments are recognizing the value of mangroves, especially since the tsunami in December, 2004. It was very clear that the devastation on more heavily forested coastlines was much less severe than on coasts which had been cleared. Still, mangrove forests are seen as dispensable wastelands ripe for conversion to make way for the exploding shrimp industry. Global shrimp production has risen from 26 thousand tons in the 1970’s to 100,000 tons in the 1980s, to over 700,000 tons in 1995. Japan’s import of shrimp has risen from 29% in 1981 to 46% in 1991. Thailand is the world’s biggest farmed shrimp exporter, with one in three originating from the Kingdom. The US and Japan are the biggest importers taking two-thirds of the global market share. The remainder is divided up between other foreign markets and luxury domestic markets.
In 1999, a team led by economist Suthawan Sathirathai did a study on a coastal village in Surathani province, southern Thailand, to compare the monetary value of mangroves versus shrimp farms. Using conventional measures and assigning only cash values for products, it found that shrimp farms brought higher returns, at US$ 3,734 per rai for the shrimp farms and $ 666 for the mangroves. However, the results changed dramatically when they included the indirect values of the mangrove forest and looked at the longer term. A monetary value was assigned to mangrove services such as nurseries for fish and plants, and protection from erosion and storms. Then the five-year time limit when shrimp farm profits begin to fall was factored in, and the 15 years that must pass before restocking is possible. With these calculations the value of the mangrove forest rises to $5,771, nearly double that of shrimp aquaculture.
Even then, the social costs and the human rights issues are not included in these figures. Incidents of displacement of entire coastal fishing communities – sometimes forcible – to make way for farms, are widely documented. Some of the more vocal opponents of the practice have been threatened and even killed by agents of the owners. Lastly, there are health concerns for the consumer who may be affected by the presence of antibiotics and other chemicals in the farmed shrimp.
Yadfon has campaigned against shrimp farming through the International Shrimp Action Network. Unfortunately, Pisit says, many forces are feeding the expansion of the industry. There is pressure on developing nation governments to increase foreign exchange reserves and open up markets; on impoverished villagers to lease or sell off land to companies; and the lack of legal protection of villagers’ land rights. Many villages Yadfon works with do have some shrimp ponds, much of which is on land owned, or at least claimed by, the government. Fortunately, creating CMFs has helped to keep shrimp ponds out of the mangrove forests. They are now locating them slightly inland, with the effluent being dumped into a second ‘holding tank’ for at least two weeks before being dumped into the canal. The canals drain into mangrove lined canals and eventually into the coastal waters. While this still impacts the ecosystem, it is far less destructive than clearing mangroves to make ponds directly on the coastal waters.
****1 hectare=6.2 rai, or 2.5 rai=1 acre
Feedback Analysis of the Thailand Community Mangrove Story
Autor: Gerry Marten
The expansion of commercial aquaculture and charcoal production into coastal mangrove forests (estuaries), along with expansion of commercial trawling in the region, formed a negative tipping point that set in motion vicious cycles degrading the estuaries and adjacent near-shore fisheries:
- Deterioration of the estuaries led to deterioration of the nearshore marine ecosystem because (1) estuaries serve as nurseries for many near-shore fish species and (2) they protect coral from sedimentation by filtering sediment from rivers as they flow through the estuary. Illegal intrusion of trawlers into near-shore fishing grounds added to the decline in the fishery. To catch enough fish, fishermen were forced to use destructive fishing methods such as dynamite and poisons, leading to further decline of the fishery.
- As fishermen were less and less able to catch enough fish to support them as full-time fishermen, they had to work in charcoal production, aquaculture, or on trawlers, contributing even further to the decline.
- As the mangrove forests deteriorated, the estuaries provided smaller quantities of products such as crabs, construction materials, and medicinal plants for local consumption, reducing the commitment of local people to maintaining the estuaries and increasing their tolerance of commercial activities that were damaging them.
The positive tipping point was the establishment of community mangrove management, which reversed the vicious cycles, transforming them into virtuous cycles:
- Healthier estuaries improved the health of the adjacent marine ecosystems, increasing fish stocks. It was less necessary for fishermen to use destructive methods. Fish stocks increased even further.
- As fish stocks increased, fishermen left their jobs in charcoal production, aquaculture, or trawling to return to fishing. Charcoal production, aquaculture, and trawling declined, contributing to recovery of the fishery.
- As the estuaries returned to health, they provided more products for local consumption, increasing the commitment of local people to the estuaries, reducing their tolerance of commercial activities that were damaging the estuaries, and ultimately contributing further to recovery of the estuaries.
- New virtuous cycles were formed as “success bred success.” Community management became stronger and more effective as experience and commitment increased. For example, once organized, the community successfully lobbied the government to keep trawlers out of their fishing grounds, contributing further to recovery of the fishery.
References
- Barbier, Edward B. And Suthawan Sathirathai. Shrimp Farming and Mangrove Loss in Thailand. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., UK, 2004.
- Martinez-Alier, Joan. “Ecological Conflicts and Valuation: Mangroves vs Shrimp in the late 1990s.” Research paper. Department of Economics and Economic History, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2001. Online link
- Berlin Snell, Marylin. “No Empty Boats: A Thai conservationist helps fishermen prosper.” Sierra Magazine, January/February 2003, pp. 16-20.
- Ong Ju Lynn. “One With Mother Nature.” The Star Online: Malaysia News. September 2, 2003.
- Cunningham, Susan. “A Raindrop Cleans the Wetlands.” Changemakers Journal Archives, 1998. Online link
- Quarto, Alfredo. “Local Community Involvement in Mangrove Rehabilitation: Thailand’s Yadfon.” (From W. Streever, ed. An International Perspective on Wetland Rehabilitation, pp. 139-142. Kluwer Academic Publishers, the Netherlands, 1999.)
- Yadfon staff, including Pisit and Ploenjai Charsnoh, and Kowit Pongchabapnapa
