Towards Heritage-Sensitive Climate Change Mitigation Policy: Impulses from Indigenous Practice in Thailand
- Project status
- Ongoing
- Departments
- International
This project will trial a portfolio of three co-developed and heritage-sensitive forest conservation approaches to identify effective mechanisms that can help support the critical role of Indigenous peoples in climate change mitigation in the tropics.
Based on five years of ethnographic engagement with four highland communities in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, we have uncovered how pervasive practices of everyday environmental heritage help Indigenous communities connect to and safeguard their natural space. These practices, however, are threatened by state-led top-down conservation and development approaches.
Our co-developed policy pilots aim at a more enabling environment for Indigenous peoples to perform their everyday environmental heritage. We will trial and evaluate the short-term impact of highland produce origin labels (reducing market pressures that prevent engagement with forests), behavioural tools to foster community forest stewardship (e.g. celebrating practices like fire break clearing and tree ordination), and the promotion of new heritage practices among Indigenous youths.
Research Team: Dr Marco Haenssgen, Chiang Mai University; Dr Elizabeth Auclair, CY Cergy Paris University; Dr Anne Hertzog, CY Cergy Paris University; Dr Prasit Leepreecha, Chiang Mai University; Dr Peter Petkoff, University of Oxford; Dr. Mukdawan Sakboon, Chiang Mai University; Dr Ivo Vlaev, University of Warwick