Population pressures play less of a role in deforestation than earlier studies of Thailand found. Between 1976 and 1989, Thailand lost 28 percent ofits forest cover.
A recent eighteen-month economic study of the benefits of alternative uses of forest and in Ratanakiri province recommends the exclusion of customary forest land from current and future commercial concessions.
Social forestry emerged amidst important changes in thinking about the role of forestry in rural development and a growing need for fuelwood. In an attempt to alleviate the fuelwood crisis, the World Bank encouraged the planting of Eucalyptus species in its social forestry programs in the 1980s.
The overall aim of the National Land Policy is to promote and ensure a secure land tenure system, to encourage the optimal use of land resources, and to facilitate broad-based social and economic development without upsetting or endangering the ecological balance of the environment.
