Concerned officials have agreed to forward all the overlapping territories and boundaries to the Office of the National Land Policy Board (ONLB) to help resolve via the use of “One Map”
The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) and the Agricultural Land Reform Office (Alro) have met to update their work on the overlapping territories and boundaries, which were first claimed by the DNP to be over 250,000 rai nationwide, following the expose of the alleged agricultural reform land encroachment, over nearly 3,000 rai of Khao Yai National Park in mid- February.
The meeting follows the latest agreement made by its supervisors, the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry and Agriculture Ministry, which managed to agree to resolve the overlapping territories of the two agencies together via the new MOU signed between the two ministries.
Under their MOU, they agreed to resolve the issue at Khao Yai through One Map mechanisms under the ONLB within two months. One Map is the most detailed map with a ratio of 1:4,000, replacing the old map with a ratio of 1: 50,000.
Second, concerned agencies supervising the country’s forest areas must prepare and submit their shape files and identify “overlapped” boundaries and territories to Alro, along with potential wildlife corridors, buffer zones, forest areas planned for future designations, and last but not least, forest land plots within the protected forests authorised for utilisation under forest laws. All these will be submitted to Alro within 30 days.
Third, they will collaborate with Alro through new panels set up by Alro to help its land allocation work to ensure that this will not overlap with their responsible areas in the future. Last but not least, another set of working groups will be set up within concerned agencies to act as their focal points for information exchange.
DNP deputy chief Weera Khunchaiyaraksa revealed during the press conference last week that the department has finished its checks over all protected forest areas under its supervision and learned that 190 out of 291 protected forests have their territories overlapped by Alro land. This is around 520,000 rai in total, he said.
In addition, 91 out of 168 forest corridors have their territories overlapped by Alro land, or around 90,000 rai, and 355 forest buffer zones, which are usually extended from the protected forests’ boundaries around 3 km, also have their territories overlapped by Alro land up to 9.6 million rai.
So far, the two agencies have agreed to forward all of the overlapping territories and boundaries to the ONLB to help resolve the issue, suggesting that they could not agree with one another in solving the problem themselves within the timeline given, which is 30 days.
“At the end, the issue will be resolved and managed as it is supposed to, either with forest laws or the Alro law,” said Mr Weera, trying to allay concerns that people living in those overlapping areas will be affected.
Deputy Alro Secretary General Wattana Mangthisan has confirmed the overlapped areas as reported by the DNP, saying the overlapping land boundary issue between the two agencies will be resolved via One Map mechanisms.
He said part of the problem came from different maps used by various agencies following different approaches to land management in the country. He added that the issue must be resolved by facts and the two agencies are collaborating to overcome this challenge.
He cited the timeframe given to solve the disagreement between the two agencies over the overlapping territory at Khao Yai, which is set to be completed within two months from the day that the agreement was made last month. The rest of the overlapping areas, which are now over a hundred times the size discovered at Khao Yai, however, have no clear timeframes given by both agencies as pending the ONLB office to complete the work.
Asked what measures Alro has taken to ensure no damage will be done over the overlapping territories when the ONLB office is still working on them, the deputy Alro chief cited the latest instruction given by the Agriculture Minister to cease all the implementations by Alro in those areas, suggesting that Alro land measurements and land allocations will be suspended.
Any possible irregularities involving the processes are also under investigation, he added, without elaborating how many cases have been taken for Alro’s internal probes so far.
Some environmental advocates following up on the issue have expressed concern that there will be no clear explanations given to the public as concerned agencies will claim they are now following the state procedures and no wrongdoings or wrongdoers will be caught red-handed as supposed.
Also read: One Map be used to settle dispute over overlapping boundaries between national parks and agricultural reform land/ State agricultural reform land encroaches over 200,000 rai of national parks nationwide
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