One day at Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park

The green oasis of Bangkok

Our first stay of the day was at the Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park, a peninsula surrounded by the Chao Phraya river, also known as the lung of Bangkok and best urban oasis of Asia. The area of 19km² was established as a park in 1990 following an initiative of the Princess. The main goals of the later founded Park Center are to restore the biodiversity in the area, rehabilitate the forest, open the park as a learning space for visitors and provide areas for recreational activities for locals. Adhering to the guideline of sustainability, which comprises social, economic and ecological aspects, the park management, on the one hand, controls the implementation of it and, on the other hand, provides assistance for the local population. Even though the peninsula comprises an area of merely 12000 rai, 3 different ecosystems can be found there: the seasonally flooded forest, the mangrove forest and the lowland evergreen forest, with the local communities specialising and focusing on the preservation of the unique fauna and flora, such as the fireflies or cork trees.

Land ownership of the island is structured as follows: 10% belong to the state, while 50% are owned by the local communities and 40% have been purchased by private companies. In the beginning, there were attempts to buy the entire area from the communities on the part of the state. First relocations and compensation payments were conducted, but eventually only the above 10% could be purchased by the state. Those 10% could be primarily received because people sold their land as they felt urged to show respect to the royal family and their plan. The core activities of the management centre are: raising the awareness of local communities, replanting trees in the greenzone, motivating local people to participate in park-related activities, providing seedlings for the local population, managing the ecologically friendly tourism as well as organising activities with youth groups and schools.

Visiting local actors

After a short bike tour through the park, our next stay brought us to one of the local communities there, where we enjoyed not only a delicious lunch, but also a traditional dancing performance of local schoolgirls. In the following talk held by the manger of the local conservation group, we were informed that the community we visited is the only remaining group which still practices the traditional way of coconut cultivation. Even though this represents one opportunity to earn a living, the younger generation generally tends to work in the city of Bangkok. Due to this proximity to the city, there are financial interests of many investors and the pressure on the local communities is ever increasing. The conservation group, however, encourages the local population to deny the lucrative offers and to not sell their land. Even though rules exist saying that only 25% of every privately owned plant is approved for construction areas, financially sound investors find ways to circumvent those, build estates, which do not follow the local conventions, and thereby eventually establish gated communities. Besides these developments, we did not have the impression that the communities seemed intimated, but rather optimistic and motivated for further activities, one of these being the cooperation with academia to develop an ecological master plan for the area.

Species worth protecting

A further example of such a scientific cooperation is another village in the area which focuses on the preservation of fireflies. We had the opportunity to talk with the head of the local conservation group whose primary concern is to protect the sensitive ecosystem, especially the fireflies and to maintain the balance between tourism and these species.

Theres Scheiblauer & Stefanie Riegler