For whom and for what? principles, criteria, and indicators for sustainable forest resources management in Thailand

Thailand's forest has been steadily declining during the last 50 years. A logging ban in the natural forests of 1989 has not been efficient in reversing this trend. However, the policy is to afforest the country to 40% cover 25% should be protected forest and 15% for production. To consolidate this a huge number of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks have been gazetted at an increasing rate during the recent decade. As law-enforcement has become stricter this situation has lead to a very tense conflict between the Royal Forest Department, the communities, and the NGO society supporting the latter. Criteria & indicators (C&I) have been developed to make the sustainable forest management (SFM) concept operational. The present study is conducted at the FMU-level, the purpose of C&I is to construct a common platform for dialogue between the involved parties and to test whether this could function to mitigate the tense forest and people controversy in the areas srutinised.The two areas are the doi Inthanon National Park and the Mae Moh FIOR teak plantation in Northern Thailand. The study concluded that C&I could be an instrumental tool in the development of a more coherent forest policy in Thailand.