This is a C. N. A podcast. Rainforests are a defining feature of many parts of Southeast Asia. From the great green expanses of Borneo to cambodia's misty cardamom mountains. These ancient landscapes support so much life over the past few decades, much of this region's rain forests have been lost. But as we start to better appreciate what they do for the planet, those trends have reversed.
Southeast. Asia is now leading global efforts to protect rainforests which are critical as a tool to fight climate change. Welcome back to the climate conversations, I'm Jack Board and in this special series, Asia's Great Climate Frontiers, I bring you stories of ecosystems at risk if you haven't already do find the first four episodes of the series wherever you get your podcasts. This week, I'm in southern Thailand
in a country where deforestation was once rife. I see firsthand the benefits communities can discover and nature is preserved rather than destroyed. This is AsIA's Great Climate Frontiers. I'm on patrol with a group of rangers from the Forest Protection unit of Khao Sok National Park from afar
you could certainly mistake them for a military unit. The men, some experienced some as young as 19 where camouflage fatigues, they carry rifles and mean business, but their successes over recent years means they're more likely to be looking for elephants to monitor than poachers to catch. Today's patrol is shorter and the discoveries a bit more mundane, a plastic bottle here and there. Even these small things indicate human activity that will need to be recorded. The rangers leader is pancetta.
He's been doing this for 20 years but his family has a much longer history in this rainforest. My name is, I am a forest protection official and central patrolling official for national park. I started working when I was 20 years old. I followed my father from when I was a child. We looked for things here and there. So I learned which spots had a lot of animals, which spots had resources such as fruit trees or seasonal plants that we can eat.
It was knowledge passed from generation to generation. Originally every family here had fathers who were working like poachers. They weren't actual poachers but rather would search for food. We didn't have laws. So a national park at the time, they naturally had to feed themselves by foraging from the forest such as finding bamboo shoots wildlife for an area where they wanted to grow crops for the family. This is my home.
If we don't take care of our home, then we can't hope for other people to take care of it. To write the rangers cover a huge area of the national park here in Surat Thani Province. Their patrols can last as long as 14 days as they venture deep into the wilderness. Most of Kawasaki consists of virgin rainforest, its dense and humid part of an ancient rainforest system that's older than the amazon and it's loud.
But over the years has changed in the 1980s, the construction of a hydroelectric dam project flooded 165of forest reservoir that was created is enormous. Nearly a quarter the size of Singapore. Just two years earlier, the area had been decreed a national park meaning no logging or mining was permitted, but Thailand needed electricity and the dam project was made a priority. The flooding that resulted caused massive upheaval. Many animals drowned
and everyone living in villages in the area was forced out. Sharon, ping john, now 78 years old, resides on the outskirts of the national Park. He remembers that time with sadness. One day the subdistrict chief said there would be a survey and a dam will be built. We needed to be prepared. We might not be able to live here in our old place. The villages were wondering where we could go and we were told that the houses would be moved and we would be given cropland as well.
We lived there until the rumors turned into real life. Once they started drilling the tunnel, we were certain that this was serious. I say that we lost everything. Whoever has to leave the place, they used to live the bed, they used to sleep, the house they used to stay in. What would they feel? We cannot find the words that describe it all. Despite the lingering memories of life before the dam today, cal is a beacon for eco tourism in southern Thailand.
International visitors are drawn to forest trekking and exploring the aqua marine waters and dramatic limestone peaks. The place has been labeled the Gui lin of Thailand for its similarities to china's famous cast landscape. The influx of money to the area has been a catalyst for local behaviors to change as well. This is Ter Taekwondo, the chief of CAl national Park. The direct benefit is that villagers now work as tour guides and lead tourists to different spots in the National Park. 80%
of the tour guides are from the local area. When former poachers so that there were a lot of tourists coming, they switch from wildlife hunting to become tour guides and boat operators. They also open restaurants or shops. This means they can earn a direct income and it isn't illegal. This makes people help with conservation of nature. Life here
is a lot different than in the past. They've joined us and cooperate in taking care of the forests and wildlife and this is why incidents of encroaching destruction of resources and poaching of wildlife is now zero. After listening to to tie, I'm wondering how important eco tourism can be as a tool to promote forest protection in Thailand.
Eco tourism is one of a bundle or a portfolio of potential strategies that we can use to reward, to compensate, to incentivize local communities to in a lot of cases continue doing the good work that they've already been doing in terms of taking care of their force and their natural resources.
That's Regan Pyro Ma Hackett, a senior program officer at rico, an international not for profit assisting local communities to actively manage forests in Asia and the pacific. She says ecotourism is just one of the tools in the kit.
People are confronted with difficult choices and tradeoffs and when you want to send grandma to the hospital and your kids to school, it takes money. And a lot of indigenous people and local communities that live in and around forests have long relied on subsistence type of economies that are not cash based. So this puts them in a difficult position to try and acquire hard currency and the forest has become
the go to place for that. If we can offer them alternative benefits, including direct payments or direct financing, I think it's essential in allowing them the same basic rights that anybody else would expect to be able to take care of the families and improve their own livelihoods. This can be through equal tourism. This can be through supporting local supply chains. For example, either timber, non timber forest products, it can also be through new and emerging markets, both for carbon
as well as for biodiversity. I see personally great promise and something really transformative as we start to see markets offering incentives and recognizing these really marginalized historically, impoverished groups for the ad absolutely vital role that they play in protecting the remaining shreds of ecosystems that we rely on as a global community for our survival
Thailand's forests are on a more hopeful path. Just like several of its Asean counterparts, the country recently joined an international coalition pledging support for a global goal to protect or conserve at least 30% of the planet's land and ocean. By the end of the decade, Regan says it's a viable goal and a good one to target given the critical role of rainforests in combating climate change.
So climate change is obviously a massive global threat and it's particularly a threat in Southeast Asia, where population densities are very high, high percentages of the most vulnerable countries to climate change are within this region. We're seeing a series of different climatic threats involving typhoons, Storm surges, drought, heavy rainfall, flooding wildfires as major phenomena
throughout the entire region. The relationship with tropical and subtropical forests is obviously, it will be affected by climate change, but also their vital role as carbon sinks. So they're one of the most high carbon sequestering forest types that exists there relatively more resilient in the face of climate change.
As opposed to say, the dry deciduous forests in northern parts of these countries which are much more subject to drought, as well as wildfires, but I think they are no less essential as critical when it comes to climate change. Tropical forests are oftentimes the traditional ancestral domains and territories of a lot of indigenous people and local communities who are also some of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities. Therefore
the intersection between tropical rain forests and indigenous people. Local communities makes them an absolutely essential geography for policymakers and for the global community to consider with regards to climate change and land use planning, are you looking for ways to make your money work harder for you or need tips on saving, investing and making financial decisions? Join me. Andrea hang on. Money talks.
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back in the south after a long day in the forest with the rangers, I'm happy to see the site of my accommodation and Iraq community lodge is on the edge of the national park. It's surrounded by jungle, but most of its grounds are quite different. It's full of palm oil trees. This land used to be a plantation, which is actually a pretty common sight in the area.
It's an example of economic land use changes here as locals sought ways to make a living in years gone by forest was turned into various types of concessions. Palm oil rubber, coffee, pineapples At Anorak things are turning back to nature though. The man who used to own this land is 48 year old Natalie Wood. He sold it to the current owners but now works at the lodge. He takes visitors on hikes and is in charge of one of anoraks programs to reforest this land. Slowly. The palm trees are being
replaced by indigenous trees. We took care of this land for around 70 or 80 years after migrating here. Since the generation of our ancestors, they grew ram batons and coffees, but it wasn't fruitful. So they planted palm oil trees instead. There's still palm oil's now. Reforestation has started in the next 10 years, it will definitely look like the forest in the old days, a lot of trees have been planted
in the future. I think that nature will be so abundant like in the past and everybody will understand about conserving nature for the next generations. And if we can conserve more nature tourism will be sustainable too. It's not everywhere that you can find a healthy mix of rainforest protection and a lively local economy around though
things seem to be on track. I can't help but worry about how mass tourism here could end up spoiling well made plans, especially outside protected areas if more locals, the ones who truly treasure this landscape are empowered to shape the future of cal so hopefully that can be avoided and everyone can still enjoy what is a special place. This has been Jack board, thank you for listening to
this special episode of the climate conversations. The team behind this podcast are Christina, robert, Jacqueline chan, C Win, Joanne chan and Tiffany.