A Lesson from a Fisherman: Who Controls the Resources? Who Defines Development?
Foodthink’s Perspective
I. Storm Surge: National Parks and Small Islands
The fishermen in this village are all Muslim, descendants of immigrants from Malaysia, and some can still speak Malay today. Seventeen households whose homes were destroyed by the storm have nowhere to live and are still staying with relatives.
“There is nowhere for these people to rebuild their homes,” says Nok. He is the head of the “Save Andaman Network” (SAN), an NGO based in Trang Province. His full name is Phakphum Vithantirawat, but everyone calls him P’ Nok (in Thai, the prefix P’ is added before a name to show respect to an elder).
The reason is somewhat absurd: this stretch of coastline belongs to a national park, and the management only allows villagers to rebuild on their original plots—nowhere else. But after experiencing such a disaster, the villagers are still shaken and dare not build in such a sensitive and fragile area.
Moreover, the storm caused tide levels to rise, severely eroding the coast and sweeping away a layer of beach, bringing the fishing village even closer to the sea. With climate change, the likelihood of storms of this intensity may increase. To build here again would be a futile struggle against nature.
But the villagers are helpless. This is not an isolated case—when land is designated as a “National Park” in the name of conservation, the indigenous people who have lived there for generations often find themselves stripped of the resources they need to survive, such as land, game and timber; this is a scenario playing out in many countries across the globe.
A core issue here is: “Who owns the resources? Who has the power to set the rules?” This is the point that resonated most deeply with me during this trip. One could say that almost everything I encountered prompted reflection on this very question.
However, the villagers have not given up. We came here to see several rows of bamboo poles positioned between the ruins and the sea. These poles serve to both dissipate the energy of the waves and trap sand. The government had originally intended to build a concrete sea wall for protection, but the locals felt that a concrete wall would only drive the waves higher and trap water inside with no way to drain. Consequently, they ultimately chose bamboo.
The government sent workers to bore holes in the sand using high-pressure water jets, inserting bamboo poles to a depth of one metre. In doing so, they created what appeared to us outsiders as a curious sight: rows upon rows of bamboo stretching across a desolate beach into the distance. Though the method looks crude, it is effective; experience has shown that it can trap 70 to 80 centimetres of sand a year, acting as a rustic form of land reclamation. Thus, in a small and slow manner, humans beg the sea for land, bit by bit.
To consolidate the hard-won sand, the villagers also plant mangrove seedlings at the base of the bamboo poles, which are said to take three to four years to mature. They prefer to plant them in clusters so that the mangroves can “grow up with friends and not be lonely”. There is a scientific basis for this: in areas exposed to wind and waves, planting two or three seedlings close together allows them to intertwine, reducing the likelihood of them toppling over.
“Look, a newborn island!” the village head, who was leading our tour, exclaimed, pointing to a small, shimmering sliver of land in the distance. It had originally been nothing more than a shallow sand dune, visible only at low tide. In just seven years, it had grown from a nondescript shoal into a startling little island. (Perhaps that storm washed sand away and deposited it here, accelerating the island’s rise—who knows?) Coconut trees had already taken root, and fishermen were now able to catch crabs in the surrounding waters.
Former seagrass beds are now being reclaimed through rudimentary bamboo methods, and an island has emerged from the shallows. Such profound transformations can happen in just a few short years. In that moment, I felt that we humans were very much like ants.
II. The Vanishing Seagrass and Dugongs
“Just walk across,” he said.
To my astonishment, I realised the water was incredibly shallow. We rolled our trousers up above our knees and stepped in barefoot; the water only reached our knees. The sand beneath our feet was fine and soft, like stepping on silt.
As we drew closer, I realised that the “floating matter” I had mistaken for an algal bloom was actually seagrass growing on the sandy floor; it was, in fact, a beach almost entirely exposed by the low tide. Only a thin layer of seawater covered the grass. The most abundant variety was a short-leaved seagrass—the primary food for dugongs.
Nok pointed to a series of very shallow grooves underfoot. “These are the tracks of the dugongs,” he explained. In the light of the setting sun, these marks were clearly visible. When the tide rises, dugongs swim here, pressing their mouths against the sand and arching their bodies as they feast. An adult dugong consumes 45 kilograms of seagrass a day.
Once the seagrass beds are destroyed, dugongs easily succumb to starvation and death. This is precisely the tragedy that has been unfolding in these waters in recent years.
The cause is the dredging project of the Kantang Channel on the Dongli River. The dredging was intended to accommodate larger cargo ships; in regional geographical terms, the project serves the development of the ‘Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT)’. However, the dredged silt and rocks were dumped into the sea, spreading outwards from the estuary. Although this area is a protected no-fishing zone and is situated some distance from the worksite, it was still affected. According to Nok, the spread of sediment has almost entirely destroyed the seagrass beds here. Members of SAN have encountered numerous dead dugongs in this region.
In 2020, the dredging operations sparked public protests. As a result, the government was forced to temporarily suspend the project and commission experts to conduct a new environmental impact assessment to identify suitable locations for silt disposal, ensuring the channel could be dredged without destroying the ecosystem or jeopardising the livelihoods of local fishers.
There were once over a thousand hectares of seagrass beds here, supporting Thailand’s largest population of dugongs. But Nok says the developers’ only explanation for this catastrophic outcome was: “at the time of construction, we believed the impact would be limited to the river channel”. It was only in 2024, four years after work stopped, that seagrass began to grow back here—the very patch beneath our feet.
According to a report by the US non-profit environmental news outlet Mongabay, Thailand’s dugong population was approximately 273 in 2022, with 90% living in the Andaman Sea; however, a third of that population may now have vanished. In 2024, at least 40% of dugong deaths were attributed to starvation caused by the large-scale depletion of seagrass.
A government scientist interviewed by Mongabay found that most of the dugongs in Trang have either died or are drifting along the coast in a desperate search for survival—some heading north towards Krabi, Phang Nga, and Phuket, and even as far as Myanmar; to the south, at least three dead dugongs were found near Langkawi in Malaysia. The scientist estimates that fewer than ten dugongs may remain in Trang province today.
Viewed in this light, seeing the recovering seagrass beds and the traces of dugongs feeding that day felt like witnessing a scene of survival against the odds. But Nok worries that those who fled also struggle to survive, as they must adapt to new environments and risk injury from colliding with unfamiliar fishing boats. “In Trang, the fishers know how to control their speed to avoid the dugongs; people elsewhere simply aren’t aware of this.” “Here,” he says, “we can protect them, but elsewhere, we are powerless.”
The distant waters the dugongs swim to may not necessarily offer food; according to the aforementioned Mongabay report, there are almost no viable seagrass beds around Phuket. Government officials have even attempted to supplement the diet of migrating dugongs with foods such as kale and cabbage — the kind of diet typically given to rescued dugongs in aquariums.
While fishermen can plead and fight for their destroyed homes, only environmental NGOs like SAN can speak up for the dugongs, the seagrass, and the coral.
Libong Island also has a variety of long-leaf seagrass, a food source for sea turtles. However, Nok explained that this seagrass takes two years to mature enough to reproduce; if consumed by turtles during this period, it is difficult for the grass to spread into dense meadows. “Therefore, there is a conflict between conserving sea turtles and conserving seagrass,” they said, looking troubled, despite the fact that providing food for sea turtles is one of the primary goals of seagrass conservation.
In a manner resembling an experiment, they used bamboo poles and fishing nets to fence off a few square metres of the beach to plant long-leaf seagrass, but the results have been poor. When we visited, the area was almost entirely bare, with only a few scattered shoots of long-leaf seagrass poking through.
III. Crab Bank
Since the 1990s, growing global demand for crab meat and unsustainable fishing practices, such as trawling, caused Thai blue swimming crab catches to peak in 1998 at 46,678 tonnes, far exceeding the maximum sustainable yield. To protect these fishery resources, the Thai government introduced a series of restoration policies, while community-led efforts also emerged—crab banks being one such initiative.
The crab bank we visited is located at a community conservation centre, housed in a simple wooden shed. A row of large blue plastic tubs lines the floor, while several glass fish tanks sit on a table, connected by a dense tangle of plastic tubing used to oxygenate the water. The village head reached into a tub and picked up a female crab, her underside a mass of bright orange eggs. Thousands of eggs are held against the female’s abdomen by mucus. The orange colour indicates that the eggs are still developing; the village head explained that when they turn grey, they are nearing the hatching stage and must be released back into the sea within five days.
These eggs hatch in the seawater into planktonic larvae, with a single batch potentially numbering from several hundred thousand to over a million. The village head believes that crab banks are effective for population recovery. He noted that whereas blue swimming crabs were previously catchable for only six months of the year, they can now be caught year-round, providing a vital source of livelihood.
The fishers have developed a habit of doing this not just for blue swimming crabs, but for other marine species during their breeding periods. We also saw squid eggs, resembling a cluster of transparent grapes; these had been brought back after being found tangled in a fishing net.
According to Mongabay, data does indeed show that blue swimmer crab populations have increased since the introduction of crab banks and ‘other measures’. In 2017, Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, WWF, and several private sector partners jointly launched a ‘Fisheries Improvement Project’. The measures promoted include crab banks, seasonal bans on catching berried crabs, and restrictions on trawling and certain gear, such as crab pots with a mesh size of less than 6.4cm.
However, stock enhancement alone is not enough. Amonsak Sawusdee, a marine biologist who has studied blue swimmer crabs for decades, emphasises that it is equally vital to establish and enforce appropriate regulations on fishing gear and to create protected areas for spawning and juvenile crabs.
In the very same waters, industrial projects destroying vast seagrass beds coexist with the fishermen’s Sisyphean ‘crab banks’—a scene that, to an observer, seems utterly absurd. Yet, it is precisely this spontaneous action by the fishing community, in collaboration with NGOs, that has resisted destructive industrial projects and overfishing, thereby conserving native species.
How can a conservation model like this—one rooted in local knowledge and governed collectively by coastal communities—be normalised? LMMA offers one possibility: the ‘community-managed protected area’ model, a system of co-management between the government and the public.
IV.LMMA: Empowering Communities to Manage the Ocean
LMMAs emphasise the coexistence of conservation and livelihoods, as this is the only way for community residents to remain. The next entry in these notes will focus on how fishing communities explore their own livelihood models. In this piece, we first examine how a system involving diverse stakeholders—including governments, NGOs, and civil associations—is implemented on the ground.
First, it should be noted that, as in China, marine and coastal resources (such as mangroves) in Thailand are state assets. The corresponding administrative body is the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR). Community-Protected Areas are also managed by the DMCR. However, plots designated as Marine National Parks have a higher level of protection and are managed directly by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.
During our visit to the renowned Mu Ko Phetra National Park in Satun Province, we found two Community-Protected Areas tucked within its boundaries. The head of the local national park administration explained that since the park was established 42 years ago, it had been under “closed-off” management. In the field of biodiversity conservation, “nature reserves” are exclusive areas designated for the purpose of species protection—national parks being a prime example—but in many places, this has led to the exclusion of indigenous peoples.
However, the managers eventually realised that this was unsustainable and that local people should be allowed to make a living from the national park, provided it is done in a sustainable manner.
As we spoke, we stood beneath a blue sign erected last year. This is a public notice regarding the management rules of the Community-Protected Area, outlining its boundaries, prohibited activities (such as the use of illegal fishing gear), and penalties. The map in the centre of the sign represents the national park, with the yellow and orange zones marking the Community-Protected Areas of two respective villages.
Fishing is strictly restricted throughout the National Park area; fishers who wish to fish may only use the most traditional gear. However, within the yellow and orange community protected areas shown in the map, fishers are permitted to engage in more extensive fishing and gathering. This comes with certain obligations: species monitoring, patrolling, and the construction of fish habitats. At first glance, it feels as though these two community protected areas are snatching a living from the jaws of the National Park; correspondingly, however, fishers must be able to prove that while pursuing their trade, they are also restoring the marine ecosystem.
This is where it becomes interesting: these community protected areas, known as LMMAs and managed by the DMCR, actually belong to the National Park. The governing authorities differ, and in terms of legal authority, the National Park Act supersedes the management framework of the community protected areas. In other words, the LMMA exists as a mode of governance embedded within the statutory framework of the National Park. Reaching this point has depended heavily on the long-term positive interaction and mutual trust between various government departments, fishers’ associations, and NGOs.
In practice, LMMAs are indeed implemented through consultation between the community and the government. Only areas that meet certain criteria can apply to become a community protected area: the community must have traditional or existing usage rights, a clear community organisation (such as the fishers’ associations we encountered on this trip), and an internal consensus to establish a set of management rules.
When it comes to “establishing management rules”, the role of NGOs is often indispensable. They primarily focus on raising awareness and capacity building within the community—teaching fishers how to monitor species, draw community maps, master meeting protocols, and understand legal knowledge. Externally, they act more as “intermediaries”, “translating” the community’s claims to rights into a language that is easier to communicate to the government and other stakeholders, particularly the “legalese” required for policy advocacy and legislative recommendations.
This bridging role was clearly reflected in the arrangement of our visit. Being able to meet and chat with the leadership of the National Park administration was actually arranged by the Thai Sea Watch Association (“Sea Watch”). Whether in the Sea Watch office, visiting fish conservation zones by boat, or sitting on the ground chatting with villagers in the community, the backgrounds of those present were diverse: community representatives, women’s representatives, local council members, and government officials—often from several departments, such as the DMCR and the Department of National Parks. Even though the process required sentence-by-sentence consecutive translation, which made for a long and tiring afternoon, they participated with great patience throughout.
Fishers are required to formulate their own community regulations. In Satun, fishers from several LMMAs collaborating with Sea Watch also had to name their respective protected areas; through this highly ritualistic act of “naming”, they felt a sense of community ownership.
The various government departments involved in LMMA management must also approve the management rules. Tab, the head of Sea Watch, showed us a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the community, the local government, and the NGO. Two enormous sheets of paper were densely covered in Thai script, detailing the management rules negotiated point by point and confirmed by all parties. There were 19 categories pertaining specifically to the community; for example, one rule states that no one may act alone, but must work with partners—who could be government departments, NGOs, or simply neighbours.
Language is a tool for thought, and the creation of concepts is a common tactic used by NGOs in policy advocacy. For example, to drive global conservation efforts, the concept of OECM—Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures—was introduced. Many LMMAs could be registered as OECMs, but Tab says they prefer the concept of LMMA.
OECMs refer to areas outside of protected areas that, through effective governance, achieve lasting in-situ biodiversity conservation, such as urban green spaces or nature-friendly farmland. In 2018, OECM became a formally defined statistical tool under the Convention on Biological Diversity, requiring national reporting to track global conservation goals and progress.
Whether they are protected areas or OECMs, these concepts have been pushed onto the global environmental governance agenda by international agencies; it is, in essence, a “top-down” process. Driven by international negotiations, OECM is becoming a common lingua franca recognised and utilised by governments and international organisations. Many community-protected areas have the potential to be declared OECMs—and while they may not receive direct financial support in the way protected areas do, the prestige of the OECM label makes it easier to attract external support, such as international partnerships or carbon credit projects.
Yet, NGOs and fishermen prefer the more grassroots concept of LMMA, which places a greater emphasis on community self-management. Tab’s indifference towards OECMs points to an interesting shift: grassroots NGOs seem less interested in the glamorous, grand concepts of international environmental governance frameworks, opting instead for approaches that reflect autonomy and provide tangible benefits.
V. Resisting Carbon Sink ‘Land Grabbing’
This stems from the fact that the local mangroves were occupied for 21 years by a company under the pretext of a charcoal production concession. During that time, villagers were required to obtain company approval to use any timber—a process that was practically impossible—leaving them with no choice but to harvest wood in secret. Over time, they noticed that food was becoming increasingly scarce within and around the mangroves. They regard crabs and shellfish as indicator species for the health of the ecosystem; not only have these populations dwindled, but some types of seafood have vanished entirely.
The villagers believe this is a direct result of the company’s logging. A vivid example is the mud crab, which lives in burrows in the mud. Without the canopy of the mangroves, the mud is scorched by the sun, making it too hot for the crabs to survive. In short, without the mangroves, the wildlife lose their habitat, and the shoreline is transformed from a vibrant sanctuary into a wasteland.
Consequently, after the concession expired, some villagers, recognising the issue, took the initiative to plant trees. Five villages formed a mangrove conservation group and applied to the DMCR to establish a community protected area.
In 2024, the application was approved. They successfully secured a “community forest”, granting them management rights over the mangroves for ten years and providing a legal safeguard for the community’s right to use the resources.
In 2025, a report by Thailand’s “Knowledge for Development Foundation” found that, against the backdrop of the climate crisis, the Thai government has vigorously promoted voluntary emission reduction schemes. These allow companies to purchase carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by funding mangrove restoration. However, the implementation of these schemes at the grassroots level has triggered severe inequalities. In some existing projects, for example, the profit distribution sees companies taking 70%, the community receiving only 20%, and the DMCR taking 10%—yet neither the companies nor the government have ever transparently explained the basis for this allocation to the community.
Furthermore, the DMCR and corporations often bypass the wider village population, dealing directly with village heads or specific representatives for signatures. Some villagers have even been coerced into signing agreements under pressure from government officials without understanding the terms of the contract. These top-down, opaque manoeuvres have sparked suspicion and division within the community.
In an interview with HaRDstories, Tab argued that mangrove carbon credit projects cannot truly address global warming. “The principle established by the UN is that those who emit are responsible for the remedy, yet this has been twisted into a scheme for a carbon market,” he said. “Solving global warming requires reducing emissions, not using money to seize things that do not belong to them.”
Now, with the establishment of community-protected areas, residents feel more empowered to say no to such land-grabbing schemes.
Coming Next
This is the second of three field notes from Foodthink’s visit to small-scale fishing communities in Southern Thailand. The first, &u201cProtecting the Sea for Thirty Years: Unity is the Key to Plenty | A Visit to Small-Scale Fishing Communities in Southern Thailand&u201d, discusses how small-scale fishers in Satun Province joined forces to drive out commercial trawlers, and how local fishers’ associations further organised into a national alliance to actively engage in legislative and policy advocacy. To learn how conservation and development coexist within local fishing communities, please look out for the third and final article.
Unless otherwise stated, photos in this article were taken by the author
Editor: Pei Dan