nothing can be done to control pollution from the industrial sector, the environment will
become unbearable. The recent study of the Thailand Development Research Institute-TDRI
indicates that the quantity of hazardous waste produced is expected to reach 6 million tons by
the year 2001 compared to 1.1 million tons in 1986. Most of this waste is generated directly
by the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, a number of recurring serious accidents supports
an assertion that Thai bureaucrat is too incompetent to cope with problems emerging from the
industrialization process.
To stress my point, a high economic growth in the Thai economy from the 1950s to
the 1980s might have come about as a result of two conditions; high population growth and
damage to the environmental resource, namely deforestation. The agricultural sector was
deployed to generate economic growth and revenue to feed industrialists in the city until the
1970s. The continuous growth of this sector with scanty technological progress lends support
to the notion that Thai farmers were heavily squeezed by the Thai state. The surprising
feature of agricultural growth was that Thailand was probably the only country in Asia where
cultivated land per agricultural worker actually increased until 1977 (see Siamwalla, 1991).
The simple answer lies in the fact that land abundance enabled Thai farmers to expand land
ownership from the 1940s to the late 1970s without a break. This also means that agriculture
has been able to absorb large amounts of labour, namely seasonal labour. A fact which
accounts for Thailand still having a larger proportion of its labour force in this sector than
other Asian countries with a similar income level. What is certain is that the availability of
land has given Thailand a strong comparative advantage in agriculture. However, since the
1980s when the state abolished forest concessions, this natural advantage has been eroded.
The monsoon season also significantly affects the labour force in Thailand, especially in the
peak season when more labour is required. In a long slack season, hundreds of thousands of
agricultural workers have to seek jobs in the city or other places far from their home.
It is apparent that high economic growth from the 1950s to the 1970s was responsible
for rapid deforestation in Thailand which has now turned into a major national problem.
Ninety million rai of forest were denuded between 1960 and 1990 at the average of three
million rai per year. Less than 28 per cent of the country (about 90 million rai is now under
forest cover (see Panayoutou and Parasuk, 1990; Panayoutou and Sungsuwan, 1989). As a
result, Thailand ranks as one of the most rapid deforestation countries in the post-war period