Although the growing Thai environmental movement has made significant progress over the last several years, Thailand's environmental problems are still notorious. Thailand's very rapid economic growth and urbanization have created a series of demands on its underlying natural resources and ecosystems that have far outstripped the country's environmental understanding, let alone its protections.
The fact that the country is surrounded by weak, undemocratic, unresponsive, and divided societies commonly suffering violent civil war (Burma and Cambodia, for example), only aggravates the problem. The misery and troubles in Indochina and Burma have pushed more and more tribal peoples across the border into Thailand. As they have struggled to find a foot hold, their traditional practices have been devastating to the forests in many of the country's key water catchment areas.
Thailand has begun to set aside major environmental reserves, however, including one giant internationally recognized biosphere reserve. In these areas, there is an especially urgent need to educate the local population about what is at stake and to build long term constituencies for the preservation of those ecosystems and the species that depend on them. For example, around the biosphere reserve there is a population of some two million people engaged in the production of rice, corn, tapioca, and sugar cane. With industry encroaching, the lowlands have been almost completely denuded of trees.