Page 31 - Executive Summary

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Introduction

1. Background

Thailand economy development for the past several decades, the land plays

crucial roles in productions for agriculture and other sectors, including industry, real
estate, and services. Demand of land in for various activity needs increases rapidly
inconsistent with economic expansion for country development, which results in
problems occurred in land use, and land ownership. Land use problems derive from

the unsuitable land use according to land suitability. Cropping practices in high areas,
which is forest area causes erosion, and landslide. For land ownership, the problems
are lack of land title, lack of land for agriculture, and rental land. Consequently,
combination of these land use related problems delivers conflict between

government agencies themselves, government agencies and villagers, and between
villages themselves. This situation becomes more serious because limitation of
national land resource, while land use demand raises up.

In principle, national land use requires both conservation and appropriate
designated area of development by establishing “National Land Use Plan”. Even the

concept of the national land use plan was introduced before the National Economic
and Development Plan No. 1 (B.E. 2504-2509) and other initiatives such as land

classification for forest area and agricultural area, delineating of national parks,
wildlife conservation areas, agricultural economic area, principle city plan, specific

plan, and land use plan of Land Development Department, there was no such

initiative coverage all land use classes of the countries, and with the consensus of
relevant agencies and was adopted to implement intensively. The reason is that

there are many agencies working in land management and focusing on their mission
directly. Although there are coordination between those agencies, there is no agreed

criteria, or master plan that could be utilized together, implementation of agencies

could not go in the same direction, so this problem exaggerate the land use problem
seriously.

In this regard, it is very important to have “Land Use Plan for Thailand” to
address the current land situation. The land use plan is the master plan for all

relevant agencies on land management could use and mainstream land management

in accordance with the plan.