Key messages:

• On paper, Thailand’s forest conservation laws protect nature from human destruction. In practice, they criminalize the very communities who have sustained these ecosystems for generations.
• When 10,000 Indigenous Peoples and farmers converged in the lawn of Chiang Mai Provincial Hall this March, they weren’t just fighting against unjust decrees; they were demonstrating an alternative through the act of showing up and care.
• The protest redefined victory as not just political concessions but also the people’s persistence in their demand for justice.

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“It is such a big win, so why doesn’t anyone look more satisfied?” I asked, naively.
“They know the fight doesn’t end here,” I was told. “This is just the beginning.”

When Thailand’s government conceded to over 10,000 protesters who had camped outside Chiang Mai Provincial Hall for nine days this March, it was hailed as historic. Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers had effectively opposed recent conservation laws, a regressive development that reinforces exclusionary conservation, with the Cabinet agreeing to all six of their demands.

But those at the protest knew better. In a political system designed to deflect justice, victory isn’t found in signed documents. It lives in the radical act of organizing, resisting, and caring. This protest wasn’t merely resistance: it was practicing an alternative future rooted in care and collective power that Thailand’s proclaimed democracy has failed to deliver.

Figure 1. A community leader addressing the authority on the first day of protest.

A struggle across generations

Half a century ago, 16-year-old Chaiprasert Phoka marched with Lisu, Akha, La-wua and other indigenous communities in the Northern Farmers Network from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. With maps demarcating communities’ land, they protested policies that would displace Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral land and challenge their land tenure. The march lasted 59 days, coordinated with just two hand-held telephones.

“Everyday we live with the earth as our mother, and the forest as our father,” says Chaiprasert, now a gray-haired elder of the Pgakanyaw Indigenous People. “We can hold our breath for as long as we have our father and mother. The law seeks to separate forest and people, but everything co-exists.”

Seven generations after Chaiprasert’s first protest have remained in the same territory. Once destroyed by a logging company, forests have regrown, and wildlife returned under their care. Yet for these caretakers, threats persist.

In November 2024, two Royal Decrees were issued under the National Parks Act and Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act (2019). They limit forest residents like Chaiprasert to 20 rai (about 8 acres) for no more than 20 years and grant officials the power to evict and fine “violators” without court oversight. With these laws, communities having lived on the same land for generations are stripped of their livelihood. Climate-positive livelihood activities, such as shifting cultivation, can no longer continue, taking away the culture and identity of many indigenous communities.

This was the latest iteration of a persistent pattern. “Governments change, but priorities remain the same,” Chaiprasert reflected on the recent protest. “The number of protected areas has grown, but environmental degradation continues, while our people suffer.” It is indeed a repetitive pattern of failing to recognize Indigenous Peoples as protectors of forests and biodiversity, and that conservation goals cannot be met without respecting the rights of these communities. The irony wasn’t lost on him, or the younger generations of indigenous and forest communities who stood at the front of this year’s protest.

Figure 2. Forest communities across ages gather at the Chiang Mai Provincial Hall.

The fight against regressive laws

Since December 2024, Suwanni Bunyuenkun, an Indigenous youth leader with the Mekong Akha Network for Peace and Sustainability, spent weeks with other organizers traveling from village to village. They explained policy implications in terms of lived experiences for local people – eviction threats, livelihood loss, and cultural erasure.

For Suwanni and some 1.8 million Indigenous Peoples and farmers, these laws are not just about conservation – they are instruments of displacement and erasure.

“It’s not something we can force people to do,” Suwanni said of joining the protest. “But communities must understand what’s at stake. The cost of doing nothing is high.”

While the government passed laws without real consultation, communities mobilized their own resources to respond. But even with awareness, joining wasn’t easy.

Phnom Thano, an Indigenous journalist and chair of the Indigenous Media Network, recalled conversations in his village over shared meals. Not everyone believed eviction could happen to them, and some simply couldn’t leave other urgent needs behind.

Still, for many, staying home wasn’t an option. Silence had already cost them. One elderly farmer brought a briefcase full of carefully stored papers—a map showing how protected areas overlapped his land, photos of destroyed crops, and documentation of his increasing debts. His loss was not abstract; it was accounted for, page by page.

As Mr. Chaiprasert reflects,

“around the world, we see violent wars and people being killed. For us forest dwellers in Thailand, these policies declare a slow death on our communities and identities.”

“Su may su!” – Fight or not fight! A repeated chant shows, the choice was clear.

Protest as care

From March 24 to April 1, over 10,000 people occupied the Provincial Hall grounds. The air was thick with heat, haze, and tension as elders, youth, and families gathered, many in traditional attire soaked in sweat.

Their six demands, centered on establishing an inclusive Law Amendment Committee, land surveys, tenure verification, citizenship status, and an amnesty bill, were formal goals. But something else was happening too.

People cooked together, shared meals, held ceremonies, looked after each other’s children, and made decisions in common. Under the scorching heat of almost 40 degrees, strangers handed each other peeled fruit and water bottles. One evening, as representatives headed to government negotiations, candles were lit for victims of the recent earthquake that shook Myanmar and neighboring countries. These were not just expressions of solidarity, but a form of governance.

In a repressed civic space that has long been constrained by cycles of military rule, constitutional rewriting, and limits on freedom of expression and assembly, these acts of caring became a form of resistance. Social movements, from the student uprisings of the 1970s to more recent pro-democracy mobilizations, have faced surveillance, criminalization, and violent crackdowns. Hence, the acts of showing up, feeding, organizing, resting, and protecting one another were not happening alongside the protest: they were the protest.

These everyday acts were expressions of a different way of relating that is grounded in reciprocity and solidarity. It defied a system that seeks to erase the presence of forest-dependent communities. In doing so, protestors redefined what civic space could be: not a zone granted or denied or surveilled by the state, but a space claimed and sustained by people building a world on their own terms.

Through collective care, protestors persisted through uncertainty, from the frustration when government representatives didn’t appear, to hope when the Deputy Prime Minister agreed to present their demands, to doubt about whether anything would truly change.

The camp didn’t just call for change – it embodied an alternative.

Figure 3. A woman cooking in a makeshift kitchen at the encampment protest.

Beyond political concessions

On April 1, after nine tense days, the Cabinet agreed to all six demands. It was a hard-won victory building on years of struggle. Smiles broke out. Dances followed. If fully implemented, the demands would represent a step toward a more inclusive and sustainable future – recognizing Indigenous Peoples and forest communities and enabling their participation in decision-making.

But as tents came down and people packed their bags, a quietness soon settled over the grounds.

“We know the fight doesn’t end here,” reflected Phnom. “This is just the beginning.”

Everyone understood that promises can be broken, Suwanni added. After all, this protest followed the state’s failure to fulfill a memorandum from November 2024 that promised to suspend law enforcement and include community input in revising the decrees. And by the time of writing this article, several lead organizers of the protest had been charged with unlawful assembly.

For those who have lived through cycles of betrayals, even major victories are viewed with caution. The Cabinet’s decision may delay reform more than advance it. As Chaiprasert said: governments change, priorities remain the same.

Figure 4. The stage on the ninth day as protesters were packing up after the victory.

A different kind of victory

What, then, does winning mean? Must victories be measured in signed government documents, or by the strength of people’s movements?

By the latter measure, something profound was achieved. For nine days, a community organized itself through collective care; solidarity deepened across ethnicities and ages through a common vision for justice. Laws and policies write them off as encroachers of the forests, but the people claimed space, raised their voice, and demanded recognition of their existence and role as guardians of the land.

They aren’t alone. Across Asia, Indigenous Peoples assert the same truth. The Tohmle Statement by the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact challenges state-led conservation models that dispossess communities under the guise of sustainability. It reminds us that justice is not just about legal recognition, it is about re-centering indigenous governance, worldview and knowledge in how they care for land and each other.

The Chiang Mai protest was more than resistance. It was a rehearsal of possibility. One where decisions emerge not from the air-conditioned rooms of distant ministries but shared deliberation among communities refusing to be silenced.

The tents may be gone, but for Chaiprasert, Suwanni, Phnom and thousands of others, the fight continues. So does the practice of building the world they seek, where forests and communities thrive together, where care replaces extraction, and where justice isn’t perpetually deferred.

That, too, is victory. Perhaps the only kind that truly lasts.

Teaser image credit: Author supplied.