Postscript to Part B

In August 1997, shortly after the group discussion o f Part B, the Australian project leader, sociocultural leader and project manager travelled to Chiang Mai for a joint team meeting. At this meeting, the Thai hydrologist was formally endorsed as the Thai DSS leader. The Australian DSS leader was unable to attend due to other professional

commitments. In lieu o f his participation, the Australian project leader outlined his own thoughts on the state o f the DSS. He suggested that creating a single integrating DSS package during the first phase o f the project would be overly ambitious, and that a better alternative would be to develop three separate but linked modules: a land use planning system such as LUPIS; a ‘w h at-if simulation program such as Extend; and a GIS database, Figure 6.3.

Given a tight schedule and an abundance o f protocol activities, few o f the issues which had emerged during the application o f the bias framework were raised at the joint meeting. However, in lieu o f discussion at the meeting, it was agreed that the Australian DSS and sociocultural leaders would travel to Chiang Mai in September

1997 to hold a workshop on the DSS component, focussing on how to integrate socioeconomic data into the DSS, how to ensure that stakeholders appreciated the capacity o f the DSS, and how to prepare them to access and use the DSS. It was also planned that LUPIS and Extend would be demonstrated to the Thais at this time. It was intended that one o f the outcomes o f the workshop would be a conceptual diagram of how the three modules o f the DSS would interrelate.

Upon her return from Chiang Mai, the sociocultural leader remarked that the visit had taken a load o ff her mind with regards to her earlier fear that the technicality o f the DSS would dissuade active participation by the Thai sociocultural researchers and villagers:

“I had had a mental image of the Thai social researchers having difficulties with the DSS, but [the Thai anthropologist] is right into ARCINFO and mapping from the village point of view. For example, there’s a Karen village called Mae Lu which has been contesting land with the Forestry Department - some of the customary land boundary has been taken over by the Forestry Department for conservation forest. [The villagers] want to map their customary land uses in Mapinfo - some are interested in using the technology and others in having [the Thai anthropologist] do it and represent their interests. Mae Lu has an ethnobotanical centre where they’ve been collecting a community seed bank of species... They’re interested in mapping this information too to map forest biodiversity... So the villagers are not seeing the DSS as a threat but as an opportunity”.

Note that the DSS has been framed here in the context o f spatial mapping technology, which represented only one module o f the conceptual model o f the IWRAM DSS presented at the joint team meeting.

A Preliminary Structure for the DSS for Mae Chaem/Ping Basin: 3 modules and some of their interactions (Note: Upland catchment and instream models in hydrology module also link with GlS module for economic “optimization” but nature of link depends on level of sophistication of optimization)

LUPIS module " j

Mackey, Ross, Pratuang etc

GIS module ]

Methi, Mackey etc

Hydrology module | Jakeman, Chaitawat j etc Stakeholder land/water use preferences plus conflict resolution information for display

1. Arcview (Version 3) 1 • Extend GUI “ Thai GUI in Thai and English ^

Display key Attributes

<=

=>

Databases for analysis, j overlay, visualization and j

transfer to other modules: | leg. demography inc.

j community types,

land capability and zoning, | ! terrain attributes, soils,

geology;

; land cover - existing - options catchment boundaries, i stream net

{ and lines etc.

rainfall and other climate temporal point discharge and water quality j economic inputs and i prices; “►2. Catchment network and nodes Summary landscape attributes for each subcatchment Land cover options

3. Upland catchment models On-site benefits n --- 3. Crop models and

bio-economic yields

^ 4 . Instream transport models

On-site effects, ^ ---4. Erosion models ‘costs’ Off-site effects, * ‘costs’ T ___________ Network Routing of Discharge and Concentrations

Due to conflicting professional commitments on the part of the Australian DSS leader, the DSS workshop proposed for September did not take place. However, the

sociocultural leader did travel to Chiang Mai during that month. On her return, she filed a report in which she described further discussions she had initiated with the Thai

sociocultural team on the DSS. Among the issues discussed was the potential to

incorporate, within the DSS, villager perspectives on the landscape, such as Karen forest classifications and Mae Lu’s records of forest biodiversity. The report also detailed the Thai sociocultural team’s suggestions about the DSS. They proposed that the form and content of the DSS be considered in relation to three analytical scales: the local

community or subcatchment; the catchment; and the policy level. They suggested that for each of these levels, there would be different needs, different players and different requirements for access to the DSS. For example, they suggested that it may be appropriate to have a computer based system at policy level, while 3D topographic models33 may be a useful off-screen interface at the village level. The Thai sociocultural researchers also raised the issue of which Thai institutions would be appropriate to use and develop the DSS. They argued that in accordance with the new Thai constitution, “Thailand needs to create new resource management mechanisms, and the DSS needs this too”. Options suggested were the new Tambon Administrative Organisations, watershed committees, or the community forestry network. They stressed that the Thai sociocultural leader, a member of the drafting committee for the new constitution, “would be very happy if our DSS demonstrated a mechanism for community rights in resource management”. The comments of the Thai sociocultural team suggest that they had been construing the DSS as: firstly, a multilevel process necessarily engaging a complex and evolving political environment; and secondly, as a political opportunity to realise aspirations for social change which had thus far only been expressed abstractly within the new constitution.