Thailand Law Forum Law Journal - Public Participation in Environmental Protection in Environmental Protection and Thai Folk Wisdom

The advantage of Thai folk thinking is that the duty to participate, and the responsibility for environmentally friendly or unfriendly actions can be imposed independently from positive law. In fact, the Thai folk idea is common to what is called natural law tradition and is reflected well in other ethical systems. It is a common stereotype to think of the West and the East as based on completely different moral and religious principles. In Thailand, it is commonly asserted that it is based on the Buddhist tradition, while the West is rooted in the Christian tradition. At least in relation to the moral duty to protect one’s environment, this presumption does not work; however, the cultural expressions of that duty can be different. For example, the Christian idea (shared to a significant degree by the Muslim world) of a human being as a co-creature and as the one to whom God has entrusted care for the rest of the earth, may find a different expression in the Buddhist mentality which is predominant in Thailand. The Buddhist ideal of ahimsa – not doing harm to any living organism, flows from the sense of kinship with other living beings implicit in the doctrine of rebirth. In other words, the duty of every individual to protect the environment transcends any cultural, religious and ethical differences.

The idea of personal and social responsibility as expressed in Thai folktales allows us to set public participation on a strong moral basis, which can and should find its expression and support in legislative acts. It must be stressed that public participation becomes not only a matter of individual rights, but of a duty of the individual and the whole community, or the public. In other words, the concept of “the public” can be presented as a circle of all who are able to participate in making environmentally significant decisions. This idea is reflected in the Thai Constitution:

The fact that the protection of the environment is a duty of every person according to the Thai Constitution leads to a principle, that public participation is a duty, which the country must promote and encourage. This principle is clearly reflected in Section 79 of the Thai Constitution quoted above. Thus, both Thai folk wisdom and the Thai Constitution agree that the state must promote public participation.