Justice Suntariya Muanpawong, a longstanding wildlife conservation advocate and a choose serving on a regional Court docket of Attraction in Rayong, on the east coast of Thailand, believes that the courts are sometimes solely geared up to cope with minor instances involving native wildlife poachers or loggers who encroach on each private and non-private land, reasonably than massive networks or these behind organised crime. “In Thailand, folks say prisons are for the poor. The difficulty of discrimination and the shortage of distributional justice is an actual downside,” she stated.
Thai police seized 48 lemurs and 1,076 star tortoises at a lodge in Khun Krating sub-district, Muang Chumphon district, Chumphon Province, on Might 2024. Picture: Royal Thai Police
Overcrowding continues to plague Thai prisons, with 112 (78 per cent) of Thailand’s 143 correctional services working above their official capability, based on the Worldwide Federation for Human Rights. Muanpawong tells Eco-Enterprise that the regulation ought to be the spine to fight wildlife trafficking and preserve the atmosphere, however on the similar time, judges and the courts should be responsive and delicate to human rights and social situations.
They should be attuned to “the struggling of individuals” and look past minor wrongdoings to know the predicament that individuals could be in, particularly if the punishment meted don’t handle the foundation reason for the issue, she stated.
“We want extra judicial innovation in order that we will strike a greater steadiness between delivering environmental justice and social justice,” she stated, including that the thought of valuing each on the similar time remains to be new to Thai judges. “There’s a must study and draw reference from the courts in different jurisdictions,” she advised.
Muanpawong is a part of a rising group of Southeast Asia’s girls judges who’re dedicated to environmental jurisprudence and advocates for extra collaboration and exchanges throughout the area. In 2015, she labored on the event of the Asean Handbook on Authorized Cooperation to Fight Wildlife Crime, and is now a daily speaker at coaching programmes for Asia’s judges.
In an interview with Eco-Enterprise, the “reluctant choose” who says she grew up desirous to be an educator, shares why she thinks judges in Southeast Asia ought to study extra from one another. As a staunch Buddhist, she additionally discusses how spirituality can come into the image when one is attempting to understand nature and animal conservation at a deeper stage.
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When the folks don’t have any land or rights to agriculture, they may find yourself encroaching on public land. It’s a case of distributive injustice, the place the poor find yourself being punished extra when they’re despatched to jail. I imagine it is among the greatest issues in Thailand.
You could have been a steadfast advocate for eco-justice and human rights. But you could have argued that there are limits to the regulation and that prisons shouldn’t solely be for the poor. Are you able to inform us extra about how the regulation works in Thailand to curb environmental violations?
In Thailand, a few of the key environment-related instances that the Supreme Court docket in addition to the provincial courts rule on are associated to unlawful logging and the encroachment of protected nature areas. And in most of those instances, the plaintiffs are very poor.
Thai regulation additionally doesn’t help the connection that Indigenous peoples have with their lands, consequently ignoring their rights to lands and forests. There isn’t any good system to judge whether or not these communities will be given rights and even land titles, and most of them are unable to show with documentation that they’ve been dwelling on the land for a very long time, and danger getting kicked out at any time.
So in lots of situations, we see the legal guidelines that cope with unlawful logging and poaching being directed unequally at these poorer communities. When the folks don’t have any land or rights to agriculture, they may find yourself encroaching on public land. It’s a case of distributive injustice, the place the poor find yourself being punished extra when they’re despatched to jail. I imagine it is among the greatest issues in Thailand.
However do judges generally take into accounts the socio-economic standing of the plaintiffs earlier than selections are made and sentences meted out?
We ought to be attempting our greatest to show who the “actual occasion” encroaching on the land is. We have now an obligation to take action. Generally we will do it and generally it isn’t straightforward.
In Phuket and Koh Samui, two of the vacationer islands in Thailand the place there are numerous costly and delightful homes by the seashore, there are situations when the wealthy and the foreigners are illegally encroaching on land too, however the regulation hardly offers with them. So discrimination is an actual downside.
For instance, I usually ask regulation enforcers how they prioritise their work. I ask them: Who do you prosecute first? Which instances do you’re employed on first? And infrequently they are saying the poor villagers and locals are the simplest to get as a result of they don’t have legal professionals to signify them. Most can’t even communicate or learn Thai. There’s additionally racial discrimination concerned, with the Indigenous peoples considered naturally as culprits for poaching or logging. Judges have a direct affect on the lives of poor folks day-after-day, but the issue of socio-economical judicial bias hasn’t been solved. So poor persons are all the time bumping into the regulation.
What will be completed to alter the state of affairs?
Firstly, the courtroom must try to know the issues in our nation. These embrace social issues, equivalent to what I’ve talked about earlier, that the poor can’t personal land.
In some situations, we’d like wiser jurisdiction and give attention to non-criminal measures equivalent to rehabilitation of former poachers or loggers who’re from the native communities. Don’t straight ship them to jail. Get them to work on reforestation initiatives, give them schooling and assist them discover various livelihoods.
In brief, we’d like extra judicial innovation in order that we will strike a greater steadiness between delivering environmental justice and social justice. This concept remains to be very new to Thai courts and judges, so there’s a must study and draw reference from the courts in different jurisdictions.
Secondly, the judiciary ought to be working intently with different consultants, and never push these initiatives on our personal. We have to collaborate with scientific consultants, for instance, who know the fitting strategies for reforestation and land restoration, planning and administration. We have to hearken to the individuals who have issues, and we have to work with different companies.
However cross-agency collaboration is troublesome in Thailand because of legacy methods. When the Constitutional Court docket of Thailand was created underneath the 1997 Structure, the nation had wished a clearer separation of powers and an emphasis on judicial independence, to forestall situations of the manager department or the Minister of Justice exerting management over the courts. However someway that has translated into judges largely working in isolation and holding too far a distance from the opposite companies. After I used to run the judicial analysis institute underneath the workplace of the judiciary, we tried onerous to ask folks from outdoors the judiciary to come back collectively for conversations however have been criticised. Some within the judiciary ask: Why do we’ve got to speak to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or representatives of native communities? Why do we’ve got to work with the forest rangers or the nationwide parks? These mindsets must shift for change to occur.
There have been situations when the courts rule in favour of villagers and native communities in environmental instances, however you usually additionally discuss how enforcement can grow to be a problem, leading to delayed justice. Are you able to share extra about that?
One instance is Thailand’s delay in cleansing up Klity Creek. For the longest time, the residents of this place often known as Decrease Klity Creek village within the province of Kanchanaburi, identified for its scenic waterfalls, needed to patiently combat instances in opposition to polluters equivalent to a lead-processing manufacturing facility which was constructed upstream from the place they lived. In 2013, Thailand’s supreme administrative courtroom handed down a judgment which discovered Thailand’s Air pollution Management Division to be negligent for being too gradual to wash up the creek, leaving folks uncovered to hazardous lead of their water for a very long time. The plaintiffs suffered from the signs of persistent lead poisoning and a few of their kids have extreme developmental disabilities equivalent to mutated fingers.
However even this judgment didn’t actually assist. As a result of after that, the remediation steps have been fairly restricted and there have been delays. More often than not, the courtroom and the judges imagine that so long as the judgment is handed down, that’s sufficient, and all the things else after that’s not a part of our duties. In some instances, the corporate or manufacturing facility concerned in air pollution goes bankrupt and the federal government companies accountable want to attract from the fiscal funds to supply treatments and it turns into an issue.
The primary case that I labored on was in Rayong, and it was about unlawful land reclamation. As a junior authorized officer, we labored with the general public prosecutor and tried to search out methods to prosecute the businesses that encroached on at the very least 50 acres of land. However I can let you know that these corporations are nonetheless there and nothing has occurred. So it exhibits how problematic it’s, and the way onerous it’s to ship justice.
You could have been concerned in tasks to reinforce authorized cooperation to fight wildlife crime since for at the very least 10 years. How did you grow to be on this trigger?
Again then, there have been only a few wildlife trafficking-related instances in our courts. These instances can be in regards to the unlawful sale of untamed birds in Chatuchak Market in Bangkok or the promoting of protected wild snakes. Nothing too main, so the judges, together with myself, have been fairly ignorant in regards to the subject.
However after working extra with organisations such because the United Nations Workplace on Medicine and Crimes (UNODC) [Muanpawong facilitated a workshop that developed an Asean handbook to combat wildlife crime with the law, which the UNODC was involved in] which actively mentioned the transboundary nature of wildlife trafficking, I began creating a brand new understanding of the problem. Wildlife trafficking doesn’t solely contain native poachers or sellers, it’s a a lot larger downside. After all, Thailand was additionally coming underneath numerous worldwide stress. So we began paying extra consideration to the unlawful wildlife commerce.
I might be at regional conferences sitting amongst my Asean and African counterparts, discussing the work that concerned police and public prosecutors. It would really feel that it doesn’t have a lot to do with us, however I believed the conversations have been very fascinating. Judges additionally must know this downside properly in order that we’ve got a greater grasp of it when instances come to us within the courts. That’s the reason I attempt to champion higher understanding of wildlife crime and encourage my friends within the judiciary to take part in workshops and studying actions. For instance, we ought to be studying from Malaysian courts about find out how to set sentencing pointers on wildlife regulation, in addition to draw references from worldwide examples.
Muanpawong talking to judges at a judicial coaching programme from Asia co-organised by ClientEarth on judicial treatments and the significance of wanting into inequality in regulation enforcement. Picture: ClientEarth
As we recognise the transboundary nature of wildlife trafficking instances, particularly main ones, and even almost about instances of dams being constructed which are inflicting impacts on riverine communities, we should always set up mechanisms throughout Asean nations to raised cope with these issues. There have to be exchanges and these should be formalised and institutionalised. There might be a analysis centre or small tribunal made up by Asean judges concerned in environmental instances.
How can cross-agency collaboration or working with exterior consultants assist the courts?
In Thailand, there was the infamous case which concerned the poaching of a black panther by Thai development tycoon Premchai Karnasuta in 2018. The tycoon and three of his associates have been arrested by park rangers, and located with the carcasses of poached animals, together with a black panther. The case generated public stress over accountability to the regulation of the rich and influential.
Then, there was numerous debate over the worth of the black panther. The nationwide parks valued it at about 12 million baht (US$331,000) however when the case was put in entrance of the courts, the police prosecutor solely requested for 3 million baht (US$82,700) in compensation. After a sequence of appeals, a closing judgment by the Supreme Court docket in December 2021 discovered the tycoon and his associates responsible and so they got jail sentences as much as three years and 9 months and ordered to pay two million baht (US$55,200) in damages. So the best way nature is seen and valued may be very totally different and due to the lack of awareness about wildlife preservation, numerous this discuss is unfair and there isn’t a deeper dialogue about how we should always correctly quantify the damages. In these instances, having scientific and biodiversity consultants would assist, and the courts ought to have entry to those assets.
Is the youthful era in Thailand extra privy to and anxious for wildlife conservation? What are your observations?
I don’t assume so. Excessive-profile instances just like the one on the black panther are uncommon. They may increase some consciousness, however these instances come and go.
The conversations additionally should be had at a deeper stage. Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, a great buddy of mine, as soon as advised that after we focus on wildlife conservation, it isn’t nearly regulation. We have now to speak about spirituality.
Justice Shah is Muslim, so he’s well-versed in Islamic rules and obligations to guard animal and plants, and to protect the atmosphere by not chopping bushes, and never polluting the water. I’m Buddhist, so I do know that the Lord Buddha additionally teaches us to guard ecology.
I’ve additionally been studying this ebook on navigating local weather change within the Anthropocene by Andrew Fellows, on the idea of Gaia and deep ecology. It asks us to see intrinsic worth in different species and ecosystems, which have worth not simply due to any utility they may present to human beings, and I feel it has given me larger appreciation of what nature conservation ought to be about.
I feel younger folks also needs to spend extra time in nature, within the forests. There must be a extra interdisciplinary strategy to instructing and studying about conservation. We have to additionally assume deeply about how we decide to schooling on nature. For instance, I recall that there was an enormous case of unlawful logging in Northern Thailand and when it concluded, numerous the messaging was not on reforestation efforts within the village which misplaced all of the bushes, however on a brand new museum in Bangkok which might show all of the logs for studying functions. There’s nothing incorrect about that, but it surely exhibits that there’s not a lot consideration paid to what we should always truly be specializing in.
Do judges should be empowered by schooling on these matters too?
Many judges are skilled on mental property rights regulation and tax regulation, however they don’t seem to be very acquainted with environmental regulation. In the event that they need to work on environmental instances, they should put on two lenses. They want a pair of “inexperienced” lenses to know eco-rights, in addition to a pair of “purple” lenses to know social rights and inequality. For instance, we’d like to consider find out how to get folks to guard nature and the local weather, throughout the boundaries of what they’ll afford. It’s good to perceive the realities of Thai society, that there are totally different socio-economic strata. There are those that are poor and people who are wealthy. You could have the minority ethnic teams and you’ve got foreigners. Provided that they perceive the intricacies of the subject, can they ship on environmental justice.
