Filling in Some of the Gaps in my Knowledge of Thai Land Reform

Time is moving faster than last year. I think that I’m doing more, clearly I know more, but the more you know, the more you realize that there is even more out there that you don’t know. Yesterday was a meeting of NGO folks in the north and discussions of the aftermath of the Bangkok Protests.

It’s been hard getting information about what all actually was accomplished. I basically heard that my boss and 20 or 30 others had met with the Prime Minister, but the only concession I’d heard about was that the government paid for the buses back to the North. That became a bit of a joke. Well, of course, they’ll pay for them to get out of Bangkok and stop the demonstration. It doesn’t amount to much money at all.

But getting to meet with the Prime Minister itself is a major achievement. And yesterday I got to see the report that was written for the other NGO leaders summarizing what has been accomplished and what else needs to be done.


Of course, the reports are in Thai. But I’ve mastered enough of the most frequent vocabulary that I can get through the pages recognizing the majority of the words. I sat next to Ping who would patiently help translate the words I would circle.

I only got through a few pages - even if I know the words, it takes some time to read them - while trying to also listen to what was going on in the meeting. Basically, there are 360 villages identified throughout Thailand, with specific land ownership issues. These are disputes of one kind or another that the coalition has asked the government to help resolve. I’ve written about the key kinds of problems, as I understood them, in a previous post. These aren’t situations where the farmers are simply asking the government to give them land. But rather there are varying levels of complication of farmers having farmed land for generations, in some cases, but having disputes because the land has been declared a national park or a protected reserve, or because of corrupt practices in which well connected, wealthy Thais managed to get title to land the farmers’ land, and other such disputes. The government has to be involved because they issue the documents stating who owns the land.

One task that I’ve decided I want to follow up on is just trying to understand the history of land ownership in Thailand. I vaguely understand that in the past most land belonged to the King, but I’m not sure about that. Ping did say that in 1954 a land law was passed to allow people to gain ownership of the land they farmed, but again, I’m not sure and need to look all this up. One report I saw said

10 % of the Thai People own 104 Million Hectares of Land (6.5 Million Rai)
90 % of the Thai People own only 9.8 Million Hectares of Land (0.6 Million Rai)

That’s not a very equitable distribution if it is accurate.

So the meeting proceeded with people reporting on the villages that they monitored - how close they were to the various goals they were working on and what problems remained in achieving them. I always amazed at how much work my organization is doing and, despite appearances to the contrary, how incredibly well organized their data are. You can see one page of long chart of all the villages in the picture.

Another document in the report that I made it through was the Prime Ministers declaration of the formation of a committee to study and resolve the farmers’ problems. It includes the Prime Minister and high level officials from a variety of related ministries and about 30 of the farmers - including my boss and the farmer that spurred my interest in trying to find out if we can export mangoes to Anchorage. That isn’t moving too fast because the staff is so stretched on other work. I’ve gathered a fair amount of information, but I need the Thai staff to go with me to meetings so they are sure what is said and because they will have to follow through on this when I leave.


I've begun a preliminary search and found a few items relevant to what I've been learning on the ground. It's nice when your experiential understanding of things gets confirmed by the evidence.

The legal pattern of Thailand's land tenure is a product of a long historical process. According to Thai traditions and its laws, all land and natural resources belonged to the King and he grant* ownership in the land to his subjects who has* cleared and cultivate* it. the traditional concept of land ownership which is establish* through occupation and prodctive use is illustrated by the following passage from an early Chiangmai palm leaf legal text which purports to restate the traditional law passed on by King Mangrai in the 13th century which is as follows1:

"If a peasant has claimed riceland, has cleared the fields and built homes and orchards on the land, after he has used the land for three years it is right to collect taxes from him. If one man has worked on the land until it is a decent piece of land and there is another man who comes to snatch it away by offering a price for it, this is not proper, so do not remove the man. No matter how much he seeks to impress you with his wealth or status, you should not be persuaded because of those things. If you give in, then the peasant will truly be discouraged from creating and producing in the future."

[*In strict academic formating I should write [sic] to show that the typos were in the original document. But this was from a paper written by a non-Native English speaker and there are several typos, but I really don't want this to look like I'm saying, "Hey, screwed up again." I know my Thai would be littered with typos. So I decided to indicate the same thing less obtrusively with asterisks. Besides, this is a blog, not an academic paper.]


Wow, sounds like people were having the same sorts of problems 800 years ago when rich, influential people tried to get legal title from officials to land already possessed by poor farmers. I'm not sure of the date of the palm leaf document that copied this older declaration. The paper goes on:

This means that any Thai can claim ownership to a plot of land he cleared out and cultivated and he has only to register his claim for a small fee after cultivating the plot for three years, whereupon it becomes his property.2 [You can see get the pdf of this article by Adibah bte Awang of the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at the link.]

That's nice in theory, but the experience of our farmers is that things are not all that easy. And I should say that the article goes on to discuss changes in the law since.

According to a document published by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada which I found at the website of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

According to Nabangchang-Srisawalak, the Land Code of 1954 remains the most significant landownership legislation in Thailand (ibid., 84) and it describes the steps that must be followed for the issuance of title deeds "in non-forest areas" (Giné 2004, 4). By 2004, approximately 40 percent of the total land area of Thailand had been classified as private property (Nabangchang-Srisawalak Jan. 2006, 84). However, according to Xavier Giné, an economist with the World Bank (World Bank n.d.), it is estimated that it could take up to 200 years to properly document all current Thai landholders (Giné 2004, 5). [Emphasis added]

The document goes on to list different land ownership documents. The most secure is:

Freehold title deed (Nor Sor 4, NS-4)

The Nor Sor 4 (NS-4) (chanod or chanote) document is an "unrestricted legal title" (Giné 2004, 4) or freehold title deed (Siam Legal n.d.) which grants the owner the right to sell, transfer and legally mortgage his or her land (Giné 2004, 4). According to the Bangkok International Associates law firm, the NS-4 is issued in duplicate, with one kept by the bearer and the other held by the Land Department (BIA n.d.). The NS-4, considered the "best evidence of ownership," contains a description of the property (including area, boundaries and marking posts) as well as a history of all relevant transactions (ibid.). NS-4 documents usually concern land in built-up areas (ibid.).

But then it documents various levels of less secure documentation of land use. The next level, for instance, Nor Sor 3,

is alternatively known as a "confirmed certificate of use" (BIA n.d.) or as an "exploitation testimonial," and demonstrates that the bearer has "made use of the land for a prescribed period of time" (Giné 2004, 4). The document allows the bearer to sell or transfer the land, and (like NS-4 and NS-3) can be used as collateral for loans from financial institutions (ibid.; Siam Legal n.d.). NS-3K documents were introduced after 1972 when officials began using "unrectified aerial photographs" to map deed plans (Giné 2004, 4). The maps used have a scale of 1:5,000 (Siam Real Estate n.d.) and authorities identify the exact boundaries for NS-3K titles (Siam Legal n.d.). The bearer of an NS-3K may request an upgrade to a full title deed at an Amphur (District Office) (BIA n.d.), which may be granted by the Land Department if no objections are raised by any other party (Siam Legal n.d.; Chaninat & Leeds n.d.).

And things get dicier as we go down the list of less and less secure documentation. The next two on the list, for example,

Nor Sor 3 (NS-3)

NS-3 documents, otherwise known as "Certificates of Use" (BIA n.d.; Giné 2004, 4), are similar to NS-3K certificates (ibid.). They were issued between 1954 and 1972, when officials used tape surveys rather than aerial photographs to trace land boundaries, which allowed the representation of a land deed by "an approximate diagram showing the shape of the parcel" (ibid.). The boundaries of an NS-3 document, however, are less reliable than those on an NS-3K certificate (Siam Legal n.d.) since property owners, rather than the government, placed the boundary markers, which increased the risk of inaccuracies (Chaninat & Leeds n.d.).

Nor Sor 2 (NS-2)

The NS-2 document or "Preemptive Certificate" allows the bearer to occupy a parcel of land temporarily, but does not confer any transfer rights (except for inheritance); this document can therefore not be used as collateral (Giné 2004, 4).

The names of these documents (Nor Sor are the names of the Thai letters นส) are well known to all the people working here. When I showed this document to Swe, the student J was tutoring in English before his nine months trip to Japan, he pointed out that some of the land in his village was Nor Sor 3 Kor, some was Nor Sor 2, and some Sor Kor 1. But most was nothing at all, because it cost money to register and money was scarce most of the time.

Our farmers are caught up in these sorts of document difficulties. Pascale M. Phélinas, in Sustainability of rice production in Thailand, explains a little more about why poor and less educated Thais are less likely to have the proper documentation than wealthier, better educated Thais.

...ownership security also raises questions of equity. The establishment of property rights as well as the procedures required to prove legal ownership are always complex and involve significant transactions costs. During the survey, farmers often complained about the delays and costs involved before they could get through the whole official procedure. Since these costs vary little according to the size of the farm, larger and wealthier landowners are better placed to afford them. Transaction costs have thus biased the acquisition of titles in favor of large and wealthy farmers. Furthermore, because of differences in educational levels and, consequently, differences in access to the state administration, some segments of the population are exposed to the risk of exclusion from access to land because they are unaware of the implications of registration or are unable to have their existing land rights recorded. The history of Thailand reveals tha in many cases land records have been manipulated by powerful government officials to allow elite to obtain ownership of land (Feeney, 1982). [Emphasis added.]

For the farmers in the forest land there are other issues as well. From the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation] Corporate Docuent Repository, we find Decentralization and Devolution of Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific... This comes from Chapter 3.3.3

Land Code of 1954 has the most important bearing on the question of land ownership and by implication on the process of centralization. Pah sa-nguan or the public forest land had many users or squatters for a long time. The Government by promulgation of 1954 land code provided the option that anyone occupying any forest land as of November 30, 1954 can receive a land using claim certificate provided he can prove his claim within 180 days. Few provincial farmers had been aware of this time stipulation, failed to take advantage of it and thus became encroachers. In 1961, the Thai government decided that 50% of the country should be forest land and as such started evicting encroachers to reach the target. In 1985, the National Forest policy reduced the target of forest land to 40% to release some land for other purposes but the objective was not realised. In fact, the Forest department undertook a programme of planting up the degraded forest which resulted in more evictions resulting in a political crisis (Lynch and Talbott, 1995). The net result of all this is that the centralization process for forest management continued in Thailand.

The Thais I work with know all this and take it for granted. As I've written in earlier posts, I believe them, but I also want to see the documentation. This sort of material helps make the case that the farmers aren't having problems with land ownership because they are lazy or because they are illegitimately claiming the land. Rather, the power structure, the education system, and the red tape is stacked against them and wealthier, better educated Thais have often been able to take advantage of this situation to get control of the land of villagers.