ABSTRACT
‘In the water there are fish, in the fields there is rice’. So the Thai saying goes, or went. Rapid industrialisation, a policy of successive governments, has taken its toll on the natural environment and the livelihood of rural people. Today, Thailand is known for enviable economic growth rates and Bangkok's smog-filled streets, literally in the same breath, which is suggestive of the causal connection between the two. For example, few would know that golf courses for the urban rich devour farmland, compete with paddy fields for water and pollute rivers, resulting in the denial of livelihoods to many rural people. Family and community life are disrupted as villagers migrate in search of non-agricultural work.
