ABSTRACT
Over the past 15 years, the situation of ethnic minority groups living in the highlands of northern Thailand has changed considerably. What were once very remote areas with purely subsistence shifting agriculture and cash-generating opium cultivation have become communities fully integrated into the Thailand government’s highland development schemes. These programs began as long ago as the late 1960s and attracted considerable sums of development assistance. Many of the projects focused either on social welfare and community development matters or on single-sector agricultural development issues. Over the years, the emphasis of government policies has changed, and the approaches used in working with the highlanders have been progressively modified.
