ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the history of environmental politics in Thailand to understand the current effects and structures of environmental movements and to consider their future trajectories. It begins with an overview of thinking about the politics of nature, mapping out how the environment became defined as a specific field of struggle and its complex relationship with democratic politics more generally. Next the chapter considers a history of debates over forests, rivers, and other natural resources, considering the way that those spaces of nature served to mobilise different kinds of activists and structured environmental politics more generally. Then it considers how the history of “environmentalism” as such has carried with it certain kinds of contradictions and exclusions related to gender, class, and region, which reflect a number of broader contradictions in Thai politics. Last, the chapter suggests how the inclusion of struggles over urban space, disaster, gender, pollution, and industry might portend future environmental politics.