Dhamma Rakhsa

CONTEXT

In rural areas of Thailand, there is a strong tradition in community forest conservation. Every village has a small wooded area which is traditionally used for local harvesting, but also for maintenance. These areas are now very small, mainly located on hillsides, where valleys have been entirely deforested for crop production such as rice.

The villagers, who are organized in committees, plan and participate spontaneously or with the Royal Family or the Government’s help in activities such as plantation, soil maintenance and fire protection cuts or in the blessing of trees, with the monks’ help, in order to protect their community forest. The help provided by Pur Projet therefore lies within the protection of a culture of community forests which are very present in all the rural areas of Thailand.

AIMS

Even though tradition is present, the resources are very limited, and villagers generally don’t have the necessary resources to properly maintain, protect and replant their forest. The financial support provided by Pur Projet and its partners therefore improves the activities of villagers and increases significantly the number of planted trees, by providing the support that public authorities generally lack of.

The "Dhamma Rakhsa" Project (which means "nature is a remedy") gathers different initiatives from cooperatives, villages, monasteries, schools and associations of the North and East of Thailand who took the initiative to join the project. The diversity of the people involved is reflected by the variety of the planted species, each corresponding to someone’s need: fruit trees (mango trees, longan trees, papaya trees, litchi trees, rambutan trees), aromatic trees (Eagle Wood from which the perfume essence is extracted), medicinal trees (Yang Na, a cousin of the rubber tree, the sap of which is used to treat sore throats), forest trees (such as the teack tree, native of the region, or the Tong Teung, the leaves of which are used to build houses’ roofs), etc.