Archives

Thaksin Shinawatra was one of the most powerful prime ministers of Thailand. With a set of new policies under Thaksinomics, great and sustained power, his CEO style of management, and his intention to make Thailand a developed country, his administration could have been a formidable force transforming Thailand’s weak and fragmented innovation system to a stronger and more coherent one, and laid out a long-lasting foundation for the country’s technological and industrial upgrading, as experienced in Japan and East Asian NIEs. Thaksin administration paid much more attention to the neglected meso and micro foundations of country’s competiveness. For the first time, Thailand had explicit vertical industrial policies that were tailored to specific sectors and geographical clusters. These policies pushed existing central and regional government agencies to adjust themselves accordingly. The Thaksin government also induced changes in the roles and behaviours other actors in the Thai NIS. Nonetheless Thaksin government, to a large extent, failed to make an enduring impact on industrial and technology upgrading. There are two key factors underlying this failure: a) the deficiencies of Thaksin policies and implementation of those policies themselves, and b) the resistance of changes by other actors in the national innovation system.

In the rural areas of West Java, agriculture is still one of the most crucial sectors in supporting the daily life of rural people where the problem of resource-poor farmers mostly remain. Today many rural areas in West Java, especially in the upland, face serius problem such as environmental degradation and resource depletion. Agroforestry systems such as homegardens and bamboo-tree gardens have a potential role as rural ecosystem components to address such problems. These agroforestry systems are often touted as efficient and sustainable and can meet divers ecological, economic, and social functions. Homegardens and bamboo-tree gardens also help to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels by sequestering carbon in the biomass and soil. Yet in Indonesia and in West Java in particularly, the policy makers and local scientists have neglected these land use systems. Moreover in view of the recent trends of land use in West Java, these systems are under severe pressure. Many farmers have already converted homegardens and bamboo-tree gardens into cashcrop gardens. Using data from research on agroforestry in the upper Citarum watershed West Java-Indonesia and literature review, in this presentation I will examine these traditional land use systems, their current status and future prospects as a component of the rural ecosystem in search of sustainable rural development for natural resource management.