Lesson from Thailand's Huai Hin Lad Nai: How integrating Indigenous wisdom can aid disaster response

November 5, 2025

The Indigenous Karen community of Huai Hin Lad Nai in northern Thailand, recognized as the country's first Indigenous way of life protection zone and previously honored with conservation awards, suffered devastating floods and landslides in September 2024 after unprecedented rainfall. Following the disaster, the community faced false accusations that their traditional rotational farming practices caused deforestation and contributed to the catastrophe, though research revealed the landslides actually occurred in areas affected by pre-1989 logging concessions, not in community-managed farmland. Experts and activists argue that restrictive conservation laws prevent Indigenous communities from fully utilizing their traditional environmental knowledge and disaster prediction methods, while Thailand's legal system fails to recognize communal land ownership or Indigenous rights despite being a UN declaration signatory.

Who is affected

Huai Hin Lad Nai village residents (Indigenous Karen community in Chiang Rai's Wiang Pa Pao District)
Families who lost rice paddies, tea plantations, and pigs in the flood
Other Indigenous Karen communities in Thailand facing similar legal restrictions
Indigenous communities living in forest areas throughout Thailand who lack official recognition
Communities in high-risk areas who could benefit from shared disaster response knowledge

What action is being taken

Community members are keeping watch around the village to guard against further incidents
Community members are observing animal behavior as warning signs based on traditional knowledge
Chaithawat Chomti is coordinating a command center overseeing relief efforts
The community is in the process of recovery from the disaster
Civil society organizations are speaking out against misinformation spread about the community

Why it matters

This situation highlights the critical tension between traditional Indigenous environmental stewardship and modern conservation laws that paradoxically undermine effective disaster prevention. The community's traditional knowledge systems—including reading animal behavior for weather prediction and rotational farming practices—have proven sustainable for generations, yet restrictive legislation prevents them from fully implementing these methods while simultaneously denying them basic rights like permanent addresses and infrastructure access. The false accusations following the disaster exemplify how prejudice against Indigenous communities persists despite their documented conservation success, and the research showing that logging concessions, not Indigenous practices, contributed to landslides demonstrates how historical exploitation rather than traditional stewardship creates environmental vulnerability. As climate change intensifies natural disasters, the case reveals how centralized, inflexible legal systems that ignore local and Indigenous knowledge create dangerous inefficiencies in disaster response.

What's next

The community plans to develop a long-term monitoring system based on lessons learned from the disaster
Chaithawat wants Huai Hin Lad Nai to become a model community in disaster response and share information with other high-risk communities
Community leader Siri wants to combine traditional knowledge with technology and science to create a response plan, with information collected and passed to future generations
Activists are calling for constitutional amendments to recognize that natural resources belong to citizens rather than the state and to protect community rights to resource management

Read full article from source: Global Voices