Legal Problems Relating to Local Community Rights to Protection and Preservation the Environment Sustainable

Abstract

This research consists purposes were 1. to study legal issues related to local community rights 2. to conduct a comparative study of international laws under the anthropocentric paradigm and the ecocentric paradigm 3. to compare local community rights under foreign laws with those under Thai law and 4. To explore approaches for recognizing local community rights in Thai law to ensure sustainable environmental protection and preservation. This is qualitative research The study is based on documentary research, collecting data from books, textbooks, academic articles, theses, international laws, foreign laws, Thai laws and relevant websites. The collected data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed that 1) Thai laws have not recognized local community rights because Thai environmental laws recognize community rights under the human-centered paradigm, in which local community rights are important for the sustainable protection and conservation of the environment 2) Humans are legal rights holders and nature is only the object of rights. International law under the ecological-centered paradigm is a substantive right, and not only humans are legal rights holders, but nature also has legal rights as the subject of rights, just like humans 3) Some countries’ laws recognize the rights of nature or the rights of Mother Earth, which give importance to local community rights in both the constitution and subordinate laws. This includes the recognition of rights by court judgments in countries that use customary law systems. For Thai law, there is still no recognition of local community rights with the ecosystem as the center as in some countries and 4) The recognition of local community rights, which gives importance not only to people in the community, but also to living things in the ecosystem and natural environment in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560 and the Community Forest Act B.E. 2562, which will be a guideline for the protection and conservation of the environment sustainably.