SCGC Joins Hands with GenEd Chula To Empower “Young Conservationists”, Driving Environmental Care, Preserving Watershed Forests And Restoring Biodiversity

Rayong - April 2024 SCGC in collaboration with the General Education Center Chulalongkorn University (GenEd Chula) recently raised awareness of environmental care and promoted knowledge and understanding about watershed forests, ecosystems, and biodiversity as well as human life through the “Watershed Forest Protector” course. The newly opened-up course is a general subject for undergraduate students in all faculties enrolling at Chulalongkorn University.

In the previous academic year of 2/2023, there were a total of 35 students registered for this course. And in April 2024, teachers and students of the so-called course took a tour on the Khao Yai Da’s ecosystem restoration and Mab Chan’s community water management in Rayong province. They also built a dam to ensure the stable water supply for the community.

As one of the registrants of this newly-opened subject and participants of the academic tour, Miss Natasha Boonkhwan, first-year student from the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, said that the theories gained from taking the courses and traveling to restore the environment at the Mab Chan Village have given her a clearer picture of ecosystem management.

“When I had the opportunity to visit the East Coast Watershed Forest Research Center, I saw the tools that officials actually use on site. This first-hand experience made me aware of their applications. Take, say, an atmometer for an instance. It is a scientific instrument that measures the rate of water evaporation from a wet surface into the atmosphere. The instrument helps assess and foresee drought conditions. While the soil water measuring device piqued my interest as it measures soil water content by inserting a probe into the soil,” she added.

Rewinding back 20 years ago, the areas around Rayong’s Khao Yai Da had faced persistent and severe droughts due to forest concessions. Trees were cut down; thus, bushfires came and water tables dropped. This occurred as plants absorbing water from the soil surface before it reaches the water table. In addition to these impacts, splash erosions also happened, displacing soil particles and destroying soil structure. Upon hearing the villagers' problems in Mapjun community, SCGC agreed to act as a consultant and mentor for the revitalization of the communities around Khao Yai Da. They started working together with the villagers since 2007, with the involvement of the Office of Science, Research, and Innovation Promotion Committee (SRI). They applied local research and traditional wisdom, combined with more than 10 years of accumulated experience, to create a sustainable community-based water management model. This led to the concept of "Good Water Storage, Sufficient Water Use" with a 2 Cultivate, 2 Collect model to address drought issues and establish a sustainable water management system within the community.

“Participating in this academic field trip at Mab Chan Village, I’ve learned a lot about how water content is managed in communities systematically. This extends to the knowledge on how water supply could be provided to everyone in the community throughout the year. Dams are a good start of this holistic process as they provide the life-sustaining resource to people and prevent severe floods. Water sharing regulations are put in place to prevent wasteful use of water,” Mr Napat Kamonamornbutra, first-year student from the Faculty of Education, Chulalongkorn University, mentioned. He then added that watershed forests are the heart of everything. If they disappear, it’s like a human whose heart stops beating — All systems will collapse. It can be compared to the word “Water is life”. Water management is what makes it possible to plan water use in times of water shortage, allowing us to deal with water disasters that may occur. This will help minimize any impacts.”

SCGC and the Mapjun community have over the years collaborated continuously on water management projects for the community, revitalizing the community's life, especially with regard to “water resources”, which are the source of various forms of abundance. The water in the streams provides a production of 14.83 million cubic meters per year, supporting agriculture around Khao Yai Da with a total production of 79,382,695 kilograms per year. The ecosystem has returned to the forest, serving as a habitat for living creatures with 123 species of wildlife and more than 120 species of plants. Additionally, it has helped reduce global warming, with the average annual temperature dropping by 1.6 degrees Celsius, capturing 38.49 tons of CO₂ per acre and absorbing 5.41 tons of CO₂ per acre per year (Data as of July 6, 2022).

The econometric benefits of this concept have additionally extended to community-based tourism projects. They welcome tourists to experience the richness of nature, shop for community products, and participate in various conservation-oriented tourism activities to pass on the concept of sustainable local water management to visitors. In 2023, it generated more than 400,000 baht of income for the community.

In addition to the success of Mab Chan Village’s water management project that extends to the “Watershed Forest Protector” course at Chulalongkorn University, SCGC and Hydro – Informatics Institute (HII) have recently joined hands with the Village to be a mentor for Ban Hua Tung. Since the village still maintains the farming method as the last rice fields in this area, our collaboration will help them manage water “from the upstream areas to the downstream as well as from the orchards to the rice paddies” sustainably.