advantage of the power of a new technology are often those previously well situated by dint of wealth, social standing and institutional position”. This conclusion echoes classical theories of organisational power, as articulated by sociologist Max Weber: “The bureaucratic structure goes hand in hand with the concentration of the material means of management in the hands of the master” (Weber 1946). Given the long tradition of political, socioeconomic and educational advantage of state officials over highland villagers, the preceding perspectives reinforce the likelihood that state agencies will own the process more than highland villagers, and raise the potential for the DSS to be used by the established elite to sustain and enhance prevailing power inequities. Thus far, the discussion has been based on a broad comparison of state and village stakeholder groups. Further biases would emerge from further disaggregation of these groups. For example, analyses of intra-village conflict by Waranoot (1995) and others suggest that different village groups are likely to have alternate framings of the decision problem, partly dependent on their location in the catchment relative to other villages, and their history of land use. Amongst the state agencies, the historical conflict between the core interests of the Department of Public Welfare and those of the Royal Forestry Department indicate alternate state framings of the highland problem. The DPW has traditionally been concerned with enhancing the welfare of the highlanders, the RFD has been concerned with the preservation and productivity of forests. Given such
conflicting framings, and in light of the tradition of interagency rivalry, the potential arises for DSS development to be hijacked by one department to reinforce its political sphere of responsibility and influence. If this occurs, then the exclusion of certain agencies in DSS development may lead to biases due to incomplete knowledge, distortions in knowledge, or commitments to certain logics. Fragmentation and non coordination of bureaucratic agencies with an interest in highland environmental management suggests that biases due to incomplete knowledge may also arise because of difficulties in gaining access to data. As Anat et al. (1987:304) suggest, “In a world where different agencies see themselves in competition for resources and influence, information is seen as power... it may be difficult to persuade them to share the information they have and to co-ordinate the data they collect in the future”. The quality of highland data, which is seldom rigorously documented methodologically and is frequently conflicting when triangulated, introduces further potential for biases due to incomplete knowledge or distortions in knowledge.
A tendency for computer power to be consolidated within central agencies in Bangkok raises potential for biases in access due to geographical constraints, potentially biasing against both regional state agencies and highland villagers. If the DSS was located in a regional office in Chiang Mai, access may still be constrained for those villagers living in remote communities. Installing the DSS on a portable laptop might surmount these geographical constraints if the agency maintaining the system was willing to travel to the remote villages. Although the expansion of the road network in the highlands has increased the accessibility of many highland villages, it is still necessary to access some villages by foot. Even for those villages connected to the road network, during the rainy season, roads are often hazardous and difficult to traverse except by four-wheel drives. An alternative favoured within many western countries would be to link computers located within highland villages to a central DSS. Limitations in terms of the
availability of electricity in the highlands suggest a further impediment, necessitating a reliance on batteries. This latter point raises an issue which was not incorporated within
the theoretically-derived taxonomy of bias, as the literature addressing computerisation and access issues is predominantly from developed countries where electricity supply tends to be assured.
If the user interface of the IWRAM DSS is in English, then access would be constrained for potential users who are not literate in English. Translating the DSS into Thai would enable agency personnel to use the system. However, access would still be constrained for many highland people since only about 59% can speak Thai, and around 74 % of hill people have no access to formal Thai education (Kampe 1992:159). The dearth of computer literacy within regional and local government agencies beyond simple word processing tasks suggests that even for these Thai-literate stakeholders, access is likely to be constrained unless computer training is provided. The limited conventional and computer literacy of highlanders raises the issue whether equitable access may be better promoted through ensuring alternate forms of interacting and interfacing with the output of the DSS rather than endeavouring for open computer-based access. However, it should be noted that some highland villagers have expressed an interest in receiving computer training, as they perceive that, as with conventional mapping technology, the DSS may be appropriated to enhance their authority and credibility in negotiations over contested resources23.
Yet not all highlanders are equally enthusiastic about computer technology. One NGO volunteer described a pilot project they had initiated in a highland village where GPS and a simple GIS were used to map the village resources: “It was time consuming - sometimes it would take an hour to get a signal through the canopy - we didn’t get one village let alone the three we had planned. At the end of the day, we would link a laptop up to a generator and draw maps. I’ll take a picture home in my mind of sitting in a Karen house lit by candlelight while the Karen villagers old and young sat around watching the computer create the map. But in the end, we stopped running it, because as we got more information, it took longer and longer to create the maps. And the novelty value wore off for everyone. We don’t know what use it will be - except that it is good for the villagers to know what is out there”. This comment suggests that the relevance and efficiency of the technology for the villagers was questionable, and emphasises local heterogeneity in responses to technologies.
If the IWRAM DSS achieves its objective of assisting in identifying more profitable resource management systems, and if users are required to pay for access, then the DSS will provide an economic advantage to those stakeholders who have the wealth to access the DSS. Hence, as with previous development efforts in the highlands, the IWRAM DSS may serve to introduce or exacerbate economic and political disparities. The historical disparities between the conventional opium cultivating and pioneer
swiddening tribes versus the conservationist Karen would seem to implicate ethnicity as a significant factor to consider in terms of the likelihood of potential biases in access. However, Hinton (1983:159) has argued that as environmental pressures have gradually forced abandonment o f ‘traditional’ cultivation practices, ethnicity has become
increasingly irrelevant. Instead, he argues that economic and political interests have emerged as more significant. Thomas (1995:15) similarly notes that although behavioural responses to introduced technologies “are increasingly similar among various communities and ethnic groups, research already indicates that there are
differentials among households within communities”. This supports consideration of intra-community economic and political differences in an interrogation of biases in access. However, results from a study by Dearden et al. (1996) suggest caution in abandonment of consideration of ethnic difference. Drawing on interviews with
villagers inhabiting the Doi Inthanon National Park, Dearden et al. (1996:127) note that while 29% of Hmong respondants indicated that they not only had sufficient income to meet their needs but also had some savings, “only 9% of the Karen were in this position, with 63% indicating that they had insufficient funds and 47% indicating that they were in debt”.
Even if villagers are provided with access to the DSS or the DSS output, the potential exists for the DSS to perpetuate the extension of state control and influence within a village, leading to the political disempowerment of villagers. Hirsch (1990:30) describes this fundamental tension of increased local participation and access: “On the one hand, integration of village institutions into supravillage structures gives villagers potential access to supralocal resources and influence over decisions affecting them that are made at a higher level. On the other hand, the penetration of State and capital into the village that is a concomitant part of this process transforms village institutions in such a way that they take on state functions or are reduced to monetised relationships within the larger economic system. This reduces village control over local resources and decisions in deference to state power, which itself falls into the hands of powerful individuals within the village”. If embedded biases are obscured, political disadvantage may be compounded. In this vein, it should be noted that the historical employment of education within highland communities as a means to promote assimilation and extend the state worldview suggests that development of DSS within a learning paradigm may not be benign. Instead, the use of a DSS as a tool for learning may explicitly or
implicitly educate highlanders to think about highland problem-solving, including what the problem is, and what factors should be considered, in a way determined by external observers as correct.
The preceding discussion suggests that on several dimensions, there is the potential for the IWRAM DSS to be biased against highlanders, particularly poorer, more remote and already marginalised communities and individuals.
5.7 Conclusions
The implications of the use of environmental DSS for the decision-making environment of the Northern Highlands of Thailand are uncertain. On the one hand, DSS may provide a means of improving access of traditionally disempowered stakeholders to information, thereby minimising inequity and facilitating informed community
participation in environmental decision-making. On the other hand, DSS may represent a means of perpetuating and reinforcing existing power inequities and conventional developmental biases through recourse to politically fashionable and convenient environmental rhetoric. For example, historical tendencies towards extreme centralisation and patriarchal rule, together with the remoteness of many highland villages, widespread illiteracy and persistent low incomes within highland villages point to potential biases in access. Meanwhile, a tradition of bureaucratic elites controlling the expertise and tools of power, and stark differences between the epistemological foundations and modes of classification associated with bureaucratic and local
a challenge is whether and how the processes of developing and implementing a DSS for the Northern highlands may be constructed to minimise potential biases. Chapter 6 describes the process by which the IWRAM researchers engage with the frameworks proposed in Chapter 4 to reflect on potential biases associated with the development and use of the IWRAM DSS.