Originally published on the website of our member organization in Thailand, the Assembly of the Poor.
Amid Phuket’s image as a “world-class tourist destination,” filled with luxury hotels and marinas for yachts, there remains a traditional small-scale fishing community with a history spanning more than 250 years, known as “Ban Ao Kung” (Village No. 9, Pa Khlok Subdistrict, Thalang District, Phuket Province). This small Muslim community of just 41 households is an outstanding example of a community standing firm to protect its natural resource base, including 584 rai of pristine mangrove forest within the Khlong Para Mangrove Forest National Forest Reserve and more than 547 rai of coral reefs throughout the bay.
The abundance of Ao Kung Bay did not happen by chance. It is the result of strong collective action by community members who have fought to restore mangrove forests and monitor destructive fishing practices since 1992. As a result, aquatic life has returned in abundance, villagers’ catches have increased by around 30 percent, and rare wildlife such as the “sea otter,” which had disappeared for more than 30 years, has returned to the forest. The Ban Ao Kung Community Mangrove Conservation Group also received the “Green Globe Award” in 2023.
Yet over the past several years, the Ban Ao Kung community has had to face mounting pressure from development driven by large capital interests, particularly the Ao Kung Marina Cruise and Sports Port project, which seeks to dredge a navigation channel through coral reefs and mangrove forests.
The 1997 Struggle of Small-Scale Fishers: The Path to Becoming Leaders in Ao Kung Conservation
The role played by Pradit Phuangket, leader of the Ban Ao Kung Mangrove Conservation Group, in rising up to protect the community’s natural resource base did not begin when the yacht marina project arrived. Its roots lie in the hardships and struggles he experienced within the people’s movement from his youth.
Father Pradit recalls that around 1997, when he was approximately 20 years old and had only recently married, he became involved in the People’s Assembly of the Poor under the name “Southern Small-Scale Fishers Federation.” Taking part in sit-in protests and exchanging knowledge with networks of people affected by state development projects across the country—including forestry networks and villagers affected by dams in the Northeast, such as the Pak Mun and Rasi Salai dams—became a crucial learning experience. It opened the eyes of a small-scale fisher to structural problems.
“When I first joined the Assembly of the Poor, I learned about problems across the country. In fact, all the poor people living in this country… the state undervalues them far too much… Before that, people who lived off the sea didn’t know how dams affected people, but we were given the opportunity to learn… For example, at Pak Mun, there was compensation in the form of land for making a living in the area where the dam was built. But the people who built their lives around the river—farming rice, growing crops—were given land up in the mountains. How were they supposed to make a living? It was a context they were not familiar with… They simply created a compensation process that looked good. But if you ask whether people wanted it, they didn’t.”
The experience gained through the Assembly of the Poor became the foundation for the struggle of small-scale fishers, who joined efforts to advance policy proposals with the government to protect coastal waters. These included campaigning for legislation to extend the exclusion zone for trawlers and push-net fishing vessels from 1,500 metres to 3,000 metres from the coast, as well as jointly pushing for an announcement expanding the trawler exclusion zone to cover Phang Nga Bay, from Laem Panwa through Koh Yao and as far as Trang Province. These efforts sought to stop the destruction of ecosystems and protect the livelihoods and fishing gear of small-scale fishers.
It is this spirit of fighting for community rights and recognising structural injustice that has been passed down to the present-day struggle to protect the mangrove forests and waters of Ban Ao Kung.
A Way of Life Dependent on Nature and Laws That Fail to Protect the Most Vulnerable
Father Pradit describes the traditional way of life of the people of Ao Kung, for whom “the sea is life.” Everyone can depend on nature in a balanced way, and the community has a high degree of resilience. On days when the monsoon arrives and boats cannot go out, both men and women go into the mangroves to gather shellfish, scoop up jellyfish, or collect fish eggs. The sea and mangrove forests are therefore the community’s rice pot, natural welfare system, and guarantee of food security.
However, Father Pradit also raises questions and expresses his pain over a state policy structure that is entirely biased towards serving the tourism sector, to the point of disregarding poor people and small-scale fishers:
“Throughout my years of work, there hasn’t been a single area in Phuket or Phang Nga declared a ‘protected area for small-scale fisheries.’ But the state tries to declare marine protected areas and conservation zones… restrictions are imposed only on the livelihoods of small-scale fishers, while tourism can continue all the time… It has become an attempt to conserve areas solely to serve tourism.”
Father Pradit’s words reflect the reality villagers face when the state uses the term “conservation area” as a tool to restrict the livelihood rights of small-scale fishers, while at the same time opening the way for tourism capital to extract benefits at any time. The expansion of tourism, which disregards community ways of life and pushes villagers out of their traditional fishing grounds, along with the arrival of inappropriate tourist activities, has also directly affected their livelihoods:
“The state’s development model forces local people to move from small-scale fishing into tourism jobs. This way of life has a major impact on people. In the past, people in Ao Kung combined different occupations… On rainy days, we could go out to sea, so we had a reliable livelihood. But today, the area available to us at sea has been restricted and reduced… We have to fight against tourism as it continues to encroach on our territory… Some kinds of fishing require concentration while drifting and watching for fish. For example, setting nets for pla nok requires peace and quiet. But it’s no longer peaceful. Even when we’re drifting, jet skis circle around us.”
Yacht Marina—“Phantom Channel”: A Blacked-Out EIA and Fabricated Aerial Imagery: A Lesson in What Happens When the State Joins Forces with Capital
The case of the channel-dredging project led by the Marine Department is an example of luxury capital advancing in an attempt to transform a natural bay into a private yacht harbour. The project plans to dredge a channel more than 1.2 kilometres long through 62 rai of shallow staghorn coral beds and 12–16 rai of rare red gorgonian coral beds (Dichotella sp.). This goes against nature and deliberately creates serious ecological impacts to serve just one private company.
Father Pradit points out: “Creating a channel on this side… goes against the currents. In reality, it’s impossible. The currents cause erosion and sediment to settle. It would have to be dredged every three to four months. It is unnatural from the outset… The private concession owner up there wants to build a marina, but there is no channel in this area.”
This is the origin of what villagers call the “phantom channel”: the use of legal loopholes to conjure up a “phantom channel” (a fake channel) as a cover. Environmental and forestry laws prohibit opening a new channel in mangrove forest for private benefit. However, an exception allows dredging if it is considered “maintenance of an existing natural channel that has become shallow through sedimentation.” Capital interests and state mechanisms therefore worked together to use expert interpretation of aerial photographs to fabricate the claim that Ao Kung Bay once had an original natural stream, 30 metres wide. Father Pradit strongly questions this process of invoking academic expertise when it does not correspond to the facts on the ground:
“If experts interpret it this way… then this kind of academic work is completely useless, because it doesn’t match reality in the slightest… In the area they claim was a natural channel, there is actually a tree standing with a trunk almost two metres in diameter.”
The problem became even more serious when the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for the marina project, which was sent to the community for review, was covered with black bars obscuring important information (the “blacked-out EIA”), citing the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and trade secrets. This concealed information about public land rights that overlap with the community’s access route to the sea and its cemetery (kubor). As a result, the Ban Ao Kung Community Mangrove Conservation Group, together with the Assembly of the Poor, submitted formal complaints to the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand (NHRCT) and the Senate, requesting an investigation into violations of community rights.
Voices of the Younger Generation: From Informal Service-Sector Labour to Returning to the Sea of Ao Kung
The experience of small-scale fishers being displaced into the service sector is not merely a warning from the past. It is a lived experience that young people in Ao Kung have gone through before choosing a different path.
Nusara Wongnui, a 33-year-old woman and single mother in the Ao Kung community, shared her life story. After completing Mathayom 6 (Grade 12) at Muslimah School, Nusara left her community to enter the world of work, as many young people do. She started as a golf course caddie and later moved on to work for a private transport company, Kerry. However, her life as a wage worker in the service sector outside her community involved severe exploitation: long commutes, double shifts lasting 10–15 hours a day, and wages of just 230–460 baht per day. When the COVID-19 crisis struck and work outside the community became increasingly uncertain, Nusara Wongnui decided to return to her birthplace in Ao Kung.
“When I worked in transport, I had to do double shifts. I started at 7 a.m. and finished at 11 a.m., then the second shift started at 2 p.m. That left only another two hours. If I went home, I had to fill up with fuel and head back out again. Altogether, I worked 14–15 hours a day… The result was very little. I earned only 460 baht a day. I kept waking up and living like that for almost two years. I couldn’t take it anymore… Luckily, our home has resources and nature. When I couldn’t cope with life outside anymore, I came back to fishing. There was food to eat.”
After returning to Ao Kung with only 20,000 baht in start-up capital, Nusara learned how to fish for “octopus” (known locally as pla muek woy-wai) from her mother. She adapted a fishing tool called “luk kung king” (a weighted crab trap) and set it in lines in the sea. Returning to a livelihood based on the marine resources of Ao Kung allowed Nusara to earn as much as 2,000–4,000 baht a day. She gained freedom over her time and could care for her child as a single mother. On days when the monsoon arrived or she could not take her boat out, the mangrove forest beside her home served as a “rice pot”: she could simply walk along the forest edge to gather shellfish for a meal without having to spend money buying food.
Notably, the younger generation has developed a system for allocating labour and sharing resources that functions as a form of community welfare:
1. Dividing roles according to capacity and location: Younger fishing groups with greater physical strength and better-equipped boats go fishing in the deeper waters outside the bay. Older people, aged 60–70, whose physical condition and boats are less suited to strong winds and waves, fish for their livelihoods around the bay entrance and the inner coastal area to reduce risks.
2. Creating jobs and welfare for village residents: When Nusara developed her production of crab-based fishing tools, she did not try to do everything alone. Instead, she established an employment system in which young people who were no longer in education, or groups of “single fathers” in the village, helped set and retrieve the octopus fishing gear. They receive a percentage of the income, ensuring they have at least 400 baht a day to live on. She also helps take the children of single fathers to school in the morning.
In terms of environmental protection, young people in Ao Kung grew up watching their ancestors fight to protect mangrove forests from destruction by concessionaires who burned charcoal. Nusara emphasises the role of mangroves as a “barrier against waves.” When the tsunami disaster struck, Ao Kung escaped major losses because its mangrove forests helped reduce the force of the waves. This contrasted with areas such as Ao Po, where development had left no protective forest and waves devastated the area.
“If the marina project goes ahead, their interests will come first, as they always do. But you have to consider the damage to us… Mangroves are a wall that holds back the water. Even concrete and steel dams collapse, so why don’t mangroves? During the tsunami, we were fortunate to have mangroves blocking the path of the waves. When powerful waves came, the mangroves slowed them down… But the capitalists live up there. They collect the money, while we live right on the beach. If anything happens, we are the ones who suffer the consequences.” Nusara concluded by reflecting on this reality.
World Bank Report: Policy Contradictions and Greenwashing Through “Carbon Credits”
What is happening in Ao Kung reflects the wider situation in Phuket, where billion-baht resorts and hotels have bought up land and blocked public access routes to beaches. As a result, long-established Phuket residents no longer even have the right to walk onto beaches where their ancestors once made use of the land and sea. Beaches have become exclusive privileges for wealthy foreign tourists, while local people are pushed into becoming mere “cogs” in the service sector—as traditional Thai massage therapists, cleaners, or domestic workers serving others in their own homes and on their ancestral land.
When this painful situation faced by the community is considered alongside the World Bank Group’s latest strategic report, “Building Thailand’s Future Today” (2026), a policy contradiction becomes apparent: this global financial institution is pressuring the Thai government to accelerate the following measures.
1. The World Bank Analyses “Sustainability” While Promoting “Luxury Tourism for High-Spending Groups”
On the one hand, the World Bank report attempts to express concern for the environment. It states that ecosystem services provided by forests and coastal areas generate as much as US$33.3 billion per year, equivalent to 6.1 percent of GDP. It also acknowledges that the tourism model of the past has created a severe environmental footprint, with Phuket losing nearly one-third of its forest area (32 percent) between 2001 and 2020.
On the other hand, the World Bank proposes restructuring the economy through “five industries of the future,” pressuring Thailand to shift its tourism model from “volume to value” (Value over Volume) through wellness and luxury tourism (Sustainable & Wellness Tourism / Luxury Segment). The World Bank report encourages the government to support tourists with high net worth (High-Net-Worth Individuals), spending at luxury hotels, and the creation of expensive tourism experiences.
This is where the contradiction lies. The policy agenda backed by the World Bank provides ideal fuel for projects such as yacht marinas, exclusive wellness centres, and billion-baht luxury resorts across Phuket. These are major drivers of land acquisition, the exclusion of small-scale fishers, and the destruction of mangrove forests and coral reefs. Promoting an upgrade to “luxury tourism” therefore reinforces an economic structure that intensifies the displacement of poor people, while using the word “sustainable” as a façade.
2. The Myth of “Carbon Credits” (Carbon Credit / Blue Carbon): A Greenwashing Tool of Capitalism
While the World Bank and the government are pushing to expand carbon-storage areas and promote the carbon-credit market (Blue Carbon) in mangrove forests, Father Pradit Phuangket has seen through the myth of green capitalism with striking clarity:
“The whole issue of carbon… is really just a process of deceiving the world. It is simply greenwashing for energy capital and groups of capital trying to generate carbon… With one hand, they are trying to dig up fossil fuels, destroying things on one side, while on the other side they claim to be conserving, so that they can look good in the eyes of global society… If we take care of our own forests, use them ourselves, and preserve them ourselves, that will be more sustainable.”
Father Pradit’s criticism highlights how carbon-credit projects and environmental protection zones promoted by the state and international financial institutions are often used as tools to take control of forests and coastlines. They seek subsidies to greenwash multinational corporations, while excluding villagers who have cared for forests for hundreds of years from access to resources. At the same time, luxury tourism capital is allowed to dredge coral reefs and build yacht marinas—a glaring contradiction.
3. Being Forced to Become “Servants in Their Own Homes”
The World Bank report itself acknowledges that most jobs in Thailand’s tourism and service sectors—more than 80 percent—are informal, low-paid, and low-productivity. Yet the World Bank’s proposed solution, which focuses on attracting luxury capital, further compounds the loss of land ownership rights and the right to determine their own future among long-established Phuket residents. Small-scale fishers with dignity and food security are forced to stop setting their nets and become cleaners in billion-baht resorts, yacht drivers for capitalists, or foot masseurs for foreign tourists—reduced to servants in their own homes, without rights or a voice in the new economic structure.
Conclusion: Standing Firm with Dignity on the Forests and Seas of the People of Ao Kung
As sunlight falls across the waters of Ao Kung Bay when the waves and winds are calm, the sight of small traditional fishing boats slowly drifting away from the shore represents the true heartbeat of Phuket, which continues to beat. For the people of Ao Kung, 584 rai of mangrove forest and the underwater coral reefs are not “economic assets” waiting for someone to assign them a value in carbon credits. They are not “empty spaces” to be dredged into yacht channels, nor are they a “backdrop” for luxury tourism reserved for a select group.
What the people of Ao Kung have protected for decades, until they have seen sea otters and flying dolphins return to their habitat, is not merely a figure representing forest area in an academic report. It is the “rice pot” that sustains every life in times of hardship; the “guarantee of security” that allows their children and grandchildren to have food without having to borrow money or fall into debt; and the “human dignity” of small-scale fishers who refuse to be forced to abandon their ancestral way of life and become merely cheap labour in the service sector.
At a time when development plans from global organisations such as the World Bank, along with state policies, are pushing Phuket towards “sustainable luxury,” the Ban Ao Kung community has already shown that true sustainability does not come from greenwashing rhetoric or turning public beaches into exclusive privileges for the wealthy. It comes from respecting the ways of life of ordinary people and recognising villagers’ right to care for and preserve their own homes, rather than having them cut off from the natural resources on which they depend.
The people of Ao Kung do not reject change, nor do they reject outsiders who come to visit. What they reject is a development model that fails to see or respect local people—a model that seeks to take control of the sea, block access to beaches, and push the original inhabitants into becoming mere “servants in their own homes.” Yacht marinas, billion-baht resorts, and the green mask of carbon credits cannot replace the community’s food sovereignty. The voices of every generation of Ao Kung residents will continue to stand firm, asserting their right to make a dignified living on the ancestral land and sea.
References:
- History of the Ban Ao Kung Community, Coordination Centre for the Plant Genetic Conservation Project under the Royal Initiative, Phuket Rajabhat University.
- Green Globe Award-winning work: Ban Ao Kung Community Mangrove Conservation Group, Phuket Province | Green Globe Institute website.
- Parliamentary Question No. 274, R. 26, January 2022, House of Representatives, 1 July 2021: Problems concerning the construction of a marina and the dredging of a navigation channel at Ao Kung, Village No. 9, Pa Khlok Subdistrict, Thalang District, Phuket Province.
- “Withdraw the EIA for the Ao Kung Yacht Marina: 62 Rai of Coral Beds Affected” – Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism (TCIJ).
- “Marine and Coastal Resources Department Says Ao Kung’s Coral Reefs and Pristine Mangrove Forests Are Unsuitable for Port Construction” | Thai PBS News.
- “Marine and Coastal Resources Department, Together with the National Human Rights Commission, Discusses Approaches to Managing the Ao Kung Area in Phuket Province” – Department of Marine and Coastal Resources.
- “What Is a Blacked-Out EIA?” – Secretariat of the Assembly of the Poor.
This post is also available in Español.
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