Psychological and Social Impacts of Top-down Conservation Initiatives on Indigenous Communities: Lessons from the Announcement of two Royal Decrees in Thailand

In November 2024, the Thai government approved two Royal Decrees for ecosystem conservation that would severely threaten the livelihoods, living prospects, and continued residence of Indigenous communities in protected areas. Protests with 10,000 participants prompted a review of the decrees in May 2025. This research report investigates the psychological and social implications of the announcement of the Royal Decrees and argues that it undermined community social capital and intrinsic engagement with everyday environmental heritage. We drew on qualitative and survey data collected from 09/2024 to 05/2025 in two Pga K’Nyau and two Hmong communities in the northern Thai highlands, comprising community consultations with 73 participants, 101 semi-structured interviews, and two survey rounds, for a total of 384 observations. We used qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics to explore how community members experienced, interpreted, and responded to the announcement of the decrees. We found that Indigenous villagers experienced anxiety and unease, and that the decrees undermined community efforts to conserve and engage with local ecosystems. The continued uncertainty surrounding communities’ future sparked a strong activist sentiment to resist the decrees. Disruptions to community social capital and everyday environmental heritage also had plausible, potentially significant ecological downstream effects. We therefore call for an urgent correction to the conservation initiative to embrace inclusive, bottom-up natural resource governance.