Knowledge circulation and conflicts in the remaking of urban treescapes of Bangkok

Keywords: Knowledge circulation, Knowledge conflicts, Treescapes, Urban trees, Civil society organizations (CSOs), Asian cities, Southeast Asia
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Urban trees are principally managed by local authorities or contractors, but civil societies can shape urban treescapes through multiple forms of interventions. This paper investigates the processes and outcomes of the Tree Care Training Program, an initiative aiming to familiarize the municipal frontline tree maintenance staff with tree-climbing techniques, with the goal of reducing overzealous pruning in Bangkok. Spearheaded by Thai civil society organizations (CSOs), this professional training was delivered in collaboration with local and foreign arborists as well as the Bangkok municipal authority. To analyze the training program, I collected data through interviews with the trainees and training providers, on-site observation, and learned tree-climbing and worked with the frontline staff. My findings suggest that the applicability of the tree-climbing techniques was limited in the Thai capital. While the trainees were able to utilize the techniques flexibly for pruning established trees in enclosed green spaces, they stuck to the conventional way for pruning street trees due to a variety of temporal and place-specific factors, including the impact of pruning on traffic, tree size and accessibility, weather, logistical limitations, and so on. The training program neglected the incompatibility between the foreign techniques and the urban factors surrounding Bangkok’s treescapes because the CSOs deemed the frontline staff to be lacking appropriate knowledge for tree maintenance and thus marginalized their voices in devising and delivering the training program. As such, this paper argues that attention to knowledge conflicts between different actors is critical for successful urban tree interventions.