Surviving the second tsunami - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 145

circumstances that created the potential for dispute. There are three specific
communities that faced problems with government departments, individuals,
provincial governments and potential development. One is a Muslim com-
munity on the island of Ko Mook. A second is on another island, Ko Kho
Khao. The third is a Moklen community at Tungwa.
Ko Mook
Prior to the tsunami there had been an ongoing dispute over the use of this
Forestry Department land. The community on Ko Mook, of course, was not
the only one facing problems with land use. After the tsunami there were
many such disputes, enough to give rise to the special Land Sub-Commission
that was set up to resolve them. Until the dispute on this piece of land was
settled, no building was going to occur.
The dispute was further complicated by a separate claim from a local
resident. While the Land Commission had resolved the dispute with the
Forestry Department in favour of the community, the project was not going
to move forward without a resolution to this other claim. Initially it appeared
that it should have been a dispute between this individual claimant and the
Forestry Department, both of which were laying claim to the same piece of
land - a dispute that would be resolved by the courts. However, it was also
clear that the residents planning to build on this land had to live with this
claimant. He was not only a member of the community but also related to
the local authority that was responsible for issuing permits. They had to
resolve this by further negotiation rather than resorting to any heavy-handed
approach from the outside. The issue, then, was not about the law but about
the way the community continues to live together after all the outsiders have
gone home.
A signing ceremony was planned for early March 2006, in which the land
would be handed over from the Forestry Department to the community.
About a week before this event, it appeared that the other claimant had put
up concrete fence posts along the edge of this property, indicating that he
still considered it his land and that the dispute was not resolved. On the day
of the ceremony, after the officials and the residents had signed the docu-
ment, a number of them went out from under the tent and removed each
of these loosely placed concrete posts before they came back and placed the
ceremonial footing and first post into the ground. The dispute had been
settled amicably and it was then possible to begin construction of the new
housing.
It is important to note that this land was handed over to the community
as a whole. What this meant was that there were no individual lots to be
sold. The land itself belongs now to the whole community. At the ceremony,
members of the community and representatives of the Chumchonthai
Foundation (CTF - a Thai national NGO), CODI, the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) and the Save Andaman Network (SAN - a