The Landowner's Dilemma

When Somsook Bonyabancha first came up with the concept of "land sharing" in mid 1970s, few people thought much of it. After all, what does the owner get out of "sharing" his land with a commune of squatters? A quick and dirty eviction is almost universally more preferable.

After 10 years had passed and a few tenacious squatters - agitated by the NGOs - began to fight back with protests and arm struggles, the landowners start to rethink about the more reasonable concept of land sharing.

Traditionally, the Thais relegated land ownership to the spirits and ghosts. It was the spirits who owned the land and the inhabitants were only acting as trustees of the land. Today, we still see "spirit houses" propped up throughout the urban and rural area; they are an ancient manifestation of this belief.

Sulak Sivaraksa, a prominent social thinker, once said that traditionally, there's no such thing as "houses" - only "places to stay" ("ที่อยู่อาศัย" ). There is no such thing as home ownership - just home.

With the arrival of the concept of statehood, things started to change. First, the ruling class took control of the land; then the new intelligentsia popularized the concept of individualism, freedom, and private property in attempt to weaken the grip of the ruling class.

The concept of individual rights spread rapidly among the new intelligentsia as they arrived back from their colleges in Europe. Both the intelligentsia who worked for the ruling classes and the intelligentsia who worked for the common man embraced this concept of individual rights. From the landowners' perspective, it's their right to the land title; from the squatters' perspective, it's their human rights to live where they can survive.

As this 18th century European dualism was imported into the mindset of 20th century Thais, the result is one of mutual belligerency. "You either get out of my land, or we'll get rid of you" or "You come evict us, and we'll defend ourselves with arms."

There's no solution when each party sees the whole scenario as a zero-sum game. But this is not necessarily true. Cooperation is possible as long as each party takes a mental leap beyond the confinement of 18th century's concept of "rights" and "Enlightment."

Let's take a look at the landowner-squatter game below:

What would you do if you were the landowner?

In the Diagram above, the landowner gets 5 points if he manages to evict the entire community of squatters. The Landowner get 5 points, the squatters gets 0 point.

However, the squatters could get 5 points too if they manage to fight the landowner to give up his land altogether. Here, the landowner gets 0 point, and the squatters get 5 points.

For the eviction scenario to happen, the squatters would have to be very docile; accepting whatever the landowner gives as compensation for their eviction. As for the scenario where the squatters decided to fight a fairly cooperative landowner - aside from being rather unusual - the squatters must need to have very powerful friends to back them up. Both are unlikely to happen in our present day social-economic setting.

The most likely scenario would be where the owner tries to evict the squatters and the squatter fight back. This would turn out to be bad for both the landowner and the squatters; both get a meager 1 point each. Nobody wins. This is, indeed, the case when both parties exert their rights to the fullest; refusing to cooperate with one another; and the battle lasts for 10 years, during which time the disputed land becomes a no-man's-land.

But there is one sweet spot in the diagram; it's the first scenario where both parties decide to cooperate. (1) Each party gets 3 points each which add up to an overall score of 6 - the best collective score.

But what is preventing them from cooperating?

The main obstacle that prevents each party from cooperating is the idea that the game would be played only once. It's a dirty one-night-stand (even slum fires are administered at night). Why take only 3 points when you could have exploited your opponent and get 5?

The conventional belief is that once you get the squatter out of the land, everything is done - you get 5 points. Bye-bye squatters.

But this is not true; the game is actually an iterative game.

Once you have evicted the squatters, they will usually come back within weeks. So the whole process would start over again. Now the squatters knows that they have once cooperate with the landowner and he had betrayed them, so this time they will dig in their heels, hold hands with the NGOs and positioned themselves for a long fight. Nobody wins - each gets 1 point from now on.

In the event that the landowner starts out by being cooperative and give the squatters some benefits - like leasing or selling a small piece of his land to the squatters' cooperative - they could both benefits from the land almost immediately. Each gets 3 points; making it 6 points in total. The squatters could build a denser housing on the same location with smaller footprint so that the landowner can also develop his project on the same site.

But how could we arrive at this stage of the game, the stage where both side are willing to cooperate?

Somsook Bonyabancha used to say that we need a professional dreamer - the architect. Community architects can acts as facilitators who draw up concrete plans of where and how each party would benefit from sharing the land - it must be seen visually. It must be tangible and the benefits must be spelled out beyond the elusive concept of "rights" and "freedom."

This is when the profession of architect is most useful. The architect is actually doing more than cutting papers models while working with the community. The architect is cutting across this antiquated 18th century concept of "individual rights" and bringing the issues to reality. The resulting plan would show the best cooperative solution to both parties. It would show ways in which the developers could develop his site and get his returns, and ways for the squatters to continue to live on the same piece of land near their jobs.

As a dreamer, the architect could find what each party's needs are and draws up a solution towards that goal - he makes things look real, tangible and concrete. He makes the landowner realized that - with the land sharing scheme - he could start making profit right away. He could save money on hiring Mafiosi to evict the equally street-wise squatters. He could be rich without having to exploit other people. And this last point is the most interesting one - especially for the Darwinians. The "fittest", it turns out, survives by cooperating.

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Notes

(1) This is similar to a game of chess; when two World Champions unexpectedly meet one another in "prize tournaments" (their livelihood actually depends on these smaller tournaments). They usually decided quickly to save their energy and to play for the draw (1/2 point each). This way, they would maximize their overall score in the tournament without spending too much energy and risking a loss.

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In the past decades, many landlords in Thailand have started to embrace the idea of "land sharing." The most notable ones are:

1. Tung Wah, in the tourist region of Phang Nga; the land belongs to the District of Phang Nga who wants to evict the indigenous Moken fishing village right after the tsunami. The media's scrutiny and coverage - even with death threats to reporters - was too much for the district so they settled for a land sharing deal with the Moken. About 1/3 of the original land was return to the provincial authority so that they could build resorts for tourists.

2. Ruam Samakee, where a portion of the land was returned to the owner - the Crown Property Bureau - so that it could build an office tower. The rest of the land was collectively leased to the community.

3. Klong Lumnoon, in Bangkok, where the owner sold part of his land to the squatters at below market price

4. Bo Farang, where the land belongs to the magnet Siam Cement Group