Doi Tung – “From opium cultivation and deforestation to sustainable development”
2022, Thaïland
The Mae Fah Luang Foundation believes that "people" are both the root cause and the solution to social and environmental problems. It therefore starts with human development, because "no one wants to be bad, it's just that they don't have the opportunity to be good".
07. Affordable and clean energy
12. Responsible consumption and production
Coordinating this project is a huge source of motivation for me because it allows me to work on concrete solutions that will improve the daily lives of communities in the long term and help them reduce their energy footprint.
Guillaume Simonis
John Cockerill Defense
The Mae Fah Luang Foundation (MFLF), under royal patronage, aims to develop communities, society, environment and cultures to create happiness, sustainability and stability.
Doi Tung is located in the heart of the Golden Triangle, which was once a major center for the production and trafficking of illicit drugs in the world.
The Doi Tung Development Project (DTDP) has transformed a community addicted to opium cultivation and trafficking into a proud and dignified community with an honest and stable income.
To achieve this, MFLF works in three phases. The first phase is “survival”, which is the development of the basic needs of life, providing public facilities and health care to enable communities to be free from hunger. This helps people reduce expenses, increase income and reduce household debt.
The second phase is “sufficiency”. It aims to restore the environment, improve the quality of life, add value to local products, and promote livelihoods that are adapted to the geo-social conditions and existing folk wisdom. This allows communities to build on this knowledge to create a stable and sustainable income.
And the third phase is “sustainability”. This phase focuses on training, learning and education of children and youth.
140m²
of photovoltaic panels
30%
of their annual consumption
44 T
of nuts harvested per year
As part of the Doi Tung development project, we have entered into a partnership on 09/08/2022 with MFLF to shift the use of current energy sources to a sustainable and clean energy system at the macadamia nut production site.
Specifically, we are tasked with creating a new structure covering the motorcycle parking lot, and the walnut shell storage area (the current roof would not be able to support this additional load) to install photovoltaic panels that would cover an average of 30% of their annual consumption. Training in the operation and maintenance of the system is also part of the project.
Since the signing of the partnership, we have visited the site to meet our partners, see the site and verify the feasibility of the project. This trip allowed us to discover the site and to see that we had to adapt the initial project (no installation possible on the roof, hence the creation of a structure). We also visited other sites that could be the object of new projects.
To date, a request for proposal is being drafted to be sent to several local providers.
The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of September 2023.
