Strengthen the Effectiveness of Environnemental Protection through Community Empowerment for Building Corruption-Free Society

Abstract

Environmental protection in the community is an important part of sustainable development. However, the effectiveness of community environmental protection is often affected by corruption, which has compromised the effectiveness. Corruption is a major social problem widely affecting all humanity around the world today. Thailand has also been confronted with the mentioned issue for a long time. Thailand’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) ranking shows no improvement. As a result, Thailand gives priority to a campaign to become corruption-free society. Particularly, it focuses on the community level as historic grassroots society with the cultural landscape differences in order to strengthen the community’s ability to manage itself in a sustainable manner and to play a major role in the nation’s development. This research study aimed at developing and implementing a system and mechanism including enhancing community participation in the community’s corruption prevention and solution. It focused on creating the community’s practice culture by applying good governance principles in participation, transparency, rule of law and accountability. In this regard, the community committee applied a counterbalance system, particularly in transparency, accurate accounting records of the community’s income and expense including the rule for the disbursement. In addition, the community members were informed about a variety of community activities and encouraged to participate in the mentioned activities. Importantly, to ensure a positive outcome, the relevant government agencies allocating the budget to support the community must closely supervise, monitor and strictly abide by the rule for budget spending so that a system and mechanism can be applied for driving the community to become sustainable and efficient “Corruption Free Community”.1