These remarks illustrate how the regime uses international environmental treaties to create an illusion of an environmentally responsible military administration, despite their politically and financially motivated clandestine resource extraction.
In one recent article in the journal Conservation Biology the authors admitted that six of twenty protected areas they reviewed had “military camps and/or insurgents indicating availability of firearms.” The six were named as Shwe U Daung, the Taunggyi Bird Sanctuary,
Among many suggestions for improvements, there is no mention in the article of how the contradictions of military bases and commercial extractive industries within protected areas might signal a problem with conservation in
Biodiversity conservation has been transformed by being adopted by the Burmese government. Their separate agendas become blurred, with a resulting hybrid of the Burma Army conducting politically sensitive conservation projects.
This “greening” of a military dictatorship creates contradictions as human rights abuses continue unchecked, civil society participation is ruled out and natural resources are exploited to earn foreign currency.
Zao Noam is a researcher on environmental politics in
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