International environmentalists have praised Burma for its commitment to conservation, yet in reality the greening of the Burmese dictatorship is just another tool for military coercion and advancement. By the year 2000,
In addition to the protected areas already established, foreign conservationists are helping the Burmese regime to create the greater “Northern Forest Complex” in
Since the KIO ceasefire in 1994, at least 10 Burma Army bases have been established in the area, which was seen by the regime as an important national security zone. The “Northern Forest Complex” took further shape at the end of 2002, when the WCS secured Burmese government approval for Hponkhan Razi, a reserve that links Hkakaborazi to the The complex would be completed by the incorporation of Bhumba Bum in southeastern Most recently, Such developments prompted Alan Rabinowitz of the WCS, in a recent article in National Geographic, to praise The government profits financially and politically from “environmentalism” to enable violent exploitation of natural resources, forced resettlement and the seizure of ethnic minority-populated land rich in biodiversity by the military. These conservation-military tactics have already been documented in That action provides an idea of what could happen in the world’s largest tiger reserve in In addition to the mining and logging concessions that followed the ceasefire in
The Burmese government uses international environmental organizations and treaties in order to gain “green money” and recognition as an “environmental steward”. However, a Burmese signature on an international environmental agreement does not commit the regime to specific actions. It is one thing to create new domestic laws under the provision of international treaties, but another matter altogether to democratically implement them. International environmental organizations continue to endorse the protected area system in A recent Global Witness report critical of the logging industry in northern 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 |
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group |
www.irrawaddy.org |