Burma: The politics of conservation - Wildlife Conservation Society

Burma's State Peace and Development Council is one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. The UN's International Labour Organisation describes forced labour in Burma as a "crime against humanity". Around one million people have been forced from their homes and land. The Burmese army, the Tatmadaw, uses rape as a weapon against indigenous women and children. It recruits child soldiers. On 6 July 2005, Burma's junta released more than 240 prisoners, many of them political prisoners, but about 1,400 political prisoners are still imprisoned. Torture of prisoners is routine. Half the national budget goes to the military. Burma is not at war with any other nation. The junta is at war with its own people.

In 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won more than 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The junta did not allow the NLD to assume power and since 1989 Aung San Suu Kyi has spent a total of almost 10 years in detention.

Since 1988, member states of the European Union have conducted US$4 billion of trade and investment with Burma. The largest foreign investor in Burma is Total Oil Company, which is partly owned by the French government.

To build the Yadana gas pipeline Total and US oil company Unocal contracted the Burmese army to provide security for the project. EarthRights International has documented forced eviction of villages to clear the route of the pipeline and to provide forced labourers to build the pipeline.

The companies deny the allegations. Total's 2004 Corporate Social Responsibility report defends its investment in Burma: "We believe that our presence has positive, lasting benefits for Myanmar [Burma] and is helping to advance human rights in the region where we operate."

Part of the income that the junta receives from gas goes on weapons. John Jackson of the UK-based NGO Burma Campaign recently told journalist John Pilger that he'd never met an EU official who denied that foreign investment and military spending are closely linked. "In the week the regime received its first payment for gas due to be piped to Thailand from a gas field operated by Total Oil, it made a US$130 million down-payment on ten MiG-29 jet fighters," said Jackson.

Of course, Total's Corporate Social Responsibility report ignores any awkward details such as the brutal Burmese military.

The survival of the Burmese junta depends on the continued exploitation of the country's environment. The regime's income comes largely from logging, fishing and mineral concessions. As a result vast areas of forests have been clearcut.

In a recent article in Nature, journalist Duncan Graham-Rowe discusses some of the ethical issues faced by conservation organisations working in Burma. He interviewed Alan Rabinowitz, the director of science and exploration at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), an NGO based at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Rabinowitz has been working in Burma for more than ten years and has helped set up the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, the world's largest tiger reserve covering more than 20,000 square kilometres.

WCS's work in Burma would not be possible without the approval of senior officials in the regime. Perhaps not surprisingly, Rabinowitz is reluctant to criticise Burma's junta. "I think it's been blown out of proportion", he told Graham-Rowe about the regime's appalling human rights record. "The displaced people from Burma are a very intelligent, educated group who have maintained a hugely strong lobby," explained Rabinowitz.

Rabinowitz is happy to acknowledge that wildlife is a bigger concern to him than politics. "The world of people is not that attractive to me," he told The Irrawaddy, a magazine published by exiled Burmese. "To me, politics, whatever government's in power, is just a little speck of time. We're not doing this for you or me or now, but for way into the future," he said.

To the people on the receiving end of the Burmese junta's terror, politics must seem more than just a little speck of time. A recent report by Human Rights Watch, titled "'They Came and Destroyed Our Village Again': The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons in Karen State" documents the atrocities. "When the Tatmadaw entered my village they killed men and beat women when they caught them," a Karen villager from Thwa Hta village, Papun District told Human Rights Watch. Another Karen woman said, "The Burmese soldiers attacked us again at Htee Hto Kaw Kee, in 1992. They shot and killed my husband and injured other villagers. The soldiers burned down our houses and killed and ate our animals. They also burned our rice barn, destroying 190 tins of rice. [They also] killed my son-in-law, who was just collecting betel nut in the forest. He [had] small children."

Although WCS is not working in Karen State, it is working in the same country and with the same military regime. WCS is not directly responsible for the human rights atrocities but the destruction of Burma's forests is not taking place in a political vacuum. By ignoring the murderous regime that it is working with, WCS is in effect legitimising the regime and helping it gain international credibility.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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India: Women’s knowledge and power in forest societies

Regarding women's indigenous knowledge, apart from a few ethnographic and anthropological studies, little consideration had been given by early androcentric-biased anthropologists, ecologists and environmentalists to the gender dimension of indigenous knowledge systems.

It was not until the mid-seventies, when the myths associated with such stereotypical thinking were unmasked, that feminist scholarship turned its attention to the knowledge systems of women. Now, acknowledgment is increasingly being given to the role played by women in many communities as the primary natural resource managers due to their intimate knowledge of the environment that enables them to maintain livelihoods, cultural continuity and community cohesion.

Before the advent of state pressure on matrilineal societies, gender relations were relatively equal. Based on women’s role in production, their special knowledge of forests, and their place in the cultural and religious life of matrilineal communities, women enjoyed considerable space within the household and the community to make decisions about resource use.

In the Chota Nagpur villages of Central India, present day practices socially acknowledge women’s knowledge of forests and agriculture. When the Munda (the headmen) go from one village to another, their wives lead them. Women’s knowledge of seeds, herbs, and plants is considered precious both in the family and community. Their knowledge of the roots of a particular plant is used to brew rice beer, the most sacred and popular drink of the people.

Their role in the preparation of cultivable land is also very important; they are seen working with men in field preparation and reclamation of forest land. Women’s contribution to the development of agriculture is further confirmed by the ‘myth of the preparation of the first plough.’ The Supreme Being’s wife is described as the real inventor of the technology of ploughmaking. Thus women’s right to land and its produce received a permanent place in the customary law of the Munda people.

Unfortunately, maintaining this position of power has been difficult for women, particularly in the face of pressures from the state in favor of centralizing forest management, weakening an important source of women’s power in matrilineal societies.

While women certainly continued to use forests after centralization, they often had to do so clandestinely and in short visits. In addition, many forests were changed into monocrops that provided few of the resources that women controlled historically. With limited access to a much altered forest, women’s ability to fend off forces of patriarchy was much reduced.

State efforts to centralize forest management did not go unopposed. Yet these movements did not often reassert women’s equal rights with respect to forest management, or any other aspect of social life for that matter. A shift in gender power from women to men was already well underway when such movements got started, and local men used the moment to further consolidate patriarchy. In the process of changing forest use, from swidden systems to settled, privately-owned fields, and the change from community access to private access to forest products, women had lost the source of their power and status. Men were fighting for the return of forests, not gender equality.

However, that situation is changing and women’s inclusion in committees is becoming more a policy norm. In many places, all-women groups have come up for forest management and protection. Women are seen to perform better in many management and production tasks. But these new norms of women’s inclusion, though still limited in space both vertically and horizontally, have also come about through a process of struggle by women, often supported by various external actors.

Article based on information from: “Patriarchy at Odds: Gender Relations in Forest Societies in Asia”, Govind Kelkar and Dev Nathan (Eds.), 2003, http://www.gendermainstreamingasia.org/img/b1.PDF; Women's indigenous knowledge of forest management in Orissa (India), Smita Mishra, http://www.nuffic.nl/ciran/ikdm/2-3/articles/mishra.html

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Indonesia: Wonosobo forest managed by the community

Wonosobo is a rural district in Central Java, close to the mountainous Dieng plateau. Much of its 18,896 hectares of state forest is designated Protection Forest as the hilly uplands are the watershed for several major rivers. Like all other forest land in Java, the Wonosobo forest was controlled by the state-owned forestry company Perum Perhutani, which according to field reports has severely damaged or destroyed well over half the 'state forest'.

When the colonial government was in charge of managing the Wonosobo forest, it converted most of the lowland forest to monoculture agricultural land and plantations. Local people were hired to work on the plantations and to produce timber, but they no longer had control over the land. However, despite centuries of colonial administration, the conversion of most lowland forest for agriculture and the establishment of plantations, elements of traditional forest management still persist in some parts of Java, where diverse systems co-exist. The Javanese term wono, incorporated into the names of many villages and towns, can mean forest, paddy fields or orchards since the same land is used to grow trees, rice and other agricultural crops -sometimes in rotation; sometimes by intercropping.

People have lived in Wonosobo forests for generations, relying on rice, fruit, livestock, and vegetables for their sustenance. Selling of non timber forest products is also a way of income for them: honey, resin and fiber. They continued applying their traditional forest management in a few parts of the forest, and developed a very sound model of agro-forestry in which community members decide collectively how resources should be managed, taking both economic and environmental needs into account.

These forests managed by people are much healthier than forests managed by the state. The difference is striking: the community forest is diverse and flourishing, and the state forest is degraded.

The people of the Wonosobo forest demonstrate that community forest management is the best way to secure both protection of the forest and the people.

Article based on information from: “Nature: poor people’s wealth”, “Communities care for forests”, Walhi/Friends of the Earth Indonesia, July 2005, http://www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/poverty.pdf; “Community forest management, the way forward”, Down to Earth, http://dte.gn.apc.org/srf3.htm#won

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Malaysia: Converting mangrove forests into shrimp farms

The dark green and yellow Great Tit (Parus major) is a bird species that makes its home in Malaysia's coastal mangrove swamps and both are disappearing as the country redoubles it attempts to boost agriculture. Commercial farmers are turning swamps in Kuala Selangor, 90 km (56 miles) north-west of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, into shrimp farms and threatening a delicate ecosystem that is home to hundreds of species.

Wood and marine products from the mangrove forests provide a source of income for villagers. But also, mangroves form a natural protective buffer against rough seas or tsunamis, like the one that struck parts of peninsular Malaysia last December and showed the importance of mangrove swamps for the ecosystem and human lives.

The mangrove forests shielded several Indonesian islands and Malaysia's northwest coastline from the worst effects of the tsunami, prompting Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to call for their preservation. "Mangroves should not be touched, they act as a barrier for big waves...they break the waves," Abdullah said.

Mangroves have luxuriant and complicated root systems that combat soil erosion by helping to bind the shore together, forming a shield against destructive waves and sustaining a varied ecosystem that is home to insects, fish and otters. Blue and orange fiddler crabs scuttle sideways across the swamp in Kuala Selangor along with mud skippers and snails while silver-leaf monkeys swing from the branches of trees through which flit 156 varieties of birds.

But an 8-km (5-mile) stretch of mangrove forest was turned into a shrimp farm in Kuala Selangor early this year. Forestry Department statistics show that peninsular Malaysia had 85,800 hectares (214,500 acres) of mangrove swamp forests in 2003, down from 86,497 hectares in 2002.

"We can't look for snails and other things here. We used to get about 30 kg (66 lb) previously but now there is none. We just scrounge around for what is left here," villager Hassan Yatim said as he gathered mangrove tree poles for his vegetable plot.

The shrimp farms have also changed the lifestyle and diet of animals in the Kuala Selangor swamp. Kingfishers, shrikes and waders now head for the farms for easy pickings instead of hunting their prey in the thick mangrove forest within the 200-hectare nature park. Sleek otters also head straight for the shrimp farms, particularly when farm workers distribute feed to the shrimp.

Despite the threat to the ecosystem, the Forestry Department says the farms are legal as part of the Kuala Selangor swamps are now classified as agricultural land rather than the forest reserve they were formerly.

While short-term benefits go for the companies behind the shrimp business, the high losses in terms of environment and livelihood will be born by local people.

Excerpted and adapted from: “Development Threatens Malaysia's Mangroves”, Jahabar Sadiq, Reuters News Service, distributed by The Mangrove Action Project News, 158th Edition, July 2005, E-mail: mangroveap@olympus.net