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Myanmar’s military coup fuels resource grabbing
Htu Seng has spent a decade preserving the land and environment of her home Kachin State. She began afraid for her life after the military seized power in a coup in February 2021.
She was forced to leave her hamlet in Myitsone in 2011 to make room for a China-backed hydroelectric project that was suspended months later. She has since led efforts to guarantee the multibillion-dollar project does not recommence.
Gold mining has overtaken the issue in the past year and a half. The industry has removed trees, damaged land and riverbanks, and polluted waterways in Myanmar’s north for 20 years. Local activists allege gold mining has increased since the military coup.
At Myitsone, where Myanmar’s longest river, Ayeyarwady, begins, the landscape has changed dramatically. Htu Seng is one of only a handful of locals who have spoken out against gold mining at the same site.
They asked the military and the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), which is fighting for autonomy and has joined the anti-coup movement, to stop the mining. They’ve released public statements, given media interviews, and met with Christian leaders and other groups.
But the mining has continued, and their activity has put them in direct conflict with one of Kachin’s most renowned families, which has long used its military and KIO ties to win logging and jade mining concessions.
In December, Htu Seng’s children found an anonymous note advising her to be careful and cease disseminating “fake information.”
Htu Seng doesn’t know who sent the threat, so she’s moved and limited her public profile.
She persists. She said, “I must fear everyone.” “If I stop speaking up out of fear, our house and land could perish…” So I continue.”
More than a million people have been displaced by the coup, military crackdowns, and civil conflict. A quieter catastrophe is also occurring as a collapsing formal economy, disintegrating rule of law, and the expansion of conflict create the perfect conditions for the increased exploitation of Myanmar’s natural resources, including gold, rare-earth elements, jade, and wildlife.
Before the coup, many industries were barely controlled and functioned illegally. The National Unity Government, Myanmar’s anti-coup administration, seeks worldwide recognition as the country’s legitimate government, while armed resistance organizations fight the military for territorial control.
The resource grab could have grave consequences in a country that has some of Southeast Asia’s largest intact forests and ecosystems and is sensitive to climate change. Threatens the livelihoods and ancestral lands of a 70% rural people.
Land, water, and biodiversity are under great strain, making it impossible to monitor environmental malfeasance or oppose entangled commercial interests.
Hanna Hindstrom, a senior campaigner with Global Witness, said the military takeover has devastated Myanmar’s natural ecosystem and those defending it.
Those who speak out against injustice risk violence and arrest. As Myanmar is plunged into lengthy conflict and upheaval, the country’s plundering risks becoming normalized and forgotten.
Myanmar is home to more than 3,000 plant and animal species, including hundreds that are internationally vulnerable and unique.
This biodiversity was threatened before the coup.
Nearly half of the 64 ecosystems studied by the University of New South Wales, Australia, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Myanmar’s former civilian government are threatened, and one has collapsed.
The coup and spread of armed conflict opened the floodgates for those with money and connections to scale up their activities. On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, war disruptions and rising commodity prices have pushed more people into the resource industries or to sell their land to mining companies.
In a recent report, the All Burma Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance noted an escalating cycle of environmental and social devastation.
Businessmen and authorities who steal and loot locally managed resources split communities and encourage locals to destroy and sell their homes, the report added.
Kachin, which borders China’s Yunnan region, has Myanmar’s most resource richness and has endured military and KIO fighting since the 1960s.
Both sides are fighting for access to jade, lumber, amber, and gold. Illicit rare-earth extraction has surged in military-aligned border areas during the past decade.
Since the coup, powerful people have more opportunity to gain money.
The military’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, appointed by the U.S. government in May 2021, has a lengthy history of “directly profit[ing] from the selling of the country’s natural resources,” according to an international non-profit. The military’s businesses have been sanctioned yet continue to profit from jade and timber.
In Kachin, military armed groups aligned with it and those fighting against it continue to tax resource-related companies. Opposing groups even tax the same businesses in contested areas, according to interviews with local environmental activists, civil society workers, and people involved in or affected by resource economies.
Even though China has established border gates and banned the entry of persons and goods from Myanmar since 2020 to prevent COVID-19, sources indicate illicit movement of resources and businesses continues unabated.
Ningrang Uma, a Kachin environmental activist, claimed Chinese people buy and trade their natural resources, wildlife, and flora. “We can’t easily transfer rice, oil, and medicine, but [the military] lets Chinese people in and out.”
He blamed corruption and a lack of political will among military and resistance leaders.
“The natural environment is our lifeblood,” he stated. “Without [effective] laws or policies, China can kill us.”
Indigenous activists are often targeted.
Global Witness reports that they accounted for more than 40% of the 200 land and environmental defenders murdered in 2021, despite being 5% of the world’s population.
In Montreal, delegates from around the world are trying to agree on a new ten-year framework to prevent and reverse natural loss that “safeguards the rights of indigenous peoples and respects their contributions as stewards of nature.”
All Burma Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance, which sent delegates to the meeting, underlined the coup’s threats to biodiversity and environmental defenders in a recent press release and urged for Indigenous people to replace authoritarian regimes in global environmental governance.
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