MYANMAR CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ECOLOGY, SOCIETY AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE MEKONG REGION BY MEKONG COMMONS

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About the Mekong Commons
The Mekong River at Chiang Khong in the early morning. (Photo by Carl Middleton.)
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Minari Tsuchikawa - 2017/08/05
Will the Dawei Special Economic Zone benefit the people of Myanmar?
The Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ) project in Myanmar will establish large-scale industrial estates for export-led industrialization. Japan has recently
expressed interest in investing in the Dawei SEZ. Japan’s economy has been built on this model of industrial development. This development model has caused
enormous environmental and health impacts.
Minari Tsuchikawa questions whether it is appropriate for Japan to impose this type of “development” model on Myanmar rather than allow the people of
Myanmar to find their own path of sustainable development.
COMMONS COMMENT
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8/8/2017 Will the Dawei Special Economic Zone benefit the people of Myanmar? | Mekong Commons
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Commons Comment
Is the Dawei Special Economic Zone paving the way to environmental disaster?
The governments of Myanmar, Thailand and Japan are together investing to build a special economic zone (SEZ) covering 20,000 hectares (ha) in Dawei, a
coastal town in Myanmar. The SEZ plans include an industrial estate and deep sea port to promote export-led industrialization. Project proponents hope to
make Dawei the western gateway of the “southern economic corridor” promoted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). This corridor would link Vietnam,
Cambodia and Thailand. Thailand’s Italian-Thai Development (ITD) initiated the project in 2008, but it eventually stalled in 2013, since ITD was unable to
raise the necessary funds. The governments of Myanmar and Thailand, however, have continued to promote the project.
In 2015, the Government of Japan formally became involved in the Dawei SEZ. Japan is investing through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation
(JBIC) through a Special Purpose Vehicle that provides investment in an equal ratio to that of the Myanmar and Thai governments. In addition, the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is also conducting a survey for the construction of a road connecting Dawei with the Thai border.
In July 2016, Mekong Watch, a nongovernmental group in Japan working on environmental issues in the Mekong Region, visited the project site and met
people who were facing a variety of problems due to the Dawei SEZ project. ITD had already begun the construction of access roads and leveling of land in
2010 as preparation for the construction of the road corridor and the industrial estate. Residents in one village spoke of road construction suddenly taking
over their lands with no prior notice. Construction has caused erosion, and sediments have flowed over farmland, making the land unfit for cultivation. Water
sources have also been polluted by soil and sediments. Community roads have been divided, and routes and habitats used by elephants and other wild
animals have been fragmented. Almost none of the residents affected by these damages have received sufficient compensation.
2017/08/05

Construction of roads for the Dawei SEZ have caused a number of environmental problems. (Photo by Mekong Watch.)
Similar problems are also arising in the area designated for the SEZ. Farming and fishing communities were told to move out of the SEZ area. A resettlement
site was built, but some people were already living there, which created problems for the original residents. People also knew they would not be able to find
employment at the resettlement site, so only four households actually moved there. At present, just one household lives there. Now the site contains 480
houses standing empty, side by side. The SEZ project claims it will create employment. But so far, the reverse seems to be the case.
Among residents affected by ITD’s road construction, some have received compensation, some have been partially compensated, and some were not
considered eligible for compensation. This is creating new tensions among the communities. Some residents told us that they are hoping Japan would
become involved and construct the road. When asked why, they explained that because Japan is an economic superpower, people would be adequately
compensated if Japan were responsible for the road. If road construction is financed with Japanese aid, it is possible that livelihood improvement programs
might be implemented regardless of damage. However, Japan will not compensate for any damages caused by previous construction work undertaken
before the involvement of the Japanese government.
Non-governmental groups from Myanmar and Thailand filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Thailand. The NHRC
conducted a survey and released a report in November 2015 citing violations of the rights of the people in Dawei. The report says there are still unresolved
problems, and expects that the negative impacts will continue into the future. The report also says that restoring the environment and the livelihoods of
residents is the responsibility of not only the company but of the participating governments as well. ITD, however, claims that it is not responsible because it
no longer has any rights in operating the project.
The Dawei SEZ’s area of 20,000 ha is one-thirds the size of Yangon. Phase 1 of the Thilawa SEZ, a project in which global Japanese corporations are
investing with the support of Japan’s government is 400 ha, and the entire project is 2,400 ha.
The Japanese government is currently reviewing the Dawei SEZ plans, and we are speculating how Japan will proceed with development in Myanmar. One
feasibility study commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (2013), states: “There is a need to rework ITD’s wishful concept into
an economically rational plan.”
In the 2015 report, “Comprehensive Development Plan Study for Assistance to Promote Industrialization in Myanmar,” it is interesting to note that the study
anticipates very high port maintenance and management costs due to necessary dredging and erosion measures. The private sector was supposed to
cover these costs in the initial project plan, but it is still unclear if companies will be interested if port utility fees are high. Public funds are also being
considered to cover part of the burden. Another concern is that the currently planned width of the channel is too narrow to enable boats to pass if a large
tanker were to enter.
In the feasibility study mentioned above, the chapter on environmental regulations states: “If strict environmental regulations similar to Thailand’s Map Ta
Phut project are adopted, Dawei’s capital investment costs will rise, weakening its manufacturing edge.” The study also says, “while keeping the
environmental burden that accompanies industrial town development to a minimum, there is a need to design environmental regulations that would make it
advantageous for Japanese companies to come aboard.”
In other words, this study is saying that it is economically unfeasible to adopt Japanese environmental standards, and that it is even impossible to adopt
standards equivalent to Thailand’s, which the Thai government has begun to revise due to its bitter experience with pollution. Unfortunately, the Japanese
government’s involvement is no guarantee that people’s rights and the environment will be protected.
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One of the ethnic Karen villages along the road linking the Dawei SEZ. (Photo by Mekong Watch.)
Dawei enables access to the Indian Ocean, and is therefore a very attractive location from a business point of view. The topography may make it impossible,
however, to construct an efficient, large-scale port. Without prior construction of the port, there would be little economic benefit to connecting Vietnam to
Dawei, and little economic benefit from building the SEZ. Without the SEZ, there is no need to spend exorbitant amounts to cut through beautiful
mountainous terrain to construct a huge highway.
Japan achieved its past economic growth by building large-scale industrial estates and developing export industries. But is this a good model for Myanmar as
it rebuilds its nation in the 21st century? It may be wise to look at some of the challenges Japan is facing now. In Japan, there is little employment outside of
urban centers, and the population has concentrated in large cities, so there are disproportionately high numbers of senior citizens in rural areas. While life in
large cities has been made very convenient with infrastructure, human relationships and a sense of community are difficult to develop. The culture of mutual
cooperation is weakening and urban life is not easy for children and the elderly. According to a study by the Prime Minister’s Office, there are 236,000 youth
who are “hikikomori,” which means they have withdrawn from society, refusing to leave their homes. They stay inside, sometimes for years, refusing, or too
afraid, to go outside.
Japan’s financial condition is also unstable. According to documents from the Japanese Ministry of Finance, 24.4% of the annual expenditure for fiscal year
2016 was for servicing the national debt. In addition, 35.6% of the national budget revenue came from public bonds. This means that while one fourth of the
budget was used to pay back previous debts, more than one third of the budget was borrowed from future generations. On the other hand, income from
corporate income tax is only 12.6%. Due to globalization of the economy, corporate profits do not necessarily lead to national profit. The Japanese
government often cites Thailand’s eastern coastal region’s industrial development as an economic success. But that took place in the context of the Plaza
Accord, when the yen was very strong, and many Japanese firms were moving overseas. Would the same happen in Myanmar today with the construction of
the Dawei SEZ?

Coastal area near point zero of the road link. (Photo by Mekong Watch.)
In Japan, it has become recently known that the surrounding seas are largely polluted with microplastics. Years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant disaster, even today water contamination from radiation is not under control with waste still being disposed in the ocean. In Dawei, on the other hand,
the ocean is vibrant with natural resources and stunningly beautiful. There are still many wonderful places along the coast. We have heard of plans to
organize eco-tours with the participation of local residents.
Myanmar is in a unique and invaluable position with unlimited opportunities to steer development so that it focuses on the needs of the people in Myanmar
and the integrity of the natural environment. Myanmar need not follow old, outdated models where development was implemented primarily for the benefit of
corporations and governments with little benefit for the local residents while also causing health and environmental impacts. In principle, Japanese aid is
provided upon request. This means that aid is given in response to requests from recipient governments. We ask that the decision-makers in Myanmar
consider whether the Dawei SEZ can really benefit the people of Myanmar. Consider it carefully then let the Japanese government know what you think.
1. Prepared for The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Heisei 24 nendo infura sisutemu yushutsu sokushin chousatou jigyo, Myanma Dawei
kaihatsutou ni okeru jigyo kanousei chousa houkokusho, March 2013, p.7-10, in Japanese.
2. Prepared for The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Myanma sangyo-ka sokushin shien sougou kaihatsu keikaku chousa houkokusho, March
2015, p.4-15, in Japanese.

8/8/2017 Minari Tsuchikawa | Mekong Commons
http://www.mekongcommons.org/author/minari-tsuchikawa/ 1/1
AUTHOR ARCHIVES: MINARI TSUCHIKAWA
Minari Tsuchikawa
Minari Tsuchikawa is a researcher from Mekong Watch, a Japanese NGO working on environment and human rights issues in the Mekong Region. She has
been monitoring Japanese ODA projects for a long time and since 2012, projects in Myanmar have been among them. She can be contacted at
tsuchikawa@mekongwatch.org.
Minari Tsuchikawa - 2017/08/05 - Commons Comment
The Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ) project in Myanmar will establish large-scale industrial estates for export-led industrialization. Japan has recently expressed interest in investing
in the Dawei SEZ. Japan’s economy has been built on this model of industrial development. This development model has caused enormous environmental and health impacts.
Minari Tsuchikawa questions whether it is appropriate for Japan to impose this type of “development” model on Myanmar rather than allow the people of Myanmar to find their own path of
sustainable development.
Tags: dawei, development, environment, health, Myanmar, Special Economic Zone
COMMONS COMMENT
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8/8/2017 Dawei’s coastal calm disrupted by Thailand’s industrial plans | Mekong Commons
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Deconstructing Development
Dawei is situated along the Andaman sea in southern Myanmar. The area’s abundant natural resources and strategic coastal location have attracted both
tourism and industrial development plans.
Small-scale fishing boats near Myawyik Pagoda, Dawei. (Photo by Dawei Watch Thailand.)
The Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) in the Dawei district of Tanintharyi Region is a planned massive multi-billion-dollar project that includes a deep-
sea port, heavy industries and extensive transport links. It would form a regional industrial hub located just 350 km west of Bangkok and allow cargo ships to
dock in southern Myanmar and avoid the busy Strait of Malacca.
Thailand’s largest construction firm, Italian-Thai Development (ITD), initiated the project in 2008 and has begun appropriating and clearing land, and
constructed a small port and roads through the Tenasserim Hills that connects Dawei to Thailand. In 2013, the project was transformed into a Government-
to-Government project between Thailand and Myanmar.
The project has met resistance due to its right violations, land grabbing and potentially enormous ecological impacts on coastal livelihoods. Hundreds of
farmers have already lost land to the project, but tens of thousands more would be required to give up farmland if the project continues.
Local civil society in Dawei comprised of various groups are raising concerns about the projects to protect their homeland and livelihoods.
Dawei’s coastal calm disrupted by Thailand’s industrial plans
2015/07/24

8/8/2017 As Dawei “initial phase” 65% complete, locals left in the dark | Mekong Commons
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Environmental Justice
The Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) is a major industrial project and deep sea port now at an initial phase of construction located in Taninthayri
Region, Myanmar. The original plan, led by the Thai construction company Ital-Thai since 2008, was for a US$ 50 billion project that entailed a 250 kilometer
square industrial zone. However, by 2012 the project was in deep trouble as it failed to attract investment and was challenged by civil society groups
concerned about impact on local livelihoods and the environment, as well as the overall decision-making process around the project. It was reformulated by
the governments of Myanmar and Thailand as a Government-to-Government project in a scaled-back form, who also sought support from the Japanese
government, and initial construction activities are now underway.
Despite the extensive media attention on the Dawei SEZ, apart from knowing that it is a mega project with regional impacts, many local people still know very
little about the details of the project and how it could change their lives.
Story of Mr. Thura the fisherman
In Htein Gyi village, Yebyu township, which is about 2 miles from the proposed Dawei deep sea port, I met Mr. Thura, a 30 year-old fisherman, who was
repairing his net. Mr. Thura often goes fishing in the area near the so-called “kilometer zero” of the DSEZ, which is the focal point of the mega project where
the big deep sea port is planned to be built.
Mr. Thura said he went fishing every day and he could earn about 5-7000 kyat per day, which is about US$ 4 to US$ 5.5. Mr. Thura said: “I have heard about
the Dawei SEZ but I do not understand much about it. No one has directly told me about this project. I only heard the neighbors talking about it. But I know
clearly that more and more Thai people are coming in.”
As Dawei “initial phase” 65% complete, locals left in the dark
2015/10/18

“kilometer zero” at the planned big port site of the Dawei SEZ is considered the “heart” of the project, from where the road will lead to Thailand. (Photo by Mai Lan.)
When asked if he knew whether he would be able to fish in the same spot as now if the big port is built, Mr. Thura said he did not know.
According to Myanmar government plans prepared at the start of the project, Htein Gyi village is amongst 19 villages that will fall inside the project’s industrial
zone area. A recent study by the Tavoyan Women’s Union (TWU) showed that local communities in the Htein Gyi area will experience serious impacts to
their livelihoods by the DSEZ.
But, in discussion with some of the villagers there, until now many villagers within this directly impacted area do not know precisely how the project could
change their lives.
“The construction of the port will destroy local ecology and change the coast. Some of the coast will be changed completely”, said Mr. Montree Chantawong
who works with the Foundation for Ecological Recovery (TERRA) based in Bangkok. He has regularly visited the DSEZ since it was first proposed to study
about its potential impacts on the area’s ecology.
“As there would be many big ships visiting to the port, we can be sure there will be much waste, for example garbage and grease, that is discharged or
leaked into the sea intentionally or unintentionally” Mr. Montree said. “This will affect the marine ecosystems and fishing will become more difficult, even
impossible.”
However, Mr. Thura the fisherman seemed comparatively optimistic about the project. He said, “If I can continue fishing, I will. If not, I will become a worker in
the industrial zone. Anything will do.”
It was perhaps not apparent to Mr. Thura, however, that he currently earns more through fishing than he could be working at the DSEZ. He presently earns
more than US$150 per month on average, whilst most of the construction workers at the DSEZ project site at present cannot earn this much. A construction
worker who I spoke to revealed that the average income of the workers here now is about US$100 per month, for which they have to work 10 hours per day.
In the future, if the DSEZ is built, then perhaps investors who open their factories may increase the worker’s income. But for now, workers here continue to
ask for a higher salary that is yet to be granted.
Some have welcomed the project, despite its ambiguity
Many local people in Dawei town are ambiguous in their knowledge of the DSEZ, but are welcoming it despite this.
Mr. Zaw, a taxi driver took me around Dawei town and to visit the local markets. When asked about this project, Mr. Zaw said: “I welcome the project, as I can
see infrastructure development. Roads are opening, and the taxi drivers have benefited from that.”
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Mr. Zaw also expects that his earnings will improve thanks to guests traveling more frequently on the new paved roads, which are more convenient.
However, Mr. Zaw guessed that apart from these positive impacts, the project would have some negative impacts. But what these could be, he did not know.
Inside the local Myoma Market in Dawei town, trading is bustling every day. Traders here say they also feel the change a little, but not too much yet. Mrs.
Sandar, a trader in the market, said that there are now more Thai agricultural and consumer goods entering Dawei, and they are cheaper than before. This is
due to the “access road” built for the DSEZ from Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand and the opening of the border at Phu Nam Roan.
Most people who I asked in the market said that they had heard about the DSEZ, and most of them hoped that the local economy will grow and their lives will
be improved because of it. However, everyone I spoke with also said that actually they were unclear about the details of the DSEZ project.
The planned scale of the DSEZ is certainly big, and is expected to be of strategic importance for connecting industry in the Mekong region to the world. It
includes many components, such as a deep seaport, various types of industrial areas, a power plant, and a major road connecting to Thailand. If the project
is implemented in accordance with this plan it will definitely change the face of the Dawei area entirely, including the lifestyle, culture and livelihoods of tens
of thousands of households.
The small port is currently a construction site. It will have a 100 meter long jetty. (Photo by Mai Lan.)
However, local people affected by the project still lack of information about how the project will change their lives. Visiting some of the project works, such as
the planned site for the big port, the small port now under construction, the cement plants, and the Bawah Resettlement site, I could find some information
boards, but these were in English.
The fact that local people cannot access enough information about a major project that may change their lives should be of great concern. A report entitled
“No Right to Know,” published in April 2012 by the Dawei Project Watch, which is a collective of local people from the DSEZ area, said that local villagers had
only been informed by the authorities and company personnel that they would be relocated, but no one has clear information about their relocation, their
compensation, or about their future. Neither do they have much knowledge about how the entire project will impact them.
The report writes: “In the case of investment in Dawei (Tavoy) Special Economic Zone, the voices of the local people have been silenced. In the new
democratic transformation of Myanmar, the local people still cannot exercise their rights to freedom of expression, freedom to access of information and
freedom of assembly.”
Meanwhile, a report by the Tavoyan Women’s Union published in December 2014 shares the results of research from interviews with 60 women chosen
randomly from six villages in Htein Gyi tract, where the deep sea port is planned. The report finds that most of the local people are fisher folk and farmers,
and argues that they have lived sustainably for generations in this relatively isolated coastal area. However, the report states that these women “…have been

given no choice about accepting this multi-billion dollar Thailand-Burma joint venture, which will turn their pristine lands into the largest petrochemical estate
in Southeast Asia.”
The information board at the Bawah resettlement site is completely in English. (Photo by Mai Lan.)
So far, despite many years since the problem was first pointed out, the Right to Access Information for the people in Dawei about the project has not
improved significantly. The people directly affected by the DSEZ project, such as Mr. Thura the fisherman, or those indirectly affected such as traders in the
market, still do not clearly know what is waiting for them in the very near future. But, they have the right to know.
Sharing information about Dawei remains partly taboo
A representative from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Taninthayri Region was initially very open and friendly when he first met our group of
journalists. He spoke passionately and enthusiastically about the tourism potential of the Dawei area.
“Dawei has plentiful tourism attractions such as mountains, rivers, the sea and forests, and cultural landscapes with many beautiful temples” he said. “These
resources together with the location bordering with Thailand hold great potential for Dawei to become a travel destination for visitors from across the Mekong
sub-region.”
However, when asked what he thought about the DSEZ project’s impacts to tourism development in Dawei, he was far more reluctant to answer.
A meeting with Mr. U Khin Maung Cho, Director of the General Administration Department of Taninthayri Region and Chairman of the Supporting Working
Body of DSEZ was somewhat more fruitful. He stated that as of the end of August 2015, about 65% of the DSEZ’s “initial project stage” had been completed,
which includes a two lane road, a small port and industrial real estate, a small power plant, an initial township, a small water reservoir, a telecommunication
landline, and a liquefied natural gas terminal. He said that the first zone of the project – designated Zone A (of Zones A to E) – is approximately seven
square kilometers and would be completed by 2018. Regarding compensation for people affected by Zone A, he said that an initial compensation of more
than 20 million Kyats or about US$200,000 had been paid.
However, when asked if there is any difficulty while implementing the project, Mr. U Khin Maung Cho said that there was no difficulty. But, this seems to be
contradicted by the reports that have been published on the project recently, such as those by the Dawei Project Watch and the Tavoyan Women’s Union.
According to the Dawei Development Association’s report, “Voices from the Ground”, published in September 2014, it estimates that 20 to 36 villages
(comprising approximately 4,384 to 7,807 households or 22,000 to 43,000 people) would be directly affected by the construction of the Dawei SEZ and
related projects.
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The Bawah resettlement site where it is estimated that 341 households or 1,363 people will be relocated during the initial stage of the project. At the time of our visit, no one was living here.
(Photo by Mai Lan.)
The need for an informed and open discussion
From talking with local people living within the project area, and also in the Dawei town which is located tens of kilometers away, it is clear that there is limited
accurate information available about the project to them, and especially about its impacts. Given the major economic, social, environmental and cultural
changes that such a large project would entail, it seems that sharing this information with all who could be affected and then having an open discussion
about whether such a project is desirable is absolutely crucial.
Acknowledgement
Ms. Mai Lan appreciates the support of the Mekong Partnership for Environment, who funded the field trip to the DSEZ in August and September, 2015.
Villagers’ names in this article have been changed.
Show 3 footnotes

8/8/2017 Thailand’s electricity utility may be complicit in human rights violations in Myanmar’s Salween dams | Mekong Commons
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The building of the 241 meter high Mong Ton (also known as Tasang dam) is well underway in the Upper Salween River in the southern Shan state of
Myanmar.
The largest dam planned on the Upper Salween River, the US$10 billion Mong Ton dam’s reservoir will flood at least 640 square km stretching across two-
thirds of Shan State. It will produce 7,000 MW of power, 90% of which will be exported to Thailand and China.
It is a joint project between China’s Three Gorges Corporation, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) International Co., Ltd., and Myanmar’s
Ministry of Electric Power and International Group of Entrepreneurs (IGE). IGE is a conglomerate with business interests in banking, timber, oil, gas and
mining. IGE is owned by the sons of Aung Thaung, the Ministry of Industry under the previous military regime and currently a lawmaker with the ruling Union
Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
The Mong Ton is one among six hydropower projects being developed on the Salween River, the others are: the Upper Salween Dam, also known as
Kunlong Dam (1,400 MW), Nong Pha Dam (1,000 MW), Manntaung on a tributary of the Salween (200 MW) (the four dams are located in Shan State),
Ywathit Dam in Kayah (Karenni) State (4,000 MW) and Hat Gyi Dam in Karen State (1,360 MW). All the projects are being developed jointly between
Chinese corporations, Thailand’s EGAT International Co., Ltd. and Burmese investors.
These projects would affect tens of thousands of people from various ethnic communities living along the length of the Salween River, which runs from China
through eastern Burma’s Shan, Karenni, Karen and Mon states.
Suffering and extortion at the dam site
The dam site is heavily militarised, being built in the remote Keng Kham Valley under the close watch of the Myanmar military. A 20-mile stretch of the
Salween River around the dam site is strictly out of bounds except for the dam builders and militia.
The dam site lies in an area that has featured the heaviest fighting in decades between Myanmar military and many ethnic armed groups in Shan State.
Since 1996, the military has forcibly relocated over 300,000 people from their lands around the planned dam site. In December 2013, the Shan Human
Rights Foundation (SHRF) reported that residents in areas potentially flooded by the dam were recruited as forced labour by the Myanmar military that was
providing security for teak logging in the reservoir area. Army battalions have forced people in nine villages in Murng Pu Long Township to build and repair
Thailand’s electricity utility may be complicit in human rights violations in Myanmar’s
Salween dams
2015/06/11
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military barracks and roads. Often the troops extort food and money from the local people. These human rights abuses have resulted in an influx of refugees
into Thailand from Shan State.
The mounting accounts of human rights violations and abuse in the building of the dam and the exodus of people fleeing to Thailand have resulted in Shan
community-based groups and Thailand and other international civil society organisations voicing concerns about the Salween dams.
At a media event on 9 June in Bangkok, Sai Khur Hseng, the coordinator of the Shan Sapawa Environmental Organization, stated that: “The Burmese
authorities must immediately cancel stop its plan to build the Mong Ton dam, as well as all other plans to build dams on the Salween River.”
The ethnic peoples in the area have not been provided information about the dam nor are part of the decision-making process about the development of the
Salween River that they depend upon for their farming and fishing livelihoods.
The Mong Ton dam protest held recently in Shan State. (Photo by Shan Sapawa.)
“The dam site is located far from the capitals of Nyapyitaw, Bangkok and Beijing. The remote areas are mostly populated by ethnic peoples who are both
geographically and politically marginalised,” said Pianporn Deetes, Thailand Campaign Coordinator of the International Rivers.
Local protests have continued against the environmental and social impact assessment studies (EIA/SIA) being carried out by the contracted company,
Australia’s Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC).
Shan groups have called the “consultations” organised by SMEC a sham that is usually attended by military and pro-government speakers including the local
commanders. Increasingly vehement local protests have led to the cancellation by SMEC of a public meeting scheduled for 30 April 2015.
Egregious EGAT
Most of the electricity is intended for sale to Thailand, although no power purchase agreement has been signed yet with EGAT.
With its investment in the Mong Ton dam, EGAT is complicit in the wide-ranging human rights violations and abuses including reports of forced labour,
displacement and extra-judicial killing in the building of the dam.
EGAT is no stranger to controversy. It is already facing a lawsuit in Thailand’s Administrative Court from Thai villagers who will be affected by the Xayaburi
dam being built on the mainstream Mekong River in Laos.
Piyaporn stated at the media event that EGAT has gone to invest in neighbouring countries mainly since it has faced criticism in the past over its dam
projects in Thailand. Its investments in Myanmar and Lao PDR also ensure it can avoid strong environmental and legal procedures to hold dam builders
accountable to the impacts from their projects.
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There are also wider concerns whether Thailand indeed does need the energy from these Salween dams. Thailand’s new Power Development Plan (PDP
2015), which lays out Thailand’s energy and investment plans for the next 21 years aims to double Thailand’s installed energy capacity in the next two
decades to reach 70,410 megawatts by 2036.
However, EGAT has a track record of consistently overestimating yearly forecasts of Thailand’s energy demand, with reserve margins set at up to as high as
40% in the next decade, often leading to over-investment.
Thailand’s civil society including consumer groups has tried to exert influence on EGAT to provide a more transparent and accountable energy planning
process that also accounts for the human and ecological costs of producing electricity from dams such as the Upper Salween and Xayaburi.
EGAT needs to make the conscientious choice now before it’s too late: disinvest from the Upper Salween dams until the Myanmar government can provide
its ethnic peoples in the Salween River Basin the power to decide the future of the area’s natural resources.
Show 3 footnotes

8/8/2017 Agribusiness and land grabs in Myanmar | Mekong Commons
http://www.mekongcommons.org/agribusiness-land-grabs-myanmar/ 1/4
Land grabs demonstrate disconnect between development discourse and practice
The historical weight of the political culture of development in Burma – now more commonly referred to as Myanmar – must not be discounted during the
democracy-neoliberal reform era. National development discourse and practice in Myanmar has combined elements from monarchical patronage and military
authoritarianism after decades of ruling military dictatorships where the military-state ‘knows best’ for its people. If ‘development’, a very loaded and
ambiguous term, is viewed as being borne out of the crucible of culture and politics, then it should come as no surprise that national development practice in
Myanmar has not yet followed the newly-established government’s declarations of ’disciplined democracy’ and pro-poor, grassroots development
approaches.
The former dictator Senior General Than Shwe implemented his final steps in the country’s long road map to ‘disciplined democracy’ by making U Thein Sein
(himself a former regional military commander) in March 2011 the country’s first non-interim civilian president in five decades. The new military-backed
President is viewed as a moderate reformist leader who has been tasked to undertake many neoliberal reforms, such as privatizing the state’s stronghold
over the economy and deregulating the heavily censored media. In line with democratic ideals, the President and his top aides routinely espouse the
hallmark virtues of grassroots voices, bottom-up development and transparency and accountability to its citizens.
But despite the President’s western-cultural development rhetoric, Myanmar’s government continues to fall back upon the familiar top-down authoritarian
approaches to development long espoused by Myanmar’s military regime that ruled the country as a dictatorship since 1962. Meanwhile, billions of dollars of
western-aligned development aid and international finance flood into Yangon and Naypyitaw to supposedly support this realignment of Myanmar’s political
economy and culture, but in reality is more an effort to buy geopolitical patronage.
Reflections on which different development discourses have the higher moral ground are not the intention of this critical analysis, however. Rather, this
commentary articulates the growing disconnect between on-the-ground realities of national development interventions and practices in Myanmar versus the
presidential and western development industries repeated proclamations of the virtues of grassroots, pro-poor development. President U Thein Sein’s first
presidential speech in 2011, various government officials’ welcoming addresses at the World Economic Forum in Naypyitaw in 2013, and the long-list of high-
Agribusiness and land grabs in Myanmar
2014/05/02

profile national development conferences held in Myanmar have gained acclaim from the western development community for praising the virtues of bottom-
up, pro-poor national development and economic growth.
Development as legal dispossession
The Myanmar government’s newly drafted land laws and “land concessions” or land grabs are forcing farmers away from their lands and handing it over to corporations. (Photo by Kevin Woods.)
Despite government rhetoric of changing attitudes to support grassroots farmers as the backbone of the nation, the first two laws quickly passed in
Naypyitaw’s first round of parliamentary law-making sessions were focused exclusively on turning land into capital for private sector investment and
reinforcing the power of the state to reallocate land use rights from farmers to private companies. The high-level national political actors who pushed the land
laws through and stifled debate hid behind the murky confusion, leaving the parliamentarians and citizens left in the dark on the fundamental significance of
land in the country’s political-economic trajectory. The two land laws – the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Wasteland Law – make land into
a legal commodity for the first time in Myanmar’s post-colonial history. The land grab laws were orchestrated to enable investors to lease land concessions in
‘wasteland’ and ‘fallow’ areas that farmers are using but where local land use rights and practices are not officially recognized. This is quite simply privatizing
the commons by applying law books backed by police force – a historical act all too familiar in industrializing countries worldwide
The two new land laws legally disenfranchised farmers by erasing their land use rights and practices if they are without an official land use certificate (which
the Land Records Department is now issuing with bribes paid, but still the vast majority of farmers have no such certificate), practice upland swidden
cultivation (or taungya, which perhaps one-third of the country’s total population relies upon for their livelihoods), leave their land fallow for one planting
season, or rely upon customary laws and land use practices, among myriad other restrictions.
Other land-related laws, such as the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Law and Foreign Investment Law, soon followed, all of which were engineered to reorient
the legal landscape in such a way that land use, access and rights are taken away from smallholder farmers and handed over to the domestic and
international private sector. These laws signify a tremendous turning point in Myanmar’s political economy that has not gone unnoticed. Instead of guns and
fear of the military to dispossess farmers of their land, the ‘rule of law’ has become the newest repertoire of land grab weapons to disenfranchise farmers,
now the country’s most attractive wealth-generating asset.
Haphazardly and selectively applying newly-minted laws often still requires the threat – or actual use – of the state police to forcibly remove farmers from
their homes and land. Since reforms began in 2011 farmers who have strongly protested land grabs have been confronted by police forces, with incendiary
devices and even bullets used in some cases. Just before the EU-Myanmar business summit in late 2013, the EU began a series of trainings with the
Myanmar police force in crowd control practices. The timing of this sort of engagement, which was also while the EU and Myanmar government was
negotiating an international arbitration agreement, leads to one interpretation that crowd control trainings are in anticipation of growing peasant and urban-led
protests against western-supported economic reform measures.
The new litany of land-related laws enables ‘legal’ land grabs that cannot be legally contested. Large-scale agribusiness concessions, for example, are now
considered a legal and legitimate method to reallocate fertile land away from farmers to corporate interests as the government proclaims industrial
agricultural production as the way to achieve a modern developed nation. For example, agribusiness concessions have increased by about 3 million acres,
up to 5.2 million acres as of mid-2013, since President U Thein Sein took office, all of which is considered as legal and part of the country’s new dictated
development path.
1

Peasant resistances against land dispossession have involved an array of both legal and so-called ‘illegal acts in an attempt to either return stolen land to
farmers, or in other cases to be more adequately compensated following international standards. In some cases, particularly in lowland Burman
communities, farmers have relied upon the law to take their fight over land to the courts. In other cases, particularly by whole communities forcibly relocated
by large-scale agribusiness concessions and SEZs, villagers have protested without permission and in some cases armed themselves not with law books but
by homemade weapons to protect themselves against police forces.
The country-wide farmer protests against these acts of coercive, top-down and sometimes violent land grabs are now the most heated topic for the media,
international development community and the Myanmar national government. Farmers are demonstrating their desires for another approach to development
that is more bottom-up, pro-poor, and culturally and economically appropriate for Myanmar’s majority rural population – which is precisely what the
President’s Office has also repeatedly demanded. Instead, a different reality has confronted these competing development discourses: the country’s new
political prisoners are front-line farmers resisting land dispossession who have been arrested, beaten, followed, interrogated, and shot at in the name of the
rule of law and national economic growth.
Deceptive developments in smallholder agriculture
Another emerging form of smallholder dispossession, which is more sinister in design by being cast as being pro-poor smallholder development, is
integrating farmers into global agricultural commodity supply chains. Western governments and aid agencies are bankrolling the Myanmar government’s land
policy reform and development process to ensure increased land tenure security for the explicit purpose of politically and economically enabling
smallholders’ production to be inserted into global supply chains. USAID, the US government’s international development aid arm, just announced a multi-
year agricultural development program in Myanmar where public-private partnerships (the holy trinity), led by some of the world’s largest capital-intensive
agribusiness MNCs, will connect select farmers in Myanmar with the likes of Unilever and Monsanto-dominated global agro-commodity markets. The same
agency is co-financing the country’s land policy reform to legally equip farmers with the legal land rights to allow them to be securely inserted into these
supply chains.
The western-supported and financed agro-industrial investment packages, backed by associated laws and policies, are presented to farmers and their
advocates as an apolitical gift that seemingly meets their demands for pro-smallholder policies and grassroots development goals. A more critical analysis is
needed, however, to better understand what this type of development push from beyond actually means for farmers, and more importantly, for whom. This
type of development intervention is not meant to target smallholder farmers who cultivate under 5 acres, which is the norm in most agro-ecological zones and
indigenous areas of the country, who have little to no experience with high-yielding seed varieties and high-input chemical applications. Instead, the type of
farmer who will qualify are ‘business farmers’, or those with 50 acres or more of land, who are trying to secure better access to land and capital to scale up
their operations – best represented by Myanmar Farmers Association and the Myanmar Rice Federation, the leaders of which have a good working
relationship with the old-military guard, cronies, and the development aid community.
Vertical integration of smallholder production schemes into global supply chains shifts significant risks to farmers. Farmers will quickly find themselves at the
bottom of the chain of highly volatile and complex global agro-food and biofuel markets with little to no safety net provided by the state or the private sector.
In order to scale up their operations, farmers will take out even more money and capital input loans with high interest rates, as is the current situation across
the countryside. Farm debt, an increasingly common yet little understood problem in Myanmar’s countryside, could very well then become even more
catastrophic for farming households who are unaccustomed to running capital-intensive farm operations and managing large loans. But these small-time
farmers are clearly not the point of entry for the country’s emerging agribusiness frontier, even if ‘smallholders’ are trumped as the development intervention
target. If the logic of the land laws and agro-industrial smallholder development logic is allowed to run its course even over the middle-term, then the less
efficient land users (i.e., rural smallholder farmers) will sell their land and become wage laborers as a growing landed elite continue to accrue large
agricultural holdings to feed the agro-industrial complex.
Biting realities
Riding along the new yet poorly constructed road connecting the country’s commercial center in Yangon to the political center in Naypyitaw helps better
understand the government’s true intentions for rural farm development, where past land concessions that have emptied the landscape of productive
household labor can be viewed. International-financed, Myanmar government-backed agro-industrial development projects are beginning to dot the sides of
the road leading to the former Senior Generals’ national capital. Modern, large-scale, capital-intensive agro-industrial production and processing plants are
being built under the watchful eye of the former regional military commander and now current agriculture minister, despite temporary suspension following an
alleged corruption scandal. Landless wage laborers work on the industrial road-side demonstration plantations, with green government signs proclaiming the
hybrid high-yielding seed varieties as a mark of modern development.
This type of military-state-led rural development has long been cultivated as the norm in Myanmar’s lowland Bama areas, where patronizing ‘big people’
demonstrate their benevolence to their poor patrons in need. Former high-level military officials-cum-statesmen have shown their true intentions for
continuing to demand status quo rural development approaches that plays into the hands of the military-state and their favored businessmen. But with the
recent opening up of political space and farmers’ newly-gained confidence in challenging normative forms of top-down development, on a few telling
occasions military leaders-turned-ministers lost their patience with defiant farmers and were caught on film screaming obscenities at poor farmer recipients
who were questioning the so-called benevolent aid.
Western governments, development aid industry and IFIs are dumping billions of dollars, countless experts, and legal advice in order to inject a heavy dose
of neoliberal economic reform to push aside the Myanmar state to open new channels of immense private capital accumulation and political influence. The
theatre being played out between the Myanmar government officials and western-aligned governments and development industry has been made into a
rather exclusive club. The legal and financial landscape which has been delivered by a new alliance among military officials, cronies, and western
governments/development aid industry has already been decided. Myanmar citizens have been denied decision making power over their own destiny, which
will be especially tragic for the majority rural farming population. Poor farmers across the country are demanding, however, that their voices be heard to
articulate alternative possibilities for rural livelihoods and forms of national development. But their collective struggle against ‘development from beyond’ is
not visible to governments and the development industry because they are too busy supposedly saving farmers from economic poverty.
2
3

Show 3 footnotes

8/8/2017 Chasing dreams against the tide | Mekong Commons
http://www.mekongcommons.org/chasing-dreams-tide/ 1/4
On the shore of Shintong, a small island near the southern tip of Myanmar, 67-year-old Gumpon Junjaraun is busy placing planks on a bus-sized fishing
boat, getting it ready to take him out to the Andaman Sea to fish again.
Uncle Pon, as he is affectionately called, is a Thai citizen. He is among a handful of Thais who have made his home in Myanmar.
For decades, millions of people from Myanmar have migrated to Thailand looking for a better life. But ten years ago, Gumpon went against the tide and
moved across the border to Myanmar.
Chasing dreams against the tide
2017/05/31

A local market in Kawthaung Island comes alive each morning as residents flock to shopping for food. (Photo by Visarut Sankham.)
Before that fateful decision, he earned a living as a boat builder and fisherman in the southern Thai province of Ranong, only a short distance across the sea
from where he lives now. For more than 20 years, he worked for a local boat builder. Then, tired of working for others, he left his job and became a
fisherman.
During his fishing days, he became familiar with the sea off Kawthaung, Myanmar’s southernmost town known in the colonial times as Victoria Point. Some
of his relatives have lived here, and he has befriended some locals. So whenever he came to fish in the area, he made it a point to drop by.
Traveling back and forth between Thailand and Myanmar was easy to do, Uncle Pon said. It was during these visits that he had come upon Shintong, a small
island just a few kilometers from Kawthaung. He liked it so much that he wanted to settle there.
During one of his visits, he said: “My Myanmar friends told me that I could have a piece of land for a cheap price. So I decided to buy it.”
For a long time, he had dreamed of owning land in Thailand. But prices were too high, he said.
In his many visits across the border, he not only learned about the area but also how local authorities worked.
After he made the decision to buy the land, he managed to obtain Myanmar citizenship through a back-door channel.
“Normally you can get a Myanmar identification card in Kawthaung Island for between 10,000 and 20,000 baht. But if you speak Burmese, you only have to
pay 5,000 baht,” he said.
Once he settled down on his new land in Kawthaung, Uncle Pon started by building a pier, using materials brought in from Ranong. His friends and relatives
who are in the fishing business became his first customers.

Serenity surrounds the house and pier where Uncle Pon and family have been calling home for more than 10 years. (Photo by Visarut Sankham.)
“I took a chance moving down here to run my own business rather than working as a laborer in Thailand for the rest of my life. Here I own land and a house
which I could not afford in Thailand,” he added.
Uncle Pon, his wife and six children regularly speaks Myanmar among themselves. Four of his children have since gone to live and work in other countries,
including Malaysia, Sweden and Thailand.
The remaining two children, who are still living with him, don’t even speak Thai although they understand the language.
While documentary evidence can attest that Uncle Gumpon and his wife are Thai, they are more like their Myanmar neighbors.
Asked whether he considered himself Thai or Myanmar, he insisted he was Thai.
Maintaining Thai citizenship has certain advantages. It gives him and family valuable access to education, public health care, and other public services in
Thailand that are otherwise not available in Myanmar.
When things get rough, Thailand could provide some sort of a safety net.

Uncle Pon walks toward his fishing boat which he is working on to prepare for the upcoming fishing season. (Photo by Visarut Sankham.)
And things may be now getting rough for Uncle Pon. Over the past several years, fishers have reported catching fewer fishes from the sea off Myanmar’s
southern coast.
“Four or five years ago, I used to catch 1,000 kg of fish when I sailed out for 15 days,” said Uncle Pon. “But nowadays I manage to catch only 100-200 kg.
The only way to catch as much as before is to use a bigger boat that can sail further out.”
A Myanmar Times article on Sept 16, 2016, confirmed that the Myanmar seas have been overfished during the past decade. It reported that fish stock has
dropped precipitously, between 30 percent and 80 percent in some instances, with small-scale fishermen bearing much of the brunt.
Uncle Pon added that each time he went out fishing it cost about 100,000 baht to cover fuel, ice for fish storage, wages for the crew, and food.
Less fish stock in the sea also means that fewer fishing boats required his repair services. As a result, he has been forced to borrow from local money
lenders to cover his expenses.
To make up for lost income, he has turned to producing charcoal for sale. Still, income from charcoal sale is not quite enough.

8/8/2017 First Salween studies conference: Listen to the people | Mekong Commons
http://www.mekongcommons.org/first-salween-studies-conference-listen-people/ 1/5
Voices of the Next Generation
“This is an opportunity to reimagine the Salween,” said Dr. Vanessa Lamb in her opening remarks at the first-ever conference on Salween-Thanlwin-Nu
studies held at Chiang Mai University, Thailand on the 14th and 15th of November. While then referring to a chance to rectify misrepresentations of the
Salween River Basin and its inhabitants often perpetuated by mainstream media, Lamb’s words had by the end of the conference rung true in many other
ways as well.
Officially titled the 1st International Conference on Salween-Thanlwin-Nu (NTS) Studies: “State of Knowledge, Environmental Change, Livelihoods, and
Development,” the event brought together an impressive array of participants in an attempt to address what opening speakers described as a situation of
“fragmented research” and “limited cooperation” with regard to the Salween River basin – the latter not only among governments, but also between
university-based researchers, NGOs, the media, and local communities.
Between coffee breaks characterized by an electric atmosphere of networking and optimistic idea-exchange, a group of 260 scholars, NGO and grassroots
activists, journalists, Thai and Burmese government officials, representatives from hydropower-affected minority groups in Myanmar, and many others
engaged in two full days of research seminars, roundtable forums, and artistic presentations covering a wide range of topics centered on the need and
possibilities for a more “people-centered” development of the Salween. Discussion of challenges in Environmental Impact Assessment policy and practice,
the necessity of and potential framework for cooperative river-basin management, and the strengthening of village-based research efforts were
complemented by biological, geological, economic, political-ecological, and archaeological perspectives, among others.
Hazardous hydropower
Fueling the palpable sense of urgency that drove each discussion were the Chinese, Burmese, and Thai governments’ massive hydropower development
plans for the Salween and the serious social and environmental consequences they would entail. China has plans for a cascade of up to thirteen dams within
its own borders – bound to run straight through the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site – where the river is called the Nu Jiang. Meanwhile, on the
lower stretch of the river, known as the Thanlwin in Myanmar and the Salween in Thailand, Chinese companies have partnered with the Thai and Burmese
governments, as well as Thai developers, in plans for seven dams on the mainstream in Myanmar. To date, these projects have been planned without
comprehensive basin-wide assessment on ecosystem and local livelihoods.
While, without major intervention, future social-environmental travesty is practically ensured by the secrecy and total lack of local-community participation
with which the dams are being planned (not to mention still absent resettlement/compensation plans), human consequences have already begun to play out
as a result of initial project preparation.
According to the NGO International Rivers, the proposed mainstream dams in Myanmar are located in active civil war zones, and “there has been increased
militarization at the dam sites…linked to the escalating abuse of local populations [since the project preparation began]. Ethnic minority groups are not only
being systematically and forcibly removed from their homes (including more than 60,000 at the Tasang dam site area and floodplain alone), but also robbed,
tortured, raped or executed.”
First Salween studies conference: Listen to the people
2014/11/24

Proposed Dams in the Salween Basin. (Photo by Salween Watch. “Hydropower Projects on the Salween River: An Update, March 2014”)
Yet as Witoon Permpongsacharoen of the Mekong Energy and Ecology Network pointed out in the first day’s “Situation Analysis” panel, there is reason to
warrant a comprehensive reassessment of development plans for the Salween beyond the dams’ expected and already-incurred impacts: their economics
are highly questionable as well. Mr. Permpongsacharoen revealed that while Myanmar is indeed in need of a significant amount of additional electricity
generation capacity – in 2010, the country’s electrification rate was only 23%, in contrast to 99% for China and Thailand – the proposed dams would not
address this issue as their generated electricity is bound for export to Thailand, a nation some analysts believe to already possess a significant surplus of
generation capacity. However, even if the electricity were destined for Myanmar, the dams still wouldn’t make sense; studies show that existing plans for new
power projects not including the Salween cascade are already sufficient to meet expected demand.
Using a powerful, head-shake-eliciting visual (pictured below), Mr. Permpongsacharoen concluded by illuminating the shortcomings of past hydropower
projects in Thailand. He pointed out how the electricity produced by the Pak Mun dam, which displaced 1,700 families and destroyed the livelihoods of 6,200
families, combined with two other Thai hydropower plants, is not even sufficient to power three of Bangkok’s large shopping malls.
Three Thai dams do not produce enough electricity to power three of Bangkok’s large shopping malls. (Photo by Witoon
Permpongsacharoen. “Know Your Power: Power Sector Development and Energy Resources Flow in Salween Basin”)
Following a thorough sequence of sessions bringing all up to speed on the dangers of current plans for the Salween, the conference focus transitioned to
understanding the causes of such mismanagement and brainstorming ways to address them.
Learning from the past

Learning from the past
A particularly lively roundtable panel in which a diverse set of stakeholders spoke candidly about continual deficiencies in Environmental Impact Assessment
(EIA) policy and practice provided one highlight. In a succinct set of opening remarks, Paul Swein Twa of the Karen Environmental and Social Action
Network (KESAN) laid out a long list of issues in need of attention.
“Transparency and public consultation in EIA assessment is problematic in Burma and everywhere,” he noted. “There’s traditionally been little input of local
environmental knowledge.” In addition, Mr. Swein Twa highlighted how EIAs do not seriously consider alternatives to proposed projects and emphasized the
impossibility of non-local agencies understanding an on-the-ground situation in the 2-4 months typically allotted for their study. He also pointed out that EIAs
rarely, if ever, assess the effect a project may have on “peace and conflict”. [See also “Dam EIAs Enable River Grabbing”]
Furthermore, there rarely exist mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of mitigation measures that EIAs lay out, a point strongly emphasized by Ms.
Indhira Euamonlachat, an official in the EIA Bureau of the Thai Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. In Thailand, she said, “every office will say
they’re too busy.”
Perhaps eliciting the most cries for reform, however, was the criticism that these days EIAs nearly always begin with the assumption that the projects they
are evaluating will go forward. “The reality is that EIAs almost never stop bad projects,” said session-moderator Dr. Peter King, Senior Policy Advisor for the
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and former Director of Pacific Operations for the Asian Development Bank. “EIAs need to go back to being
planning tools, not regulatory ones.”
Among the innovative solutions proposed for such a broken process were Dr. Kanokwan Manarom’s “Peoples’ EIA” model, which partners academics with
local people and thereby bridges the public participation gap while seeking to oust the problem of biased consultants.
Transboundary cooperation
Day 2’s morning session continued with a policy discussion on the need for the governments of China, Myanmar, and Thailand to govern the Salween in a
cooperative fashion. “Water links us to our neighbors in a way more profound and complex than any other,” noted Dr. Zhou Zhangui. Next, Mr.
Permpongsacharoen proposed a three prong-plan for cooperative management consisting of an umbrella Salween River Commission (SRC) with a mandate
following international laws and standards, an Ethnics Council to provide local communities an avenue for input, and a Regulatory Body to ensure
performance of the Commission. The panelists stressed the need to learn from shortcomings in the Mekong River Commission – an intergovernmental
commission for the lower Mekong Basin between the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam – when conceptualizing a potential SRC.
These include problems with funding adequacy, public accountability, and public participation.
The proposal was well-received by the audience. And though discussion regarding cooperative management of the Salween was officially the focus of only
one plenary session, a general call for the countries’ collaboration echoed throughout the conference. “More than 40 percent of the world’s population lives in
river basins shared by multiple countries,” noted Professor Muang Muang Aye (Myanmar). “Water-sharing agreements could serve as a framework for more
comprehensive international cooperation in other contexts.”

Participants listen to a question posed during the session on trans-boundary river cooperation. (Photo by Gus Greenstein.)
Yet true to its theme, the conference did not focus exclusively on technical policy discussion and university-level science, but rather allotted serious attention
to “knowledge” in all senses of the word. This was especially apparent in the space given to grassroots movement leaders, community-level researchers, and
Salween youth.
Voices from the ground
Talks from civil society leaders on topics ranging from “Marginal Ecology and the Movement of Local Communities against Lower Mekong Dams” to
“Redefining Citizenship and Local Livelihoods on the Thai-Burmese Border” drew attention to the ‘multiple ecologies’ at play in the Salween discourse and
provoked passionate discussion about how local, subaltern knowledge-systems should be more meaningfully incorporated at the policy level.
A related panel took on the emerging topic of community-based research, demonstrating its proven effectiveness and calling on academics and policymakers
to more seriously consider it.
“Myanmar’s been difficult to access in recent years, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s been watching,” noted one panelist. To date, villager research has
revealed 52 local rice varieties and 19 traditional fishing methods present in the Karen community. And while grassroots knowledge production helped raise
awareness that led to the NGO KESAN collecting over 30,000 signatures against the Salween dams, fish researchers in a Karen village spearheaded an
effort that appears to have successfully derailed plans for a harmful cement factory as well. Unlike academic research, stated Paul Sein Twa, “grassroots
research empowers communities to organize and resist against harmful development.”
An energetic group of Salween youth sought to push the conference from analytics to action, calling attention to the surprising lack of discussion of conflict
and human rights abuses in the proceedings thus far and underscoring Salween hydropower development’s grave implications for the ongoing peace
process in Myanmar.
They would carry their infectious enthusiasm for meaningful, urgent change into the conference’s concluding session in which they presented, alongside an
NGO group, grassroots movement group, and academics group, their ‘next steps’ for action.
In addition to immediate tangibles such as an urgent mass protest to halt construction of the Kunglong dam in Shan state (Myanmar), these various
delegates seemed to well-agree on the need for a far greater degree of collaboration – between governments, but just as importantly between themselves –
in research design and communication efforts, including to inform project proponents about the harm they risk doing.
Progress promises
“The conference exceed expectations – my own, but also those of the NTS Studies Group,” reflected Dr. Lamb, one of the event’s main organizers, upon
returning from a 2-day trip on which she took 50 conference participants and 20 international journalists to the Salween river and an affected village.

“Personally, I am inspired to continue working on Salween issues, pursue further research on Salween political ecologies, and find ways to work
collaboratively with so many of the people I met over the past four days.”
Moreover, the success of the event already appears to have inspired initiatives for further convergences on a similar scale, according to Dr. Lamb. With
Thailand and Myanmar now covered (a large meeting was held at Mawlaymine University this past September), a gathering in China is now under
discussion.
But perhaps far more telling of the gathering’s concluding sentiment and unwritten legacy was the manner in which the Salween youth opened their final
remarks – which, many would concur, amounted to an excellent set of suggestions.
“Please move to the front to present your ‘next steps,’” requested the session’s moderator.
“No,” said the youth spokesperson, his group holding their ground behind him at the back of the room. “We will present, but we will not move. We want to
shift the center of power.”

8/8/2017 Lower Klity Creek villagers: Living with lead poisoning | Mekong Commons
http://www.mekongcommons.org/lower-klity-creek-villagers-living-lead-poisoning/ 1/5
Fighting for justice
Over the past five decades, a lead-processing mine and factory in Kanchanaburi province has released toxic waste including lead into the rivers and creeks
of the Lower Klity creek, home to about 400 ethnic Karen people. The factory operation began in the mid-1960s and, though it was shut down in 1998, the
lives of local people have never been the same since.
The Lower Klity village, located in Chalae sub-district, Thongpakphum district of Kanchanaburi, is situated about 200 km away from town deep in the forest
where the community has settled down for over a hundred years. Villagers rely heavily on nature and the Klity creek water source for farming and
livelihoods. After the lead factory was established about 12 km from their village, the factory emissions contaminated the village water sources and farming
areas.
Lead is a poisonous metal that poses serious health hazards as it affects the nervous systems and kidneys. In 1972, the full impacts of the lead factory
became evident when the creek water turned into a thick, muddy-red color and the area was filled with a terrible stench. Soon huge numbers of dead fish
floated up to the surface. The villagers noticed that many of them were falling sick with dizziness, stomachache, headache, numb and swollen limbs as well
as babies both with birth defects: blind or with mutated hands and fingers. Miscarriages and infant mortality were increasingly reported in the community.
Over the last twenty years, the villagers have became more aware of the toxic impacts of the lead factory pollution and actively campaigned for its closure. In
2003, the villagers initiated two court cases to defend their rights to life and to live in a clean and safe environment; the courts awarded damages in both
cases in 2010 and 2013. The courts ordered the defendants from the firm Lead Concentrates Co. Ltd. to pay Thailand’s Pollution Control Department (PCD)
to clean up the creek.
Lower Klity Creek villagers: Living with lead poisoning
2017/04/08

In 2013, the Klity villagers staged a campaign in front of the Supreme Court in Bangkok. Later in 2016, the Court ordered the Lead company to clean up the creek and pay compensation to
affected villagers. (Photo by EnLaw.)
In July 2016, the Supreme Court issued an order that the defendants from the firm should also pay compensation to the villagers for both the past and future
illnesses and their previous medical expenses over two years at 20.2 million baht. This sum also covers the loss of livelihood opportunity as the plaintiffs
were unable to have healthy lives due to the lead poisoning. However, high lead toxicity remains in Klity creek up to today as the PCD has delayed the
cleaning up of the creek and the surrounding areas. There is no information about when the contaminated areas would be cleaned up and life can return to
normal for the Klity villagers.
The Jo family
‘The Jo Family’ is the nickname of the three young boys in the Lower Klity Creek village: Jo Ti Pai aged 26, Jo Sor Wor aged 16, and Jo Pu Jai aged 12. Jo
means “mister” in the Karen language. Ti Pai means the flesh of the human body; Sor Wor means a senator because when he was born, a Thai senator was
visiting the community. Jo Ti Pai and Jo Sor Wor are brothers, and Jo Pu Jai, whose name means a nomad, is their cousin.
They all were born with cerebral impairment.
“Sawaddee krub (hello),” say the boys with cheerful smiles whenever they meet other villagers. The Jo family has undergone unimaginable suffering. The
father, who was the primary wage earner for the family, passed away in 2015 with a high-level of lead in his blood, higher than the permissible standard of
41mg/dL. Many members of this village have been found to have the same high levels of lead as the father.
The mother took over the earning of income for the whole family. But she gets sick very often; as an ethnic Karen, she cannot speak Thai language, so her
chances of finding work are quite limited. She takes up work as hired labor in the fields to make a living and support her children.
Jo Ti Pai: A childhood poisoned by lead
Jo Ti Pai was born in 1990, around the time that the lead mine stopped operating and discharging lead effluents at its full capacity. His mother loved fishing
and eating fish; even when she was pregnant Jo Ti Pai, she always went out fishing.
Until the age of 4, Jo Ti Pai looked like any other children in the village. He started to walk at 11 months old, and mumbled his first words as a two-year-old.
But when he turned five, he developed abnormal seizures that sometimes lasted up to 10 minutes. While the seizures became intermittent, other more
serious health-related disorders like speech and walking impairment started to show.

Jo Ti Pai, Jo So Wor and Jo Pu Jai (left to right) enjoy their everyday lives like other children although their health is irreparably damaged by acute toxicity. (Photo by Thanakrit Tongfa.)
His mother sought every method for a cure. Eventually she found some herbal medicine that helped lessen the seizures, but other health disorders
remained. When he was able to walk, he often strayed around the community, broke into other villagers’ houses and destroyed their belongings, ate their
meals, and was often ill-tempered.
He threw plates and bowls, and he bit people when he was not happy. Once he strayed into another village and traveled in another car when nobody noticed.
Once they realized Jo Ti Pai was in the car that was now already far away from the village, they tried to get him out, but he refused. He often disappears from
the village for days, and his family has to run around the community and nearby areas looking for him.
Whenever they could not find Jo Ti Pai, they would assume that he must have gone outside the village. His family and relatives would borrow a motorcycle
from neighbors or relatives, borrow money for gas, and go out looking for him. Often they do not have enough money and end up borrowing from neighbors
and relatives and getting into debt.
No water, no life
Klity stream is the only stream for the domestic use of the villagers from drinking, cooking, and watering their gardens to washing clothes, bathing, cattle-
raising, fishing, and catching shrimps and shellfish in the creeks. The elders in the area have sayings that reflect the importance of this creek: “Where there
is water, there is life. No water, no life;” “Not eating rice for one month, we can survive. Not drinking water for 3 days, we die.”
Klity stream is the lifeblood for the people in the area. But since the Lead Concentrates Co. Ltd. was established in 1967, this stream has been filled with
lead effluents discharged into the stream without any filtering or water treatment.
Now the clear stream has become turbid, smelly and poisoned. Villagers are not able to catch fish anymore and often buy food from mobile-grocery trucks
that visit the area. Moreover, many of the people are now suffering from acute toxic poisoning. Traditional medicines and herbs are not able to help cure their
sickness.

Klity Creek residents rely on the Klity stream to sustain their livelihood; although it looks like any other picturesque stream, it is fatally poisonous. (Photo by Thanakrit Tongfa.)
The villagers have to travel to see a doctor outside the village. In earlier days, when the road was unpaved, the villagers had to go by tractor over 80 km from
the village to the Thongpaphum Hospital taking a whole day to travel. This long exhausting journey took up both their time and money.
The community’s way of living has completely changed. Money has become indispensable for travel expense, health care and food. The villagers have been
struggling to make a living. From growing rice for subsistence, they have switched to growing cash crops for income such as corn and cassava. Klity villagers
have also been sub-contracted to supply animal food to big companies.
Every year, tons of corn from Chalae sub-district are processed into animal food for livestock such as pig, chicken and fish; villagers also lease their lands to
Hmong ethnic people to grow cabbage that is distributed to wholesale markets in the center of Thailand.
The Chalae sub-district from being an area for processing lead has now become an area for growing vegetables, rice and corn; the produce from this area
travels to markets to feed both humans – in supermarkets, households and restaurants – and animals. The risk of lead exposure is thus being spread among
consumers in the city, not just among the people and environment in the Lower Klity village.
Denial of rights
The Jo family is but one horrifying example of the unimaginable suffering endured by the people of Klity creek. Although the state provides an allowance of
500 Baht per month for those with any disabilities, and a waiver of tuition fee at the extra-curriculum school for children who require special care, these
remedies are barely sufficient.

Kilty Creek children at school, they are the future of their community and the Thai society but have to live in the environment that was very toxic contaminated at their own health and life expense.
(Photo by Thanakrit Tongfa.)
Even today, blood tests of the Klity Creek residents show high lead levels. The elders no longer worry about themselves but more about their children. All
children have rights to live in a healthy, clean and safe environment. The children are the future of their community but are growing up in a poisoned
environment. Their question is: how many more years need their children have to endure this toxicity, struggling to survive with illness and deformities,
without proper access to education and healthcare and without any sign of clean-up of their environment?

8/8/2017 Myanmar in perfect storm of ‘conflict-climate nexus’
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/21151-myanmar-in-perfect-storm-of-conflict-climate-nexus.html 1/2
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Myanmar in perfect storm of
‘conflict-climate nexus’
By Nick Baker | Friday, 01 July 2016
The ongoing effects of climate change may lead to more severe
conflicts around the world, with Myanmar especially vulnerable,
according to a recent United Nations report.
Villagers in Kalay township, Sagaing Region, wade through floodwaters in August 2015.
Photo: Aung Myin Ye Zaw / The Myanmar Times
Myanmar has been identified as one of 20 countries in a “conflict-climate
nexus”, the threatening combination of severe environmental vulnerability
along with pre-existing social fragility and weak institutions.
The 2016 Global Climate Risk report had previously found Myanmar was one
of the countries most affected by extreme weather events between 1995 and
2014, while the 2016 Global Peace Index ranked Myanmar 115 out of the 163
countries analysed.
“Myanmar’s susceptibility to climate hazards in combination with the
prevalence of several forms of social and political conflict result in heightened
vulnerability with regards to the climate-conflict nexus,” the report,
“Understanding the Climate-Conflict Nexus from a Humanitarian Perspective”,
said.
It makes the case that social unrest, intergroup grievances and gender-based
violence can increase if a country or government is unable to provide the
resources needed to cope with a changing environment or destruction from
extreme weather conditions.
The report cited 2008’s Cyclone Nargis as an example of the kind of situation
that can emerge given the combination of vulnerabilities.
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8/8/2017 Myanmar in perfect storm of ‘conflict-climate nexus’
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/21151-myanmar-in-perfect-storm-of-conflict-climate-nexus.html 2/2
that can emerge given the combination of vulnerabilities.
In that case, it said, the weather event and land scarcity led to a spike in food
prices and an increase in the number of displaced people, which “intensified
ethnic conflict”.
In addition, the government allegedly obstructed international aid efforts and
hindered the humanitarian community’s ability to deliver impartial aid,
exacerbating grievances among different ethnic and religious groups.
“Cyclone Nargis was an example of how climate change can become a threat
multiplier that can add more stress to an already fragile context where poverty,
competition for resources and interstate violence paint a worrisome picture,”
the report said.
Spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar Pierre Péron agreed that Cyclone Nargis
could be a sign of things to come.
“The devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis brought into focus the vulnerability
of communities to natural disasters and in the future we may witness more
frequent and more intense climate events in Myanmar due to climate change,”
he said.
Mr Péron indicated that both the United Nations and the Union government
were already working on strengthening disaster preparedness measures,
contingency plans and disaster risk reduction.
“The potential link between climate change and conflict needs to be better
understood [here],” he said.
This link appears to be a growing topic globally.
Former US defence secretary Chuck Hagel had referred to global warming as a
“threat multiplier” in regards to world’s security environment.
“Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea
levels and more extreme weather events will intensify … conflict,” he said in a
2014 statement.
“They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes
over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions
across the globe.”
And a statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross earlier
this year said that “no discussion of climate change is complete without
consideration for how the phenomenon affects people caught up in armed
conflicts”.
At an event to mark the signing of the Paris Agreement at United Nations
headquarters in April, Minister for Natural Resources and Environmental
Conservation U Ohn Win said that Myanmar will face “acute loss of life and
properties” if climate change continues unabated.
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8/8/2017 Myanmar: Hydropower and the cost of life - News from Al Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/05/myanmar-hydropower-cost-life-160505112811031.html 1/15
Nikkei Asian
Review
Save 44% On Your
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by Connor Macdonald
FEATURES ASIA 30 JUNE 2016
Myanmar:
Hydropower and the
cost of life
Suicideratesandpovertyareon
theriseamongricefarmers
displacedbyMyanmar's
PaunglaungDam.
Tens of thousands have been displaced by Myanmar's ambitious
hydropower projects [Connor Macdonald/Al Jazeera]
News Middle East Documentaries Shows Investigations
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Live
32C° | 27C° Bangkok, Thailand
Live

Paunglaungvillage,Myanmar-TheUpperPaunglaung
Damsitsnestledinthehillsthatmarktheborderof
southernShanState,awindingfour-hourdrivesoutheast
ofNaypyidaw.Smallvillagesoncedottedvalleysthatare
nowsubmergedbeneaththevastinlandsea.Atwo-hour
boatrideisthequickestroutetothegovernment-built
relocationsites.
InPaunglaungvillage,arelocationsitenearthemiddleof
thereservoir,elderlyDawTinThantandherhusbandsit
ontheflooroftheirstiltedwoodenhouse.Theywere
forcedfromtheiroldvillage,HteinBin,in2013,whenthe
governmenttoldthemtheirlandwassittingontheflood
plain.
"Theysaid,'Ifyoudon'tmovewewilldestroyyourhouse
withCaterpillar[bulldozers],'"recalledDawTinThant.
Theirlandisnowunder40yards[36metres]ofwater,
shesaid.
Theirson,MoungNgyay,whoworkedasaricefarmerin
HteinBin,didn'ttaketheevictionwell.Heinsistedon
stayinginthevacantfamilyhome,spendinghoursby
himself,staringoutattherisingwaterthatsteadily
claimedhischerishedricepaddy.
Monthslater,he
committedsuicideby
drinkingalethalcocktail
ofalcoholandpesticide.
Hewas35.
Morethan8,000people
from23villageswere
forciblydisplaced(PDF)
bytheTheinSein
governmentduringtheconstructionoftheUpper
PaunglaungDam,whichbeganin2006.Relocationhas
ledtopoverty,hungerandsuicidesamongthethousands
wholiveinthegovernment-builtrelocationsites.
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WATCH: People &
Power - Blood and
Gold: Inside Burma's
Hidden War
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OnApril1,theNationalLeagueforDemocracy(NLD)
party, ledbyAungSanSuuKyi,wasswornintooffice
afterwinningacrushingmandateinMyanmar'shistoric
electionsinNovember2015,bringinginthecountry'sfirst
democraticallyelectedciviliangovernmentinmorethan
50years.
Thechangeofgovernmentisexpectedtospurforeign
investmentintothecountry,contributingtoitsrapid
development.Butamongthemyriadissuesfacingthe
country,including decades-longcivilwars,thenew
governmenthasinherited43plannedhydropower
projectsfromitspredecessors.
The new Myanmar government has inherited 43 planned hydropower
projects from its predecessors [Connor Macdonald/Al Jazeera]
Depression and suicides
DawTinThant,themotheroftheyoungfarmerwho
committedsuicide,saidsheblamesthegovernmentfor
hisdeath,"butwedon'tdaresayanythingagainstthem
becausetheyarethegovernment-wecan't".
Depressionintherelocationsitesisrife.Thelossofland
andlackofaccesstoworkopportunitieshavehada
devastatingeffectontheyoungpeopleinthePaunglaung
RiverValley.Humanrightsorganisationshavereported
thatsince2013,therehavebeenfoursuicidesandsix
moreattemptedsuicidesbyyoungpeoplefromHteinBin,
someasyoungas18(PDF).
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NygiLaThein,26,thegranddaughterofDawTinThant,
attemptedsuicidebydrinkingthesamepesticidesasher
uncleinMay2015,butshesurvived.Aftertheattempt,
theyoungmotherspentaweekinhospitalandwasoutof
workforamonthwhilesherecovered.
Sheandherhusbandwerealsoricefarmersbeforethe
damwentup,butnowtheymustrelyontheirplantation
foranincome.Theformergovernmentgavethem,like
manyofthericefarmersofthePaunglaungrivervalley,a
plotoflandonasteep,rockyhilltopunsuitableforrice
farming,ascompensation.
"Myhusbandworksveryhardeverydaybutwestillcan't
makeendsmeet.Alltheyoungpeoplefeeldepressed
becauseallofouroldlandisgone.Ijustwantmyland
back,"shesaidwithavacantgaze.
Nygi La Thein, 26, the granddaughter of Daw Tin Thant, attempted
suicide by drinking the same pesticides as her uncle in May 2015, but she
survived [Connor Macdonald/Al Jazeera]
Poverty and hunger
Toooldtowork,andwiththeirsongone,NyiLaThein's
elderlygrandparentsrelyonthree-year-oldricerations
stockpiledfromHteinBin.DawTinThantsaidtheynow
onlyeattwiceadaytoensurethattheirrationswilllast.
"Ifoursonwereherewecouldworkonourplotofland,
butwecan'tnow.Sincewecan'twork,we'rebetteroff
dead,"shesaid.
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Hungerandpovertyarecommonplaceamongtheformer
residentsofHteinBin,accordingtoareportpublishedby
thehumanrightswatchdogPhysiciansforHumanRights
(PHR)inpartnershipwiththeMyanmar-basedcivil
societyorganisationsLandinOurHands(LIOH)and
KarenNewGenerationYouth(KNGY).
Thereport,basedoninterviewswith80households
displacedbytheproject,foundthat84percentnowlive
belowthepovertylinecomparedwith15percentbefore
relocation.PHRfoundthatafterrelocation,aspoverty
increasedandwithlimitedaccesstofarmland,
householdsdidn'thaveenoughfoodfor8.8monthsofthe
year.
"Forceddisplacementconstitutesahumanrights
violationwheninternationalstandardsonevictionarenot
followed.Moreover,thisinitialrightsabuseoftenleadsto
subsequentviolationssuchastherighttofood,adequate
housing,healthandeducation,"readsthereport.
Shared responsibility
NorepresentativefromtheformerMinistryofElectric
PowerorDepartmentofHydropowerImplementation
respondedtoAlJazeera'srequestsforaninterview
regardingtheforcedresettlementofresidentsinthe
Paunglaungrivervalley.
The140megawattsofelectricitygeneratedbythethe
UpperPaunglaunghydropowerprojectisdestinedfor
Napyidaw.Famousforitsmonolithicparliamentary
buildings,grandhotelsanddesertedeight-lanehighways,
itwasunveiledasthenation'snewcapitalonemorningin
2005,afterithadbeenconstructedinsecretandatgreat
costbytheformermilitaryregime.
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'If our son was here we could work on our plot of land, but we can't now.
Since we can't work, we're better off dead,' said the elderly displaced
couple [Connor Macdonald/Al Jazeera]
Swiss,British,andChinesecompaniesfinancedandbuilt
thedam.Swiss-basedAF-Consult,responsibleforthe
"consultingservicesofthedesignandconstructionofthe
dam",saidtheyhadnoinvolvementintheresettlementof
villagers.
"Accordingtoourinformationthey[theDepartmentof
HydropowerImplementation]havedevelopedand
implementedaprogrammebasedonnewfarmland,new
infrastructureandsomecompensation,butthedetailsare
notknowntous,"SabineBargetz,executiveassistantat
AF-ConsultSwitzerland,toldAlJazeerainanemail.
Similarly,arepresentativefromtheUK-based
engineeringfirmMalcolmDunstanandAssociates,also
involvedintheproject,said:"Wehadnothingtodowith
theresettlementofvillagersaspartoftheproject,"when
contactedbyAlJazeera.
RepeatedattemptsfromAlJazeeratocontactYunnan
MachineryandEquipmentImportandExportCompany
Ltd,theChinesecompanyinvolvedinthedamproject,for
commentthroughemailandphonewereunanswered.
Humanrightsgroupshavedenouncedthefirmforits
involvementinseveralotherhydropowerprojects.
MarkFarmaner,directorofnot-for-profithumanrights
groupBurmaCampaignUK(Myanmarwasformally
calledBurma),thinksthatforeigncompaniesinvolvedin
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