Environmental conservation problems and possible solutions in Myanmar.

• Author: Sovacool, Benjamin
• Position: Report

Myanmar, notwithstanding an incredibly rich cache of biodiversity, is the least developed country in Southeast Asia and also the "worst performer" in most indicators of economic and social progress. (1) In 2010, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was about US$700, compared to $815 in Cambodia, almost $1,000 in Laos, $2,600 in Timor-Leste, and more than $4,900 in Thailand. (2) Myanmar also faces a unique and daunting set of biodiversity conservation challenges. Habitats and wildlife face the growing threat of destruction and extinction, with thirty-four rare species within the country now endangered and growing amounts of air and water pollution jeopardizing national parks and old-growth rainforests. (3) One assessment analysed the status of twenty of Myanmar's Protected Areas and, disturbingly, concluded that illegal activity such as logging, grazing, fuel-wood extraction and hunting occurred in 85 per cent of them and that 40 per cent had "significant gaps in infrastructure for management" and "insufficient on-site staff". (4) A separate investigation of Myanmar's forest protection programmes found that they were "faltering" in the face of population growth, agricultural expansion, industrialization, and rising levels of poverty, which collectively created pressure to unsustainably harvest forest products. (5) Another assessment concurred, and stated that:

Current government budget allocations for protected areas may be less than that recommended for effective management. Legislation to protect both wildlife and their habitats is weak and difficult to enforce, in part because of low staffing and training deficiencies, so that only one-third of protected areas are effectively managed. Land use planning and economic ventures often have consequences in human communities that conflict with the goals of protected areas. (6) A host of other studies have noted a "significant" decline in wildlife populations and loss of natural habitats. (7)

This article analyses how policy-makers within the country and throughout the region can best confront environmental degradation in Myanmar. Based on an extensive review of the academic literature published mostly in the past ten years, it addresses two questions: first, what are Myanmar's most pressing environmental conservation concerns?; and second, what can domestic and regional policy-makers do to rapidly address and overcome these concerns?

Country Background

Myanmar is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia. It is home to roughly 60 million people spread cross seven divisions and seven states, with the ruling elite of Burman ethnicity with seven other major ethnic nationalities: Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mort and Shan. (8) In indicators as diverse as life expectancy and infant mortality to the number of paved roads and power plants per capita, it ranks behind every other country in Asia. In the last count in the early 2000s, it had only 0.34 telephones per 100 inhabitants. (9) It is primarily an agrarian and rural country, with the agricultural sector employing 64 per cent of the labour force and responsible for 48 per cent of GDP; the industrial sector accounts for only 10 per cent of labour and 17 per cent of GDP. (10)

Although recent events such the introduction of political and economic reforms, the destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and the crackdown on "Saffron" protesters in 2007 have tended to dominate media coverage and academic discussions of Myanmar, (11) its natural resources and network of protected areas are a central component of its agrarian economy and, as such, need to be understood prior to any assessment of challenges and solutions. As the pages to come show, their forests and conservation areas sit front and centre in national campaigns to alleviate rural poverty. Moreover, Myanmar is a biodiversity hotspot and has some of the rarest and most interesting flora and fauna found within all of Asia.

Myanmar remains a biomass-centred energy system, with wood alone meeting 62 per cent of all primary energy consumption in 2008--more than five times the second most significant source, crude oil and petroleum products (see Table 1). This dependence on biomass is largely due to the fact that 65 per cent of the population lives in rural areas. Households receive about three-quarters of national energy supply (76 per cent) followed by transport (10 per cent), industry (8.3 per cent) and agriculture (2 per cent). (12)

At first blush, this dependence on wood would not be an issue, for Myanmar supports sustainable forestry management and, on paper, has an impressive list of environmental laws and regulations summarized in Table 2. (13) These laws recognize that the country possesses an abundance of biodiversity and is "one of the most biologically diverse regions in Asia". (14) The country sits at the intersection of three biogeographic regions and has an "extraordinary array of ecosystems" including alpine meadows, Himalayan mountains, rainforests, dry forests, large river deltas and estuaries, coral reefs and island archipelagoes with high rates of endemism (organisms found only within a single habitat) and richness. (15) These ecosystems maintain some of the rarest intact species communities including many globally threatened species of both plants and animals, four Endemic Bird Areas ("critical regions for the conservation of the world's birds and other biodiversity") and Four Centers of Plant Diversity ("areas safeguarding the greatest number of plant species") in the world. (16)

Large tracts of Myanmar's natural habitats still exist due to its slower pace of economic development. Roughly 40 per cent of the remaining forests in all of Southeast Asia reside within its borders--along with 80 per cent of the world's teak reserves (17)--and these habitats are home to rare "charismatic mega-fauna" such as tigers and elephants. According to the most recent data from the Food and Agricultural Organization, 47 per cent of Myanmar's total land area remains forested. (18) As one recent analysis from 2011 put it, "High levels of biodiversity, vast expanses of contiguous forests and relative low human population density provide a unique and perhaps short-lived opportunity to conserve species of global and regional significance in [Myanmar]." (19) By far the most far-reaching enshrinement of government efforts to conserve the environment is Myanmar's vast network of protected areas and parks. To date, a total of thirty-three national parks and wildlife sanctuaries have been created between 1918 and 2007; six additional protected areas have been proposed since 1999. (20)

However, in practice, as discussed below, much of this biodiversity is being degraded and destroyed. Critics have attacked Myanmar's laws as being "broad" with little "substantive" or "specific" plan of protection, poor methods of implementation and lax enforcement. (21) The central force behind them seems to have more to do with harvesting environmental resources to drive economic growth than intrinsic protection for the sake of the environment.

Moreover, rapid changes in land use and deforestation throughout the country have resulted in astronomically high rates of greenhouse gas emissions. Myanmar ranks fourth in the world for its emissions from land use change and deforestation, coming only after Indonesia, Brazil and Malaysia. In 2000, its emissions within the land use and agricultural sector amounted to 116 million metric tons of C[O.sub.2], also accounting for 83.7 per cent of its national emissions. (22) Despite its relatively undeveloped economy, as of 2000, Table 3 shows that Myanmar was sixteenth in the world for overall carbon equivalent emissions.

Environmental Challenges

Ominous signs of Myanmar's declining energy and environmental security have been confirmed by a recent academic study that assessed the performance of eighteen countries--including all of those within Southeast Asia--according to twenty distinct indicators spread broadly across the areas of energy supply, energy affordability, efficiency and innovation, environmental stewardship and governance. (23) This study assessed national progress in five-year increments from 1990 to 2010 in two ways: overall "absolute" performance compared to all countries within the sample, and "improving" performance which looked at who improved, or regressed, most substantially over time. The study concluded that Myanmar performed at the bottom of both lists. As Figure 1 shows, the top three performers for the "absolute" scoring technique were Japan (284), Brunei (271) and the United States (168), whereas the worst three performers were Vietnam (155), India (132) and Myanmar (131). As Figure 2 shows, the country that saw its energy and environmental security erode the most over time was Myanmar (-63 per cent); Malaysia (31 per cent), Australia (28 per cent), and Brunei (28 per cent) were the three countries which improved the most.

What explains these troubling trends? As Table 4 summarizes, barriers to conserving environmental resources fall into four interconnected categories: poverty and subsistence needs; conflicting priorities; lack of resources; and policy fragmentation. This section discusses each in turn.

Poverty and Subsistence Needs

Myanmar is an agrarian and predominately poor country. High rates of rural poverty place severe stress on the country's forests and mangroves for fuelwood collection and charcoal production-homes cannot afford modern energy services, so they cut down trees or scavenge for free wood. As an independent United Nations assessment concluded:

The demand for fuelwood and charcoal for cooking is rising with the growth in population, resulting in indiscriminate cutting of trees for fuelwood in forest areas adjacent to villages and towns. In addition, illegal logging of valuable trees in some areas is worsening deforestation and environmental degradation ... It is highly...