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WASHINGTON, 12. March 2015: The Government of Myanmar (Burma) has allocated at least 2,4 million hectares (5.2 mio. acres) and has identified another five million hectares (11 mio. acres) of some of Southeast Asia’s last remaining biodiversity rich high value forests as suitable for clear-cutting to make way for large-scale, private agribusiness projects that often never materialize.
This is revealed in a new analysis by Forest Trends, a US-based environmental NGO, according to a press release Thursday.
Many of these forest areas overlap with historical land claims made by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups who could permanently lose their land, further enflaming decades-old armed conflicts with the national government.
As local communities lose land, wildlife habitat is destroyed and carbon emissions (CO2 udledningen) increase, while elite businessmen with strong connections to military-state officials profit.
Strider mod tidligere hensigter
This 170 percent increase in the amount of land slated for agribusiness, much of it under forest cover, since Myanmar’s new government took office, and the additional millions of acres identified as available for agricultural conversion, contradicts national statements purporting to protect Myanmar’s remaining forests and land rights.
It is an unprecedented rate of land and forest clearance in the country, creating a volatile situation of forest conservation, land confiscation and business interests, according to the report from Forest Trends
And the timber clear-cut from these lands is some of the world’s most valuable wood marked for international trade, despite increasing scrutiny on whether imported wood products have been legally or ethically sourced.
The analysis, “Commercial Agricultural Expansion in Myanmar: Links to Deforestation, Conversion Timber, and Land Conflicts”, reveals the growing impacts of Myanmar’s plans to use Southeast Asia’s last remaining highvalue conservation forests for commercial agriculture.
Udbredt afskovning
“As Myanmar opens to global markets and concessions for global food production are on the rise, agribusiness has become the primary driver of deforestation in Myanmar”, said Michael Jenkins, President and CEO of Forest Trends, the Washington-based non-profit organization behind the report.
“Clearly, forests, agriculture, and land governance must be at the center of Myanmar’s forthcoming National Land Use Policy to properly address resource management and land conflicts,” noted Jenkins.
Many of these forest lands given to large agribusiness companies are situated in existing national forest reserves.
These figures are therefore likely an underestimate as they do not include those areas managed by authorities other than the national government (i.e., provincial, military, and ethnic armed groups).
“Seventy-five percent of these cleared lands – nearly four million acres – are still not planted, and concessions do not follow any kind of regulation to protect the environment or local communities from negative impact,” said report author Kevin Woods.
Case studies illustrate political and ecological impacts of agribusiness expansion into old growth forest areas also embroiled in armed conflict.
Konfliktfyldte regioner
The report specifically investigated agriculture-driven deforestation in two regions: Kachin State along the China border, where forests are making away for rubber and biofuel plantations, and the Tanintharyi Region near the Thailand border, where oil palm and rubber plantations have led to the clearcutting of the region’s most biodiverse forests.
These two regions are also where some of the most intense, protracted armed conflicts between ethnic minority groups and the Myanmar government have occurred.
They also represent two regions of the country where the most commercial agribusiness concessions have been allocated, together amounting to nearly 1,5 million hectares (3.3 mio. acres), or 60 per cenrt of Myanmar’s total concession area.
At the same time, however, agricultural crops are planted in only 15 per cent of the area as of 2013 – the lowest rate in the nation.
The number and intensity of local land and livelihood conflicts have increased in parallel with the increase in the government allocations of commercial agricultural concessions.
No land use or access rights are officially granted to people in designated forest reserves or areas cornered off as private agricultural concessions, despite long histories of cultivation and occupation by local communities.
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Forest Trends is a Washington D.C.-based international non-profit organization that was created in 1999 by leaders from conservation organizations, forest products firms, research groups, multilateral development banks, private investment funds and philanthropic foundations.
