by Zao Noam

Burma is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia, with a land  area of 675,000 km2. A wide variation in altitude, latitude and climate creates high diversity of habitats and species: nine of the   WWF Global 200 Ecoregions lie wholly or partly in  Burma, [i]and the  World Resources Institute (WRI) has described the Indo-Burmese region   as one of the eight hottest hotspots of  biodiversity in the world.  

The country is blessed (or some would say cursed) with a wealth of   natural resources. Its extensive forests, perhaps the largest intact  natural forest ecosystem in the region, contain commercially-valuable   and increasingly rare timber such as Burmese teak  (Tectona grandis),   Pyinkadoor ironwood (Xylia dolabriformis), Padaukor rosewood   (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) and Kanyin(Dipterocarpus spp.). Natural  resources are concentrated along the frontiers with  Thailand, China,   Bangladesh and India, regions mainly inhabited by Burma’s numerous   minority ethnic groups.

The combination of valuable natural resources   and high ethnic diversity has contributed to  political unrest in Burma,   and is shaping into an ethno-ecological crisis.

Despite (or because of) Burma?s great biological, cultural and ethnic   diversity, Burma remains embattled by the world’s’  longest running civil   war. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the present name   for the Burmese military junta, focuses on unitary state-building   through military conquest. Its goal is to end  political and ethnic   resistance, control all territory within Burma, bring all the people of   Burma and specifically the ethnic minorities  into the “national   fold”, and exploit the natural resource wealth of  the frontier regions.

The SPDC now controls much of the country, but some  ethnic   political/military groups still have effective control over some   territories. SPDC corruption and human rights  violations, especially in   ethnic areas, have been extensively reported upon by international and   Burmese media, exiled opposition groups and international   organizations. According to the latest UN   Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in   Burma,”Grave human rights violations are committed by persons within   the established structures of the State Peace and  Development Council   and are not only perpetrated with impunity but authorized by law.”

Furthermore, and with serious implications for conservation   projects in Burma, there exists “…widespread  practice of land   confiscation throughout the country, which is seemingly aimed at   anchoring military control, especially in ethnic areas. It has led to   numerous forced evictions, relocations and  resettlements, forced   migration and internal displacement.”

The international community is divided as to whether the best strategy   for change is to isolate Burma or to engage, and if  so, precisely how.   Although some major international conservation organizations, such as   the IUCN, have purposefully chosen not to engage with the Burmese  regime, others have readily moved in. The Wildlife Conservation Society   (WCS) based in New York City led the way into Burma in 1993, becoming   the first INGO of any kind to initiate a program inside Burma. WCS’s   primary aims are to work closely with the Burmese  regime (specifically  the Ministry of Forestry), to increase the area covered under Burma’s   protected area (PA) system and engage in wildlife protection. [iv]WCS,   and other international NGOs (INGOs) following suit,  see establishing   projects in Burma through the SPDC as apolitical and not constituting   support for the Burmese junta. Alan Rabinowitz, executive director of   the WCS Science and Exploration Program and the  foremost international   conservationist working in Burma, summarizes the common position of   international conservation organizations working in Burma: “WCS does  not sanction forced relocation or killings but we  have no control over   the government. We are in Burma because it is one of the highest   biodiversity countries.” [v]However,Rabinowitz has also highlighted   certain advantages of working on conservation with  an authoritarian   regime. “It’s much harder to get conservation done in democracies than  in communist countries or dictatorships; when a dictatorship decides to   establish a reserve, that’s that.”

Burmese  pro-democracy leader   and Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose house arrest   was just renewed for yet another year, has commented on political   barriers to an inclusive and participatory  conservation approach: “I   doubt under the present circumstances you can do anything very   effectively in the way of conservation. Under the kind of military   regime that we have here you would not be allowed  free access to all   the people with whom you wish to work.” However, for the type of   conservationRabinowitz advocates, this is not seen as an   obstacle:”Biodiversity conservation is doomed to  failure when it is   based on bottom-up processes that depend on voluntary compliance.I   would advocate a top-down approach to nature conservation, contrary to   much contemporary political and conservation  rhetoric because in most   countries it is the government, not the people around the protected   areas, that ultimately decides the fate of forests and wildlife.”

In a National Public Radio (NPR) interview, Alan Rabinowitz commented   that “the [Burmese] government has been very receptive, more than any other country I have worked with, in terms of conservation.”  Why   should the normally reclusive SPDC be so receptive to engagement with   international conservation organizations?

Forming associations with conservation INGOs enjoying a worldwide reputation can be a source of credibility for a regime with a poor   international image. Against a background of  countless reports by   international organizations, NGOs and foreign governments documenting   and criticizing the human rights situation in Burma (see endnote 3),   Rabinowitz has argued that human rights violations  have been  > exaggerated: “I’m not arrogant enough to say I have seen everything   there is to see. But having worked in the country for ten years,   traveling to the most remote areas, I think its  [human rights abuses]   have been blown out of proportion.”

International conservation organizations can leverage “green” discourse for money, allowing governments to access  substantial funding   for projects with an ostensible conservation purpose. Concepts such as  “biodiversity”, “conservation” and “sustainable
development” can be   translated and concretized into new regulatory  regimes and institutions   augmenting state power. Perhaps most importantly, there are potential   economic, military and security advantages to large-scale conservation   projects in Burma. [xi]Raymond Bryant asserts, “Conservation projects   provide an effective means to promote environmental conservation in a   politically and economically important part of the country at the same   time as it provides a justification for tightened  political control   over this area. In this manner, coercive conservation in Burma is   designed simultaneously to meet environmental and political objectives   to obtain sustainable development.”

“Military  state-building   activities can be transformed into seemingly apolitical state   conservation” .Jeremy Woodrum of U.S. Campaign for Burma has stated,   “They’ll do anything they can, including create  large forest reserves,   to seize control of land that has historically belonged to a particular   ethnic group” Re-zoning for conservation provides an apparently   legitimate reason for the state to relocate  populations, to control and   patrol previously inaccessible areas of contested territory, and to   claim/state military ownership of natural resources.
In this way,   abuses against ethnic people may continue under the  guise of   conservation enforcement.   The creation of the Myinmoletkat Biosphere Reserve in Karen State in   the 1990s provides one example of this phenomenon.  Reserve creation was   facilitated by WCS and the Smithsonian Institute, and pushed through by  a Thai/Burmese oil consortium as appeasement to the international   community for the disastrous Yadana/Yetagon gas  pipelines that were   being developed, and which would run through the proposed reserve to   Thailand.  The creation of the reserve reportedly led to violent   oppression of Karen communities living in the area. 

Within a few   months of signing the MoU to establish the reserve, the Burmese army   launched one of its biggest and most successful military offensives to   secure territory away from the Karen National Union  (KNU) for inclusion   in the proposed reserve. In addition, the new reserve overlapped and  disrupted a Community Conserved Area already established by the Karen,   known as Kaserdooh.

Development of the PA system is a key strategy of SPDC’s conservation   policy. Burma?s 1994 forest policy mandated an increase in the   country?s PA system to at least 5% of the country?s  total land area,   with a long-term goal of 10%. [xvii] In the early 1990s, the regime   called for the area set aside as state reserved forest to increase from   14% to 30% of the total national forested area.   Despite these   policy commitments, in 1996 PAs constituted less than 1% of the total   national land area. However, between 1996 and 1999, 12 new PAs were   added due to increased collaboration with conservation INGOs, and by   2000, Burma had designated over 15,000 km2 of PAs covering 2.3% of the   total area of the country.  Largely due to the work of WCS in   Kachin State, presently Burma has designated over  40,000 km2 of PAs in   38 established national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, covering about   6% of the total area of the country, with several other PAs currently   in negotiation.

PAs and conservation corridors are being designated/proposed  predominantly in indigenous areas and, in some cases, in areas of   current political conflict (see Tables 1 and  2). Natural resources   remain most plentiful in mountainous ethnic regions along Burma’s many   borders; ongoing conflict and peripheral location caused these areas to  be beyond easy reach for large-scale resource  extraction by SPDC or   transnational corporations, while to some extent indigenous land   management practices has protected the environment as well.

WCS spearheaded the establishment of Hkakabo RaziNational Park in the   far north of Kachin State in 1998, currently the country’s largest   National Park (although not the largest protected  area), with an area   of over 3,800 km2. Within the PA resides a permanent human population   engaging in hunting, fuel wood collection, non-timber forest product   (NTFP) collection and shifting cultivation. [xx] The  Burmese military   took control of the area in 1994, after a ceasefire agreement with the   Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the prominent Kachin political   group with semi-autonomy in the region. Neither WCS  nor the state   informed or consulted with the KIO when the PA was established.  

Since then, the number of Burmese military battalions stationed   in the surrounding area has risen to over 10, as it  is perceived as an   important national security zone. [xxii]   WCS published a review of Burma?s PA system in 2002. It confirmed a   military-conservation overlap in Burmass PAs: out of 20 PAs reviewed in   the paper, 6 are recorded as having ?military camps and/or insurgents   indicating availability of firearms.? [xxiii] Many other PAs, according   to the same article, contain plantations, mining or  logging concessions   operated by military-backed companies. One of the PAs mentioned is Shwe   U Dawng in Shan State, which according to a Shan environmentalist is   located near the Bat Tu military compound that  manufactures bombs for   the Burmese Army. [xxiv] The article didn’t mention, however, Loimwe PA   also in Shan State, which is located in a hostile area prone to   fighting, and which houses a military communication  tower on the mountain peak, as has been the case since British colonial times. [xxv]

I am not suggesting that international conservation organizations share   the vision of the SPDC and its desire to support the  military   state. However, the state may appropriate environmentalism to establish   resource sovereignty out of line with the conservation goals desired by   practitioners and their donors. Only  authoritarian trends in   conservation that can benefit the regime are promoted in SPDC-endorsed   conservation projects, such as in large-scale land re-zoning for   PAs. There is no room for participatory decision-making, access to   environmental information, media freedom to report on environmental   issues, or support for “pro-people” conservation.

It is impossible to undertake a large-scale conservation project in   Burma without engaging with the military regime. Birdlife    International, in conjunction with CARE-Myanmar, Conservation   International, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, and UNDP-Burma,   recently published a report on the status and opportunities for formal   conservation in Burma entitled “Myanmar: Investment Opportunities in Biodiversity Conservation”. The report notes that “regional military   commanders have considerable influence over the way  [environmental]   policies are implemented within their commands.”

In addition,   in areas of past/present conflict (”natural habitats with security   concerns”), the Ministry of Forestry shares  management responsibility  with the Ministry of Defense.[xxviii] In ceasefire areas (”parts of   the country that have come under government influence following “peace   for development” agreements”), activities must be  coordinated with the   Ministry for Progress of Border Areas, National Races, and Development   Affairs. [xxix] The function of this ministry, known by the Burmese   acronym Na Ta La,is summarized as follows: “Na Ta  La projects are  ordained by regime elite, imposed by the army, and implemented not to   improve the lives of all individuals but to bolster the power of a few.

The border development program serves primarily to  secure the regime’s   hold on power and to enrich its supporters. Na Ta La projects are only   participatory inasmuch as they are financed predominately through   forced labor and the taxation of the rural populace.  The net effect of   the regime’s border development policies on border residents is   negative. [xxx] Or as one local Kachin informant put it: “Na Ta   La means they just chop down trees.”[xxxi]

To operate in Burma, INGOs must negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding   (MoU) with any number of relevant ministries, along with the Ministry  of National Planning and Economic  Development. Antony Lynam, Associate   Conservation Scientist of WCS’s Asia Program and working on tiger   conservation in Burma,confirmed via e-mail that official permission to   operate in protected areas must be issued through the Ministry of   Defense and the Prime Minister (an army general). Despite these   conservation-military alliances, Lynam went on to write that, if   important wildlife in a country exists, then it is important for WCS to   be working with the agencies responsible for managing wildlife,   regardless of the politics.But the politics of Burma place great   restrictions on how INGOs are allowed to operate within the   country. Based on conversations with local, national and international   NGOs operating in Burma, the unwritten rule is that  organizations must   refrain from commenting on the political situation in Burma, from   having dialogue (i.e., public participation) with ethnic political   groups, from implementing projects in  non-SPDC-controlled areas, and   from addressing any environmental threats linked to regime-backed   natural resource extraction concessions.

SPDC interference in NGO activities intensified  after the removal of   Prime Minister and Chief of Intelligence General Khin Nyunt in October   2004.  A Burmese journalist wrote that ?one of the top generals has   issued a directive forcing all international  humanitarian organizations   to deal directly with Burmese government ministries, with all major   decisions going through the Ministry of Defense.? [xxxii] Early in 2006   the Ministry of National Planning and Economic  Development circulated   guidelines for the code of conduct for NGOs operating in Burma;   however, the Burmese language version released was significantly   different from the official English language version  prepared to target  expatriate staff, in that the former was much more severe with listed   restrictions than the latter.  According to the Burmese language   version, when recruiting national staff organizations should inform   the respective ministry about the required qualifications for staff,? and then the respective ministry will provide the list of qualified   staff, and the organization can choose from the  list.

Other   restrictions include project staff having to be accompanied by a   “liaison officer” for “security” when embarking to the field. Also,   coordination committees including members from every  ministry   (including the Na Ta La and Ministry of Defense if situated in ethnic   border areas), the police and government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) must   be formed from the national all the way down to the  township level.    The various committees are responsible for “monitoring the project   team”, “networkingbetween/among NGOs/INGOs”, permitting INGO staff   members to travel to the project site, and  coordinatingthe   organizations? project activities. [xxxiv]  These operating   restrictions not only severely impede NGO?s work, but more notably   enable the military regime to influence the type of  projects chosen and   how they are carried out. Furthermore, the potential sensitivity of NGO   projects create a climate of fear, causing NGO personnel (especially   local staff) to work carefully and quietly for fear  of repercussions,   such as interrogation by police and/or the organization’s MoU being   revoked.

The SPDC may seek to exploit NGO activities for its own   purposes. Military personnel accompany researchers on environmental   surveys in politically-sensitive ethnic areas. For example, over the   past few years a Burmese Ph.D . environment student has always been   accompanied by SPDC soldiers when she traveled to the field to conduct   her research in ethnic areas.  In another example, military   intelligence joined the 1997 survey led by WCS in Hkakabo Razi National   Park in northern Kachin State, collectinginformation on the people   encountered and their activities.

NGOs are hesitant to challenge the restrictions placed upon them and   end up complying with regime politics. In one interview with a Kachin   youth group, it was revealed that they were afraid  to work on   environment issues because of the sensitivity of the issue in Kachin   State, even though they viewed environment as a key issue. [xxxvii] For   another Kachin environment organization, the main  cause of project   failures was field sites being demarcated by the SPDC as logging and   mining concessions, for which the NGO did not file a complaint out of   fear. [xxxviii] But these allegations are more  severe for international   NGOs, of which two strong cases are presented. The mostly foreign   authors of the 2005 Birdlife International et al report consulted with   few, if any, ethnic Burmese working on environment  issues based inside   Burma, nor did they consult with any ethnic Burmese environmentalists   working outside the country, such as Burmese environmental groups based  in Thailand, who follow an overtly rights-based  approach.

In   another current example, Burma is embarking on the National   Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) process to follow up on   its ratification of the Convention for Biological  Diversity (CBD).   Despite strong language in CBD, NBSAP and GEF (Global Environment   Facility, the financer for NBSAPs) guidelines about consulting with all   stakeholders and paying close attention to  indigenous knowledge and   equitable access and benefit sharing, so far no ethnic Burmese   environmentalists  inside or outside the country  are being consulted   in the process pushed by Birdlife International and  facilitated by UNEP   ROAP (Regional Office of Asia-Pacific) in Bangkok, Thailand.

Following dialogue between WCS and the Burmese  regime, in 2004 the   Minister of Forestry agreed to expand the original 6,400 km2 Hukawng   Valley Wildlife Sanctuary to cover almost the entire Hukawng Valley, an   area of nearly 22,000 km2, creating the largest  tiger conservation area   in the world, and one of the world?s largest forest PAs (Figure 2). The   Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve is a part of the massive 30,000 km2?Northern Forest Complex?, promoted by WCS, which  encompasses most of   northwest Kachin State . As part of this conservation   mission, WCS is assisting the SPDC in obtaining GIS information of   forested regions in Kachin State in order to expand  conservation   operations to the “human-dominated landscape” and “into neighboring   valleys”. The Hukawng Valley Wildlife Sanctuary acts as the core   protected area, where relatively few people live,  but the forest surrounding it will also be protected as part of the tiger reserve to   “act as a buffer to human encroachment”.

An estimated 50,000 people  currently live within the valley and “venture  into the park to   hunt and collect forest products.?”Rumors circulated that the PA was a trick by the SPDC to secure more   Kachin territory, as the Hukawng Valley is located  in a   politically-contested area.  Alan Rabinowitz of WCS confirms that   one of the reasons the SPDC was so enthusiastic about the Hukawng   Valley Tiger Reserve was the opportunity to engage  the KIO, a major   Kachin political ceasefire group who controls around 80 percent of the   valley, in negotiations.  In contrast to the situation at   Hkakabo Razi National Park, Rabinowitz contacted the  KIO during his   visits to Hukawng Valley, despite this being against MoU regulations   that prohibit dialogue with ethnic political groups. During one visit,   a KIA commander (the military arm of the KIO),> interviewed in his   headquarters in the proposed tiger reserve, proudly claimed: “This is   our land.?” Rabinowitz supports this assertion in his NPR  interview, declaring, “The KIA rules this valley;  they have autonomy   over this valley.”

Yet a WCS-Burma staff member asserted that  “the SPDC controls all the areas [of Hukawng Valley]” and claimed they   do not know which areas are still under the  jurisdiction of the KIO or   about KIO-SPDC political relations in the valley. It is hard to   see how participatory decision-making can be promoted and effective   conservation achieved if key stakeholders in the area can not be   accessed, or even acknowledged, by conservationists. Despite its   success in expanding the PA system, a WCS-Burma staff member privately   complained that “sometimes we are very upset because  we can’t work   freely,we have a binding with the government.”

The local people WCS is targeting for conservation-development outreach   areLisu,traditional hunter-gatherers who do not yet  engage in   permanent cash-crop agriculture, and most importantly are not   politically organized. Despite its published statements on the   importance of working with local people to save the  tiger, as of  mid-2006 the author is not aware of WCS yet engaging in any   community-focused activity in the tiger reserve, apart from demanding   local Lisu villagers not to hunt the tiger or its  prey. [li] Community   development workis outside the mandate of WCS since their concern and   experience is with wildlife conservation, as communicated by one   WCS-Burma staff member. [lii] Any projects to deal  with the “people   problem” will apparently be contracted out to development organizations, as told by a WCS-Burma staff member. NGOs in Kachin   State and UN agencies in Yangon, however, have been  hesitant to get   involved. [liii]

The Lisu are only one ethnic subgroup in the Hukawng Valley among many   others who are purposefully ignoredfor political reasons. Other    ?locals?include different sub-groups of Kachin, Naga, thousands of   recent Burmese and Chinese entrepreneurial migrants, and KIO/KIA active   and retired soldiers. The Naga? hunters who mostly  live at the   north-western border of the reserve? are politically organized as the   National Socialist Council of Nagaland, and are actively engaged in   conflict with both the SPDC and the Indian  government. The Naga   territory along the Burma-India border is excluded from the reserve.

Lisu subsistence is neither the only nor the most important cause of ” tiger habitat deterioration in the valley”. The same  habitat is under   threat from gold mining and recent agricultural plantation development   with backing from the Burmese military. A recent report by Kachin   Development Networking Group (KDNG) states that the  number of gold   mining sites in Hukawng valley alone increased from 14 in 1994 to 31 in
> 2006. [liv] Migrants have been sweeping into the valley in search of   quick profits from gold mining. Mining concessions  have been granted   (mostly to Chinese companies) by the SPDC, facilitated by   state-sponsored infrastructure improvements (such as the infamous Ledo   Road that cuts through the valley). Most recently,  the SPDC has   allocated thousands of acres of forested and paddy land to sugar  cane and tapioca plantation development. The land is now underU Htay   Myint’s Yuzana Company in Yangon, which has close  political connections   to the junta’s vice Senior General Maung Aye.

It remains to be   seen whether WCS will use its rare influence in the country to advocate   against these wider  yet more political threats  to the   tiger. WCS-Burma has asked for a ban on individual gold panning by   local people, but will not ask for a ban on large operations of   SPDC-backed mining concessions which scour rivers  with hydraulic equipment, destroy riverbanks and dump mercury into the river system.   Perhaps more importantly, the gold mining concessions provide   employment to the thousands of migrants who provide  a ready and   reachable market for the tiger’s prey that was non-existent prior to   their mass arrival, thus transforming prevus local sustainable tiger   hunting into a market-orientated enterprise.

Subsidized by WCS, the state has also created a corps of some 60   “wildlife and conservation protection police” for the tiger reserve.    It has been alleged that these officers have  accepted bribes   from locals seeking to continue their subsistence NTFP collection.   In all, the situation does not appear conducive to   peace-building, respect for human rights or  long-term tiger   conservation. Any hope for achieving lasting conservation in Hukawng   Valley must involve revocation of large-scale resource concessions,   consultation with the KIO as major stakeholders in  the area, support   for Lisu traditional subsistence rather than mono-agriculture for   export, and incorporation of community-based natural resource   management as an integral part of the tiger  conservation plan.
According to a Karen saying, “The dog covers up the hoof print of the   pig.”While large-scale conservation projects  attract most attention   and funding, grassroots environmental activities continue virtually   unnoticed. Local communities in Burma have always undertaken   conservation through indigenous land management  practices (including   establishing Community Conserved Areas). Since the many ceasefire   agreements signed between the SPDC and opposition groups in the 1990s,   however, there has been a remarkable emergence of  local NGOs,   community-based organizations (CBOs) and (mainly Christian) faith-based   organizations. Some have been working quietly with local communities in   ethnic areas on projects directly or indirectly  related to the   environment for the past decade. Activities include capacity-building,   small-scale sustainable development projects, environmental education   and awareness, farmer-to-farmer information exchange programs,   indigenous seed cultivar preservation and exchange, sustainable   agriculture demonstration plots, community forestry, agroforestry and   documentation of environmental threats, among many  others. Some INGOs   have been supporting grassroots environmentalism through small-scale   projects carried out by local field staff, usually of the same   ethnicity as their target group, working out of  provincial and township   offices, including projects innon-SPDC controlled areas.

Burma civil society researcher and writer Ashley South states that   grassroots initiatives “undermine the ideological  and practical basis   of military rule, creating autonomous spaces, at least in limited   spheres.” [lix] He highlights the sangha(Buddhist clergy) and Christian   churches, among the few institutions not controlled  directly by the   state, as potentially powerful civil society actors. With many ethnic   political groups signing ceasefires with the SPDC, faith-based ethnic   organizations are beginning to occupy new political  space. South   asserts that “these networks constitute one of the most dynamic aspects   in an otherwise bleak political scene.”>

Churches, Christian   institutions and theological schools are converging  on the immediate   environmental situation in ethnic Christian areas, using the advantage of access to international mission funds and well-educated, influential  pastor leaders. Based on the author’s environmental  education project   with Kachin Baptist youth groups, the author witnessed a spontaneously   and inadvertently emerging “Eco-Christian Network”, a coalition of   Christian ethnic minority youth that engage on  grassroots environmental issues directly connected to immediate livelihood problems with their  communities.

Conclusion: In Burma an uncomfortably close link exist between exclusionary   top-down conservation and the state-building strategies of a military    regime associated with serious human rights abuses. I do not wish to   suggest that international conservationists support the SPDC national   military motives. However, although their  motivations are different   (build up of the state military power versus biodiversity protection),   the SPDC and conservationists may have a shared interest in the outcome   of re-territorializing strategic and resource-rich  ethnic areas into   state and military-controlled strict protected areas. Large-scale   rezoning for conservation purposes can concomitantly create   “people-free” nature reserves and drive resettlement  of ethnic people   (seen as potential supporters of ethnic insurgents) from strategically   important areas into SPDC-controlled villages. In addition,   there-territorialization of high biodiversity areas  from land   quasi-controlled by ethnic political groups at odds with the SPDC to   national/military territory leads to a greater presence of   state/military officials and army battalions.

Superficial “greening”of  the SPDC could result in conservation INGOs becoming implicated in   expanded access to power, resources and funds for the Burmese   military/elite at the expense of local people. The  wrong type of   conservation could deepen the political and environmental crisis in  Burma-  an ethno-ecological crisis. An authoritarian PA approach  could lead to further human rights abuses. Where the  state is in   conflict with local people, and communities live in fear of the   authorities, state conservation policing could lead to a backlash in   which conservation initiatives aligned with the  state may be viewed as   hostile, driving people to become enemies of
conservation.

This does not necessarily imply, however, that conservation INGOs    should avoid engagement in Burma altogether. On the contrary, there may   be potential for “selective environmental engagement” to support   small-scale, grassroots initiatives that could have  positive impacts   for environment, humanitarian relief and social development. Operating   through local structures outside the control of the institutions that   infringe upon peoples rights connects conservation  with efforts to   empower local people and strengthen civil society, which are crucial in   areas experiencing long-term conflict. Conservation practitioners   should observe human rights based standards in zones  of conflict and   rights violation, to ensure that their approaches support local   livelihoods, help people facing humanitarian crisis and mitigate,   rather than aggravate, conflict.

In territories not controlled by government, or where local people do not support the government, opportunities arise to more closely work   with local people and grassroots organizations. This  could include   semi-engaging with militias on environmental education, and encouraging   establishment of Community Conserved Areas. Certain types of conflict   may offer diverse opportunities to explore  community-based   conservation, since, in the absence of a strong state, local   traditional forms of environmental governance may have survived and   indeed been strengthened.

There is a debate in conservation between advocates of community-based   and participatory approaches, and those who favor top-down conservation  and the exclusion of people from protected  areas. Opposing   “eco-authoritarian” conservation does not equate to being   anti-conservation. Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable and essential   for sustainability, and its conservation should be a  global human goal.

However, an approach that ignores human rights and puts an   externally-driven environmental agenda ahead of immediate local needs   for nutrition, sanitation and human security is not  only unethical, but   will turn people against conservation and ultimately fail to achieve   the long-term goal of biodiversity protection.  Biodiversity   conservation is embedded within a social and  political process, and if   it is to win support and achieve success it must address issues of   social justice for stakeholders, such as the rights to   self-representation and indigenous culture, autonomy  and   self-determination, the right to participate in decision-making, the   right to information, and the principles of transparency and   accountability. In this light, environmentalism is  indeed a primary   struggle for democracy.

Previously published on the website of the World Conservation Union- http://www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/Publications/Publications.htm