Co-Producing Vulnerability: Climate Change, Conflict and the Coup in Southeastern Myanmar

Description

Between 2015-2020, the work of grassroots environmental activists and indigenous community-based organisations to tackle climate change was gaining momentum. However, this period also coincided with rapid agribusiness expansion, mining and mega extractive and infrastructure development projects which dispossessed primarily ethnic minority and indigenous communities access to their land. As one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, the introduction of climate-related conservation initiatives between 2015-2020 by outside actors also contributed to ethnic and indigenous communities vulnerability through ‘green washing’ processes and technologies of state dispossession and enclosure (Forsyth 2018; Franco & Borras 2019; Woods & Naimark 2020).

Since the February 2021 coup, ethnic and indigenous communities face new vulnerabilities in the face of three interconnected crisis: Conflict, Climate Change and the Coup. In addition to the uncertainties posed by violent counterinsurgency campaigns and a shrinking civic space, landscapes inhabited and administered by ethnic minority and indigenous groups are extremely vulnerable to climate change, including through a dramatic increase in natural resource extraction initiatives by Myanmar military and other armed groups. Based on interviews with ethnic and environmental activists and ethnographic research in two ethnic Karen villages, this paper examines the impact of the coup on local communities and their relationship to the environment in the context of a rapidly changing climate. Amidst the deepening political and environmental crisis, it asks, how communities are responding to climate change and what role customary forms of natural resource management have to play to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of global warming.

Period	10 Jun 2023
Event title	15th International Burmese Studies Conference 2023
Event type	Conference
Location	Zurich, SwitzerlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International