Local Experiences and Perceptions of Climate Change During Myanmar’s Violent Rupture

How do conflict-affected communities experience and perceive climate change amid violent rupture? This article by Helene Maria Kyed, Ah Lynn & Nyan Pyi Thit published in the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship explores this question in the aftermath of the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Drawing on two years of community ethnography across eight localities, the article explores how local people articulate and navigate environmental and weather changes amidst violent rupture, authoritarian rule, and chronic crisis. We foreground local voices to show that climate change is not perceived in isolation but intertwined with conflict, insecurity, spiritual beliefs, and sociopolitical disruptions. Under conditions of high risk and repression, community ethnography is a vital methodology for accessing knowledge otherwise excluded from dominant climate-conflict narratives. We argue that local perceptions challenge the assumption that climate change is solely a global, biophysical phenomenon, instead revealing deeply contextual understandings rooted in political violence, economic hardship, and moral or religious interpretations. These insights reframe the climate-conflict nexus by highlighting how conflict and governance breakdowns shape both vulnerability and meaning-making.