Aceh

Jammu-Kashmir

Mindanao

Nagaland

Papua

FREE BURMA: Environmental Devastation

http://www.arcweb.org/campaigns/burma/burma_environmental.html

Timber
Burma's 34 million acres of tropical rainforests contain 80% of the world's teak reserves. But at the current rate of felling, the teak forests will be gone within 25 years. After 1988, SLORC agreed 40 logging contracts with Thai companies worth $112 million, mainly in ethnic-minority regions.

Pipeline
The construction of a natural gas pipeline, financed in part by Los Angeles-based Unocal, will seriously impact forests, wetlands and mangrove ecosystems. The pipeline project will also cause the fragmentation of habitat for numerous species, many of which are endangered. Tigers are particularly at risk.

Burma is extremely rich in many types of natural resources.

• The forests of Burma have a tremendous ecological, economic, social, and hydrological significance. Greenpeace International calls the nation's rainforest "one of the last intact large tropical rainforest area in mainland Asia."
• Burma's rainforest includes the traditional habitats of three of the World Wildlife Fund's "Ten Most Endangered Species of 1994."
• A 1989 Report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) states that Burma has unusually large flora and fauna diversity, with over 7,000 recorded flowering plants, including 1,000 endemic species.
• The report also found over 300 recorded mammals, such as tigers, leopards, panthers, tapirs, gibbons and monkeys, 360 reptiles and nearly 1,000 birds.
• Burma's long coast line along the Andaman Sea has traditionally been an important source of food and other resources for inhabitants of the coastal region.
• Five major rivers and many tributaries criss-cross the nation, providing water, fish, trans-portation to many of the people of Burma.

Efforts by Burma's military dictatorship, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to fund massive military expenditures have led to the large-scale destruction of the nation's natural resources. The horrible environmental record of the SLORC goes hand in hand with their human rights record. Their attack on the environment is an outgrowth of the general collapse of the rule of law in Burma, and the complete lack of accountability under which the regime and its corporate partners operate. Burma scholar Martin Smith writes that "modern experience has repeatedly shown that the worst abusers of human rights are very often, the worst abusers of the environment."

Tremendous rates of environmental destruction in Burma have been documented despite the regime's unwillingness to allow independent investigators to assess the effects of current projects.

• Alarming Rates of Deforestation. Rates of deforestation have drastically increased under the SLORC. The Rainforest Action Network estimates Burma's annual deforestation rate at an alarming 1.5 to 2.5 million acres, third highest in the world.
• Destructive Pipeline Project. A huge natural gas pipeline, financed in part by UNOCAL will devastate one of the few areas where SLORC timber concessions have not resulted in large-scale clear-cutting. The International Rivers Network has projected other environmental impacts of the pipeline project to include destruction to wetlands and mangrove ecosystems, forest clearing, fragmentation of habitat and disruption of biological corridors, establishment of logging concessions, and increased poaching of endangered species.
• Environmentally Devastating Mega-Dams. A number of mega-dams have been proposed in east and southeast Burma. The largest would be along the Upper Salween river. The dam would force thousands of villagers, primarily members of the country's ethnic nationalities, to abandon their homes. Flood waters would also inundate parts of the Salween Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. Other environmental impacts of the dams include massive silting, water diversion, loss of fisheries, and flooding biologically diverse ecosystems.
• Additional Environmental Catastrophes. The absence of any meaningful environmental regulations in Burma and SLORC's desire to attract multinational investment at any cost has led to many other forms of environmental devastation including overfishing, unsustainable mining, and destruction of the habitats of the nation's many endangered species.

Afghanistan

Burma

Timor

Sri Lanka

JustPeace

Stories