Resource information
In Myanmar, as in other countries of the Mekong, it is widely acknowledged that the clearing of forests to
make way for the expansion of commercial agricultural fields is increasingly the leading driver of deforestation,
alongside legal and illegal logging, and the clearance of forest areas to make way for infrastructure projects
such as roads and hydropower dams. While the conversion of forests for agricultural development has been
occurring for many decades, it is the unprecedented rate of this conversion that is now so astounding — as
well as the fact that the government is encouraging increasing levels of investment for large-scale industrial
agricultural expansion when laws and institutions are not yet able to regulate these large-scale land acquisitions
(LSLAs). National legal frameworks — laws, regulations, and enforcement bodies — will need to be improved
so this development occurs in the context of sustainable and legal forest management and local communities
are assured that they have secure land use rights and access to these agricultural and forested landscapes for
their livelihood needs.
Despite national statements purporting to protect Myanmar’s remaining forests, a new set of land and investment
laws1 are still facilitating the conversion of forests into private agribusiness concessions. Since Myanmar’s President
U Thein Sein took office in March 2011, the new reform-minded government has promoted industrial agricultural
development as an attractive sector for both domestic and, increasingly, foreign investment. In the forest sector
itself, promising new reforms have been progressing, but so far have focused only on the managed timber estates
under the direct control of the Myanmar Forest Department (which have been over-harvested for decades). The
remaining natural forests in the country’s resource-rich, ethnic-populated states are still left outside any effective
forest management and are thus even more prone to extensive logging and forest conversion. In sum, each year Myanmar has been losing more than 1.15 million acres of forests — some of Southeast
Asia’s last remaining (sub-)tropical High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF). Hardwood log exports have been
growing by volume, and even more by value, since the new government took office (Figures 1 and 2). Between
2011 and 2013, the volume of timber product exports jumped from about 2.7 to over 3.3 million m3, with
values increasing from just over US$ 1 billion to about US$ 1.6 billion. Much of Myanmar’s timber is no longer
sourced from historical (over-cut) harvesting areas (government-managed timber estates predominately in
the geographic center of the country). Instead, domestic private companies are clear-cutting HCVFs — for
agribusiness, mining, and hydropower sites, and special economic zones (SEZs) — and producing Myanmar’s, and some of the world’s, most valuable “conversion timber.” Forest Trends has estimated that conversion
timber from these LSLAs now constitutes a significant portion of the Burmese timber being placed on the
international market...
