Myanmar conservation indigenous peoples Karen
'Peace means self-determination': an interview with Paul Sein Twa
The Salween Peace Park, managed by KESAN, is an ambitious conservation project which came out of devastating teak deforestation in the Karen Territories.
Interview
1 September 2024
Lital Khaikin
Revolutionary conservation is at the heart of the Indigenous Karen struggle in southeast Myanmar, as activist Paul Sein Twa explains to Lital Khaikin.
‘We’ve been forgotten,’ says Paul Sein Twa, internationally recognized Karen environmental activist, and executive director of Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN).
He has lived through several periods of political turmoil in Myanmar, passing from one military regime to another and navigating predatory international development and centralization reforms under the democratic mandate of former State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Out of the devastation caused by teak deforestation in the Karen territories came an ambitious conservation project known as the Salween Peace Park, which is in part managed by KESAN. The Karen-administered park now encompasses 5,485 square kilometres, including more than 350 villages and 27 community forests.
According to Paul, the majority of people living within the park itself have experienced displacement since the 2021 military coup and escalation of the civil war. The park continues its mission of conservation, working in tandem with the revolutionary Karen National Union (KNU) government toward autonomous Karen state governance and recognition under Burmese legislation despite continued threats from airstrikes.
How did you get started in environmental activism?
In 1988 Thailand banned commercial logging because of the environmental impact and landslides, and started to import timber from neighbouring countries. Burma [renamed Myanmar in 1989] needed foreign money because in 1988 there was a nationwide uprising against the dictatorship... they went bankrupt. So they sold logging concessions along the Thai-Burma border that was at the time controlled by ethnic resistance groups and the KNU. The Burmese military government gained foreign money to buy weapons to support operations against ethnic groups. It was also to destroy the forest which [had] protected the people and all the resistance movements – logging opened up the forest through roads and helped to quickly move in and militarize the area.
[A few] years later, there was a huge flood, landslides along the river like never before. It struck me as a young student that there’s something very wrong with logging. Logging businesses didn’t bring any benefit to the local people.
In the early 2000s, the military government wanted to build hydropower dams along the Salween River. You can see a sequence of development that led to militarization and human-rights violations. So for me, it was a wake-up call for younger people to do something, and that’s when I got interested in environmental activism.
Can you talk about how the Salween Peace Park got established?
The Peace Park initiative started during the peace process in early 2012. The armed conflict prevented bigger projects like dams and mining from penetrating into this area. But the ceasefire facilitated them – [the government] tried to bring them in as incentives to the resistance leaders. ‘Development for peace’ or something along those lines.
But we very much disagree with that, because the kind of peace that we want is not that – it is the freedom to be able to govern ourselves, to be able to make our own decisions about our own lives, our resources, our land. That kind of autonomy in the context of the federal system has always been our call for political reform.
The ceasefire brought other kinds of threats. It was not only the military government. We were also facing foreign investment and other emergent actors like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Everything was top-down.
With the Salween Peace Park, the idea was that we need to have initiatives that show what we want, what our vision is, and what we would like to achieve when we talk about peace. Peace means self-determination. Peace means biological conservation. Peace means revitalization of our culture and Indigenous knowledge: our way of life.
The Salween Peace Park, managed by KESAN, is an ambitious conservation project which came out of devastating teak deforestation in the Karen Territories.
Interview
1 September 2024
Lital Khaikin
Revolutionary conservation is at the heart of the Indigenous Karen struggle in southeast Myanmar, as activist Paul Sein Twa explains to Lital Khaikin.
‘We’ve been forgotten,’ says Paul Sein Twa, internationally recognized Karen environmental activist, and executive director of Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN).
He has lived through several periods of political turmoil in Myanmar, passing from one military regime to another and navigating predatory international development and centralization reforms under the democratic mandate of former State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Out of the devastation caused by teak deforestation in the Karen territories came an ambitious conservation project known as the Salween Peace Park, which is in part managed by KESAN. The Karen-administered park now encompasses 5,485 square kilometres, including more than 350 villages and 27 community forests.
According to Paul, the majority of people living within the park itself have experienced displacement since the 2021 military coup and escalation of the civil war. The park continues its mission of conservation, working in tandem with the revolutionary Karen National Union (KNU) government toward autonomous Karen state governance and recognition under Burmese legislation despite continued threats from airstrikes.
How did you get started in environmental activism?
In 1988 Thailand banned commercial logging because of the environmental impact and landslides, and started to import timber from neighbouring countries. Burma [renamed Myanmar in 1989] needed foreign money because in 1988 there was a nationwide uprising against the dictatorship... they went bankrupt. So they sold logging concessions along the Thai-Burma border that was at the time controlled by ethnic resistance groups and the KNU. The Burmese military government gained foreign money to buy weapons to support operations against ethnic groups. It was also to destroy the forest which [had] protected the people and all the resistance movements – logging opened up the forest through roads and helped to quickly move in and militarize the area.
[A few] years later, there was a huge flood, landslides along the river like never before. It struck me as a young student that there’s something very wrong with logging. Logging businesses didn’t bring any benefit to the local people.
In the early 2000s, the military government wanted to build hydropower dams along the Salween River. You can see a sequence of development that led to militarization and human-rights violations. So for me, it was a wake-up call for younger people to do something, and that’s when I got interested in environmental activism.
Can you talk about how the Salween Peace Park got established?
The Peace Park initiative started during the peace process in early 2012. The armed conflict prevented bigger projects like dams and mining from penetrating into this area. But the ceasefire facilitated them – [the government] tried to bring them in as incentives to the resistance leaders. ‘Development for peace’ or something along those lines.
But we very much disagree with that, because the kind of peace that we want is not that – it is the freedom to be able to govern ourselves, to be able to make our own decisions about our own lives, our resources, our land. That kind of autonomy in the context of the federal system has always been our call for political reform.
The ceasefire brought other kinds of threats. It was not only the military government. We were also facing foreign investment and other emergent actors like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Everything was top-down.
With the Salween Peace Park, the idea was that we need to have initiatives that show what we want, what our vision is, and what we would like to achieve when we talk about peace. Peace means self-determination. Peace means biological conservation. Peace means revitalization of our culture and Indigenous knowledge: our way of life.
‘The usual way to conserve and manage the forest and the landscape is through a top-down conservation governance model. We have a different model: our Indigenous way of doing’
How are you replacing colonial forestry practices with Karen-led forestry?
The usual way to conserve and manage the forest and the landscape is through a top-down conservation governance model. We have a different model: our Indigenous way of doing. We started to demarcate and map the Indigenous territory called Kaw customary lands. In each unit of land, you have between 10 and 20 villages that you can say own that land – maybe own is not the right word to use in Indigenous terms!
So the land doesn’t belong to you?
We belong to the land, because when we die we go back to the land. Everything we use from the land is through a stewardship philosophy, meaning we are not the owners but we are trusted to take care of it.
We try to recognize each customary territory and make people in that area say yes, this is our territory, this is so valuable, this is so important, so we need to take care of it. That’s why even though the Salween Peace Park is a huge area, it’s not difficult to bring people together because we have the same understanding, concerns and vision. We don’t want to see our land being grabbed or exploited for any extractive activities or other development projects.
With forest management, the colonial [form] where everything is decided by the forestry department doesn’t work because the forestry department has very few resources, so they cannot look after big areas. We have proof that after 10 years, we can show improvement compared to a government reserve or national park.
How has the community self-governance in Salween Peace Park and the KNU navigated the conflicting foreign interests in Myanmar’s natural resources amid the civil war?
In post-conflict times, governments usually follow Western development models. We need to step up and promote alternatives to the Western or capitalistic way of doing development.
The path that we do want is more ecological. In terms of livelihoods, it should be looking at agroecological approaches and food sovereignty, and addressing the issues of farmers who have been impacted by armed conflict and other crises like landlessness because of land grabs.
The law of customary land [is that people] should get a fair share, not that the government seizes all this land, pays a little compensation, and then leases the rest to a company for a hundred years. We want a new model in which communities are involved through all of the development process. We need to be different and not follow the failed pathways of capitalism.
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