Community Forestry in Cease-Fire Zones in Kachin State, Northern Burma: Formalizing Collective Property in Contested Ethnic Areas

TitleCommunity Forestry in Cease-Fire Zones in Kachin State, Northern Burma: Formalizing Collective Property in Contested Ethnic Areas
Annotated RecordAnnotated
Year of Publication2010
AuthorsWoods K
Secondary TitleCAPRi Workshop on Collective Action, Property Rights, and Conflict in Natural Resources Management
Pagination1-20
Place PublishedSiem Reap, Cambodia
Key themesCivilSociety-Donors, Dispossession-grabbing, FDI, Formalisation-titling
Abstract

Community forests (CFs) in northern Burma have been gaining momentum since the mid-2000s, spearheaded by national NGOs, mostly in response to protect village land from encroaching agribusiness concessions. While the production of these new CF landscapes represents the material resistance against state-sponsored rubber, in effect it produces contested state authority by formalizing control of former customary swidden hills under the Forestry Department. The CF land management plans mirror state land classification schemes that delineate between "forest‟ and "agriculture‟ land uses, in stark contrast to traditional land management practices. For instances of post-war zones with continued contentious state authority, as is the case in Burma, rebuilding state- society resource relations and institutions present new challenges beyond the more narrow environmental conflict framework. This ethnographic case study challenges the “subsistence wars” premise, calls for in-depth area studies to understand the deep historical and political conflict driving so-called resource wars, and argues against the tendency to "aboralize‟ and "tribalize‟ indigenous people through collective forest management interventions. Overall this paper challenges several assumptions with advocating for collective property management as a conflict mediation strategy, and underscores the importance of development projects taking into account new forms of power and authority in post-war/conflict zones.
URLhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/29f0/dbf98984c9e28dc2bda840e551c52f9dfa12.pdf
Availability

Available for download
Countries

Myanmar
Document Type

Conference Proceedings

Annotations

Overall relevance: 

The article looks into the background of Community Forestry (CF) in Kachin state, northern Myanmar, following a cease-fire agreement area between the military government and ethnic political groups. Once the cease-fire period started, local Kachin farmers feared for their farmland and CF was seen as a way to protect it from land grabbing by military and government actors, particularly for monoculture rubber plantations. Moreover, in 12 of 19 townships of Kachin State, over half of population are landless. Although a customary land ownership system is still being practiced, the Burmese central government does not recognize it, increasing vulnerability on local populations. Local and international NGOs help establish Community Forests that abide with the Ministry of Forestry’s 1995 Community Forestry Instructions (CFI). They support the documentation of management plans for approval by the Forest Department, which is the co-managing party of CF. Forest User Group (FUG) members can then defend their surrounding areas from state-backed land grabbing, although establishing a CF places restrictions on the practice of the traditional cultivation taungya system.

Key Themes: 
  • Civil society and donor engagement in land issues - Local and international NGOs are key actors supporting local communities in the application for and implementation of Community Forestry. The CF procedure provides not only territorial power to ethnic people, but also a chance to enhance vast degraded forest areas together with the Forest Department.
  • Land dispossession/land grabbing - Acquisitions of land that dispossess local users, who perceived them as grabs, have been tacitly legitimized at State level, involving a mix of government, military and corporate actors. The challenge for these local users is to find ways of protecting access to their land, and achieve a sufficient production livelihood.
  • FDI and land access: economic land concessions, contract farming, short term and long term renting - After the cease-fire, governments at both national, regional, and ethnic group levels share a desire to exploit potential commerce, particularly through trade with neighbouring China. Lands in Kachin State offer opportunities for resource extraction, such as in the setting up of rubber plantations, and provide an attraction for investment from across the border.
  • Land rights recognition/formalization/titling/collective tenure - Community Forestry is only allowed in reserved forest areas, where the traditional swidden cultivation system of Kachin people is prohibited. Nevertheless, it offers one of the few legal means to protect farmers against the expansion of private agriculture business.
Research basis: 

The paper is a discussion piece, originally written for a regional workshop on collective rights and natural resource management, held in Cambodia. It draws upon extensive research by the author on the topic, both in terms of secondary sources and field experiences. As part of its analysis, the paper provides an ethnographic case study based on interviews with three Forest User Groups based in proximity to the Kachin capital of Myitkyina. (Provided by Aung Nyi Lwin)