Myanmar’s ceasefire regime: Two decades of unaccountable natural resource exploitation

Talbott, Kirk; Akimoto, Yutaro; Cuskelly, Katrina

doi:10.4324/9780203109793-16

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The preconditions established in the 1990s-in particular policies of turning battlefields into marketplaces-set the stage for a series of events that triggered the land-cover regime shift in Tanintharyi. The importance of China and Thailand as Myanmar's trading partners increased when the United States and European Union imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar in response to the human rights abuses of the military government [64,65]. Immediately after Myanmar's military signed a series of bilateral resource trade and infrastructure deals with China in 1988, the Commander in Chief of the Thai Armed Forces became the first foreign dignitary to visit Myanmar since the military gunned down hundreds of pro-democracy student activists earlier that same year (the 8888 Uprisings).…”

Section: Triggersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Tanintharyi, our results showed that the land-cover regime shift was induced by a punctuation pathway wherein the equilibrium was punctuated by decisive political events-armed conflict ceasefires, bilateral trade deals, road infrastructure development, granting of resource concessions, and enabling policies on land allocation and edible oils production-thereby transforming the formerly forest-dominated landscape into a new agricultural production-oriented landscape. Moreover, evidence indicated that the regime shift is irreversible given several prominent developments: increasing foreign investment following the initiation of democratic and capitalist transitions [75]; the subsequent lifting of Western sanctions to remove obstacles for foreign companies to invest in Myanmar [65,73]; and the 2012 Foreign Investment Law that included very significant liberalisation measures to encourage foreign direct investment in the natural resources extraction and agribusiness production sectors [80]; thus causing the agricultural production-oriented landscape to persist.…”

Section: Historical and Possible Future Drivers Of Land-cover Regime mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating Analytical Frameworks to Investigate Land-Cover Regime Shifts in Dynamic Landscapes

et al. 2019

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Regime shifts—rapid long-term transitions between stable states—are well documented in ecology but remain controversial and understudied in land use and land cover change (LUCC). In particular, uncertainty surrounds the prevalence and causes of regime shifts at the landscape level. We studied LUCC dynamics in the Tanintharyi Region (Myanmar), which contains one of the last remaining significant contiguous forest areas in Southeast Asia but was heavily deforested between 1992–2015. By combining remote sensing methods and a literature review of historical processes leading to LUCC, we identified a regime shift from a forest-oriented state to an agricultural-oriented state between 1997–2004. The regime shift was triggered by a confluence of complex political and economic conditions within Myanmar, notably the ceasefires between various ethnic groups and the military government, coupled with its enhanced business relations with Thailand and China. Government policies and foreign direct investment enabling the establishment of large-scale agro-industrial concessions reinforced the new agriculture-oriented regime and prevented reversion to the original forest-dominated regime. Our approach of integrating complementary analytical frameworks to identify and understand land-cover regime shifts can help policymakers to preempt future regime shifts in Tanintharyi, and can be applied to the study of land change in other regions.

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Section: Triggersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Historical and Possible Future Drivers Of Land-cover Regime mentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Analytical Frameworks to Investigate Land-Cover Regime Shifts in Dynamic Landscapes

et al. 2019

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“…Under the 1991 'Wasteland Instructions', domestic investors were favored for allocation of up to 50,000 acres of what the state deemed to be 'vacant, fallow and virgin' (VFV) lands, earlier defined by colonial law as lands to which no use rights had been granted by the state (Ferguson, 2014). The promotion of agri-business, coupled with the military's rampant takeover of community land for defence and income-generation led to extensive confiscations across the country (Talbott et al, 2016).…”

Section: Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variegated transitions: Emerging forms of land and resource capitalism in Laos and Myanmar

Kenney‐Lazar

Mark²

2020

Environ Plan A

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Since the mid- to late- 1980s, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) have gradually and unevenly opened their economies to capitalist relations of accumulation. Both countries have done so by granting state land concessions to private capital for resource extraction and land commodification projects, particularly since the early 2000s. Yet, resource capitalism has manifested in distinct ways in both places due to the ways in which capital has interacted with unique pre-capitalist political-economic and social relations as well as the diverse political reactions of Lao and Myanmar people to capitalist transformations. In this paper, we analyze such differences through a conceptualization of ‘variegated transitions’, an extension of the variegated capitalism framework, which investigates the political economic transitions towards capitalism in marginalized, resource extractive countries of the Global South. In Myanmar, the transition from military to democratic rule has been marked by protests and land occupations combined with center-periphery fragmentation and ongoing civil wars, all of which have led to a heavily contested process of land concession granting. In contrast, a stable, comparatively centralized political system in Laos that restrains popular protest has enabled an expanding regime of land concessions for resource extraction projects, albeit hemmed in at the edges by sporadic, localized forms of resistance and appeals to the state.

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“…In the case of Sierra Leone, diamond resources have been central to the economy since the 1930s, and when the country's decade-long civil war ended in 2002, IMF estimates suggested that their revenues accounted for as much as 96 percent of all exports (IMF, 2009). Meanwhile in Burma, between 2008-2009, gas exports reportedly made up one-quarter of all exports (Talbott et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The extractive industries, mineral sector reform and post-conflict reconstruction in developing countries

Maconachie

2016

The Extractive Industries and Society

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Myanmar’s ceasefire regime: Two decades of unaccountable natural resource exploitation

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Integrating Analytical Frameworks to Investigate Land-Cover Regime Shifts in Dynamic Landscapes

Integrating Analytical Frameworks to Investigate Land-Cover Regime Shifts in Dynamic Landscapes

Variegated transitions: Emerging forms of land and resource capitalism in Laos and Myanmar

The extractive industries, mineral sector reform and post-conflict reconstruction in developing countries

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