Indigenous activists clash with U.N. over park

JAKARTA, Indonesia — When farmer May Cho Win learned that a conservation project proposed by the U.N. Development Program in Myanmar would include the land she’s worked for over a decade, the 28yearold wondered how she and her husband would be able to support their three children.

“Without our land we can’t live,” she said, speaking by phone from her singleroom bamboo home.

The $21 million “Ridge to Reef ” project — funded by the Global Environment Facility with support from the Smithsonian Institute, the Myanmar government and other partners — would conserve nearly 5,500 square miles of land, coastline and marine areas in southern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region.

But Indigenous and land rights activists say the project will disrupt largely agrarian and fishingbased livelihoods among residents of about 225 villages in the proposed park area. The project — now on hold while the U.N. program’s inspector general investigates their complaints — is but one example of conflicts between wellmeaning, topdown conservation efforts and Indigenous peoples.

With increasing development and deforestation across the globe, both international conservation groups and Indigenous activists recognize the importance of protecting lands that provide havens for biodiversity and valuable carbon storage for a warming planet.

Tigers, Asian elephants, tapirs and other endangered species live in what is the largest area of lowland wet evergreen forest remaining in the IndoMyanmar biodiversity hot spot, as well as some of the largest contiguous blocks of mangrove forest in mainland Southeast Asia.

Yet the region has been environmentally degraded by palm oil concessions, aquaculture projects, mining and illegal logging.

Between 2010 and 2015, the U.N. says, Myanmar experienced the world’s thirdhighest forest loss after Brazil and Indonesia, with an estimated annual loss of about 2% of its total forest cover.

However, local Indigenous and land rights activists contend that when the U.N.’s development program designed the conservation project, the organization didn’t adequately consult with communities, violating the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.