BOOM, BUST IN BURMA
Tourists and industry are overwhelming unique fishing villages,
INLE LAKE, BURMA— The tranquil waters of this highland lake are flanked by high mountains and in the mists of dawn there is a quality of light and a quiet serenity that many visitors describe as mystic.
On Inle Lake, a unique, centuries-old civilization has flourished. There are small villages along the banks with Buddhist temples, one-hut schools and bustling markets. Many houses rest on stilts above the waterline. There are floating vegetable farms. And the fishermen propel long, wooden skiffs by balancing at the back of the boat and wrapping their leg around a single oar as they push through the still waters with a unique motion that has become the symbol of the local Intha tribe.
The country’s second-largest freshwater lake, a candidate for World Heritage Site status, Inle Lake is a complex ecosystem. It is ranked among Burma’s top tourist destinations, but visitors were rare under the military regime. Then, three years ago, when a civilian government replaced a half-century of iron-fisted rule, change in Burma — and the lake — began to accelerate.
Tourist hotels are mushrooming on once-pristine shorelines and 250 hectares of farmland have recently been razed for a special zone to include 16 more hotels. The tourism boom is eroding traditional lifestyles and adding to serious water pollution from overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Toxic waste is being dumped into the lake from a coal mine and power plant. And as impoverished villagers denude the mountain slopes of forest, it is being filled with sedimentation. The resulting fall in water levels, along with several years of poor rainfall, has shrunk the originally 260-square-kilometre lake by a third. Some fear it may simply vanish one day.
For years, the ruling military did little or nothing but exploit the lake’s revenue potential. Following the advent of a civilian government in 2010, a five-year plan was drawn up to reverse environmental degradation and uplift the lives of the local community. It has support from the United Nations and the Norwegian government.
But the opening up of the domestic economy and Burma’s door to the outside world has also sparked the oft-witnessed race between development and preservation.
“Inle Lake is like our parents. And when our mother and father get sick, we need to cure them,” said U Myo Myint, a lakeside dweller who has switched to organic farming. “But we still have time to heal this place. We still have hope.”
‘Bad thing for us’
It is morning at the pier in Nyaung Shwe and boats are being loaded with tourists. Powerful engines are ignited and the flotilla sets off on another daily lake tour, the boats trailing yellowish spray in their wakes.
Nearby, Yone Gyi Street is also abuzz. Here you can drink a beer or an espresso, book airline tickets or get a pre-tour shave at “Hair Cat.” If you are a local, there are stores selling construction tools
“Inle Lake is like our parents. And when our mother and father get sick, we need to cure them. But we still have time to heal this place. We still have hope.”
U MYO MYINT A LAKESIDE DWELLER WHO HAS SWITCHED TO ORGANIC FARMING
and pesticides, both much in use these days.
A recently built hotel, the Inn Star, stands immediately next to — and one storey higher than — a Buddhist pagoda, something regarded as a sacrilege. Piles of sand and pebbles lie in front of a still unnamed hotel under construction, where Ko Loon Aung passes a cement-filled bucket to a fellow worker.
“I like working here. This is another source of my income,” says the 30-year-old member of the Intha ethnic minority whose pay was raised a week earlier to 4,000 kyat ($4.30) a day — about double the national average. “In the past, there was no place to work. Now there’s a lot of construction. They hire a lot of people.”
It’s been a different story for U Yan Way, 57, whose home and family land — his only assets — were grabbed to build the new hotel zone seven months ago. His pea and sesame fields were bulldozed to become a road. A company has promised him 900,000 kyat (about $975) in compensation, which he says is not enough to buy a cow. He has been forced to take his 17-year-old son out of school to work at a hotel construction site so the family can eat.
“I don’t know whether this is development or not. It is just a bad thing for us,” he says. “Tourists coming in might be good for the government, but it’s not for poor people like us.”
With 120,000 visitors descending on the lake in 2012, a 50-per-cent increase over the previous year, the question of tourism — blessing or curse — hangs over Inle.
Areport last year by the Australia-based Institute for International Development warned that the tourism influx would damage “the livelihoods of ethnic communities making up the population of the lake region, endanger the health of the lake ecosystem and degrade the natural and cultural resources which form the attractions to tourists.”
The 40 hotels in place and many more underway have clearly created job opportunities. But most locals are employed as low-paid, unskilled labour, while more lucrative and rewarding posts go to outsiders, mostly from Rangoon.
As farmers and fishermen turn away from their traditional occupations, Inle Lake’s special culture is in danger of fragmentation. Former fisherman Ko Ni Win now works on one of the tourist boats, making more money. “Fishing is not OK. Less fish nowadays,” he says. “Farming is also not OK. Less rainfall now.”
Fifteen-year-old Mg Nyein Chan Aung hopes the tourism boom will launch him on a bright career as a chef. Quitting school to help his family, he found a job at the Nice Restaurant in the lakeside village of Nan Pam. He earns a basic salary of 26,000 kyat ($28) a month, almost double that in the high tourist season.
“This restaurant teaches me everything,” he says. “From cooking to English.”
Delicate ecosystem
Despite new jobs in the tourism industry, fishing and agriculture remain the mainstays for a growing population of some 170,000 Intha people living on the lake, as well as the area’s other ethnic minorities. The tomato is the king of the crops, considered the finest in the country and is even exported to neighbouring Thailand. Visitors flock to eat the lake’s heavenly tomato salad.
Along with other vegetables, tomatoes are grown on small, floating islands — swaying blocks of solidified soil and vegetation anchored to the lake bed. Fertilizers and pesticides, used by the majority of farmers in ever-greater quantities, seep easily into the water.
Inle Lake was once teeming with aquatic life, home to nearly 30 species of fish and snails, many of them endemic, but the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) now lists the lake’s biodiversity status as “vulnerable.”
“I have to use more fertilizer than before,” says Ma Htay Htay Win, mud caking both her hands as she stops working on the tomato beds at one of the 11 islands owned by the family. “Last year, it was one bag for one floating garden. Now, I have to use one-and-a-half.”
Close-knit community
The road to Myay Phyu village, an isolated settlement of the Pa-O ethnic minority, snakes up into the mountains above Inle Lake. It’s a close-knit community, with families helping one another whenever needed. But Myay Phyu, l i ke other mountainside villages, depends on the once-lush forests to build homes and cook food. There are two hydroelectric dams in the area but the electricity they generate is funnelled off to other parts of Burma. As the village population of 80 families expands and new fields have to be cleared for crops, the surrounding forest is contracting.
“We have to find and cut trees every day. We need them every day. Now, the trees are not big like before. Maybe because of the rain. The rainfall is less and less,” said 61-year-old U Loon.
When asked whether she is worried about the forest just vanishing one day, she replied, “I don’t know. I can cook only when I have wood.”
UTin Maung Win, who heads the area’s forestry department, sees the bigger picture: Inle Lake’s watershed is 20 kilometres deep and logging within it loosens the soil, tumbling it into the increasingly murky and shallow water, warming it and otherwise creating an environment harmful to aquatic life.
A letter posted on the wall of his office reads, “The Forest Department will not accept any proposals for coal mine projects.”
One was started within the watershed in 2002 as a joint venture between China and two Burmese companies, growing into the country’s largest open-cast coal mine and coal power plant. According to the Thailand-based Pa- O Youth Organization, the project generates up to 135 tonnes of toxic waste a day, much of it eventually finding its way into Inle.
The latest scientific study of the lake’s water quality, conducted in 2007 by Yangon University’s zoology department, concluded that Inle was undergoing eutrophication, the presence of excessively rich nutrients from runoffs, which cause dense growth of plant life and death of animal life from lack of oxygen. The levels of phosphates and nitrates, prime components of chemical fertilizers, was found to be above acceptable World Health Organization levels — 20 milligrams of phosphate per litre of water, or four times the standard for safe drinking water. Arsenic was detected in one of the streams flowing into the lake.
The forestry chief says local resources are limited and outside assistance is needed to cope with the welter of ills. Some has come, notably the five-year government partnership with the United Nations, backed by $2.6 million from Norway. But what is crucial, says project manager U Htun Paw Oo, are the local people: “They know the value of the lake and this is more important than what the government, the UN or NGOs do.”
Many were well aware of Inle Lake’s changing face.
“I’m worried for the future. I feel sorry when I think of the lake dying,” said Ma Sandar, the Intha owner of the Nice Restaurant. “Inle Lake is the source of pride for us all. There is nothing to compare with Inle.”