1
The Environmental Effects of Forced Displacement in Burma's Karenni State
Brandon MacDonald Student Number: 996 401 086 B.Sc. International Developmental Studies Co-op email: [email protected]
Thesis Supervisor: Professor M. Isaac Personnel Number: 1042359 Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences & International Developmental Studies email: [email protected]
Submission Date: April 18, 2012 2
Acknowledgements
This thesis was a collaborative effort. My co-workers at Karenni Evergreen stimulated and challenged my thinking on issues surrounding the displacement of the Karenni people and the impact that this has had on environmental issues. They helped me find direction in my research and guided my data gathering process. They played an integral role in identifying the participants for my research. I am especially indebted to my good friend, roommate and co- worker Khu Kyi Reh who acted as a translator during many of the interviews. The participants gave generously of their time and their thoughts. Throughout this process Professor Marney
Isaac was an engaged and thoughtful supporter. I am grateful for her input through both the research and the writing phases of this thesis. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge the help of my good friend Taskin Shiraze and my parents for their feedback on my written work. 3
Table of Contents List of Acronyms ...... 4 Abstract ...... 5 Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 A Brief History 1.1.1 The Colonial Era ...... 8 1.1.2 The Democratic Era ...... 9 1.1.3 The Ne Win Era 1962 − 1988 ...... 10 1.1.4 SPDC Rule 1988 − 2011 ...... 10 1.1.5 The Saffron Revolution and the Elections in 2010...... 11 1.2 The Current Situation ...... 12 1.3 Literature Review on the Environmental Issues of Displacement ...... 12 1.3.1 Land Degradation...... 13 1.3.2 Natural Resource Depletion ...... 14 1.3.3 Environmental Management Problems Driven by the Concentration of People ...... 16 1.3.4 Loss of Traditional Environmental Protection Mechanisms ...... 17 1.3.5 Environmental Exploitation through Macro-Development Projects 18 1.3.6 Exchange of Environmental Knowledge Through Migration ...... 19 1.4.1 Research Problem ...... 20 1.4.2 Research Question and Objectives ...... 22 Chapter 2: Methods 2.1 Study Area ...... 25 2.2 Study Samples ...... 26 2.3 Data Collection ...... 27 2.4 Methods for Gathering Information ...... 29 2.5 Data Analysis Procedures ...... 30 2.6 Reasons for Displacement ...... 31 2.6.1 The Four-Cuts Policy ...... 32 2.6.2 Fleeing Poverty, Violence, and Human Rights Violations ...... 33 2.6.3 Land Seizures for Macro-Development Projects ...... 34 2.7 Living Situations ...... 35 2.7.1 Relocation ...... 36 2.7.2 Villages Where Participants had Kinship Ties ...... 37 2.7.3 Newly Formed Villages ...... 37 2.7.4 Migrant Settlements Constantly Fleeing Violence ...... 38 2.7.5 Refugee Camps ...... 39 2.8 Temporal Categorizations of Displacement ...... 40 Chapter 3: Results and Discussion 3.1 Socio-Demographics of Participants ...... 41 3.2 Land Degradation and Management ...... 43 3.2.1 Fertilizer Use Dynamics ...... 45 3.2.2 The Dynamics of Other Agricultural Inputs ...... 47 3.2.3 Plot Size Dynamics ...... 48 3.2.4 Changes in the Number of Harvests Per Year ...... 49 3.2.5 Crop Diversification ...... 51 4
3.2.6 Fallow Periods ...... 52 3.2.7 Land Tenure ...... 54 3.2.8 Community Exchange of Land Management Information ...... 55 3.2.9 Summary on Land Degradation ...... 56 3.3 Food Security ...... 57 3.3.1 Drivers of Food Insecurity ...... 58 3.3.2 Strategies Implemented in Situations of Food Insecurity ...... 60 3.3.3 Generation of Economic Vulnerability by Political Organizations ... 62 3.4 Natural Resource Depletion ...... 65 3.4.1 Deforestation ...... 69 3.4.2 Environmental Management ...... 73 3.4.3 The Role of Animist Religion in Environmental Management ...... 75 3.4.4 Summary on Displacement's Effect on Natural Resource Depletion ..... 79 3.5 Environmental Recovery of Abandoned Areas ...... 80 3.5.1 Waste Management ...... 82 Chapter 4: Conclusions 4.1 Final thoughts ...... 85 4.2 Areas for Further Research ...... 89 References ...... 91
List of Acronyms
Association of South East Asian Nations ASEAN
Community Based Organization CBO
International Rescue Committee IRC
Karenni National Political Party KNPP
Non Governmental Organizations NGO
State Law and Order Restoration Council SLORC
State Peace and Development Council SPDC
Thailand Burma Boarder Consortium TBBC
Union Solidarity and Development Party USDP
United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNHCR 5
Abstract
Displaced Karenni people on the Thai-Burma boarder were interviewed to investigate the environmental effects of conflict-based displacement on the Karenni's traditional knowledge and livelihoods strategies. As a framework for analysis the reasons for displacement were categorized. Living situations were categorized in terms of the characteristics of a location, and in terms of the sequential stage of displacement (ie. point of origin, second location, third location and refugee camp).
Results were mixed. It was found that refugee camps, second and third locations had fewer natural resources which Karenni people depend upon, higher levels of deforestation, lower levels of food security, higher levels of human rights violations leading to poverty, fewer policies and systems in place to protect the environment, and, in some cases, shorter agricultural fallow periods. Refugee camps faced unique environmental problems especially with waste management. There was not found to be an increase in environmental knowledge exchange with migration. It was also found that many areas which had been abandoned due to displacement had their environments degraded and natural resources exploited by government or private companies carrying out macro-development project or logging operations.
The high density of populations in the refugee camp, second and third locations led to an exhaustion of natural resources and agricultural land. Poverty was exacerbated by displacement.
It led to a dependance on unsustainable income generating activities, and undermined the
Karenni people's ability to adapt to new environmental challenges. Displacement also removed traditional environmental protection mechanisms. On the other hand, Karenni is a region of high conservation importance, and the displacement of people from large regions may be preserving ecosystems void of human activity, but this is unproven and warrants further study. 6
Chapter 1: Introduction Figure 2: Karenni State's Townships 7
Figure 2 Regional Map 8
A Brief History of Karenni 1.1.1 The Colonial Era
Karenni State (“Karenni”) is located in north-eastern Burma1 (fig. 1). It’s politically turbulent history includes conquests and exploitation extending back before the colonial era.
There have been various kingdoms and political centres vying for control of the Karenni people and their land (Chapman, 1998). British colonization brought political stability to Karenni after three long wars spanning from 1826-1885, but Karenni was never fully incorporated into British
Burma (CHRE, 2007). The three states of Kantarawadi, Kyebogyi and Bawlakeh were given the name “The Karenni States” and as a result of a treaty negotiated with the Burmese King Mindon
Min granted independence in 1875 (Chapman, 1998). The Karenni States agreed to become a
“tributary” to British Burma starting in 1892, in exchange for a stipend from the British government (Chapman, 1998). It was in this time that the Karenni people were first exposed to
British missionaries who converted many Karenni people to christianity (CHRE, 2007).
Burma did not achieve its independence until 1948, but the independence movement, started in the late 1930’s (Marshall, 2011). The movement was triggered by the famouse actions of U Wisara, who was a Buddhist monk who launched a hunger strike to protest British rule; his strike lasted 166 days until finally he died in prison (Chapman, 1998). To this day the Buddhist monk community is a prominent leader in the democratic movement.
In 1940 Aung San, father of the famous Aung San Suu Kyi and known as the “liberator of
Burma”, formed the Burma Independence Army in Japan (Khin Kyaw Han, 2003). During the the Second World War, Japanese troops working with the Burma Independence Army, entered the
Burmese capital of Yangoon and within a few months collapsed the British administration (Khin
Kyaw Han, 2003).
1 Karenni State was renamed “Kayah” State, and Burma was renamed 'Myanmar' by the military government, but this paper uses the names 'Karenni' and 'Burma' as they are the preferred names of all of the participants. 9
Many Burmese saw the Japanese as their liberators and fought with them initially, but other Burmese, mostly ethnic minorities including the Karenni, served in the Allies' army in exchange for the promise of their independence from central Burma at the end of the war (Khin
Kyaw Han, 2003). Aung San and the Burma Independence Army fought with the Japanese from
1942 to 1944 but switched sides and fought with the Allies Forces which launched a series of attacks that lead to the end of Japanese rule in 1945. in 1945 (Marshall, 2011).
1.1.2 The Democratic Era
After the end of World War II in 1948, Aung San negotiated the Panglong Agreement with various ethnic leaders signifying the independence of Burma (Aung Zaw, 2006). The
Burmese republic was named the “Union of Burma” with Sao Shwe Thaik as the first President and U Nu as the first Prime Minister (Aung Zaw, 2006). The departure of the British administration left a power vacuum that was characterized by ten years of fighting ending in a coup d'état. General Ne Win was asserted into office.
With the signing of the Independence Constitution the three states of Kantarawadi,
Kyebogyi and Bawlakeh were incorporated into the Union of Burma and were renamed “Karenni
State” (Chapman, 1998). In 1952 Shan state and the Mong Pai states were added to Karenni and renamed “Kayah State” (Marshall, 2011). Pro-independence groups started emerging in 1957.
The Karenni National Political Party (KNPP) was by far the most dominant group; it was backed by its own Karenni Army (KA) (Chapman, 1998). The KA has been fighting the central government ever since with the exception of a brief cease-fire in 1995 (TBBC, 2009). Rival groups included the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP) and the Karenni National People’s
Liberation Front (KNPLF), but both of these groups are now allied with the Burmese military 10
(Chapman, 1998).
1.1.3 The Ne Win Era 1962 − 1988
In 1962 Ne Win commenced his rule and implemented the 'Burmese Way to Socialism'.
This political philosophy was modelled after Soviet-style central planning, and was characterized by nationalization, and government control of business, media and industry (Fink, 2001). The country was under a one-party system, the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) (Fink,
2001). During this period Burma went from one of the most developed countries in South-East
Asia to the most impoverished (Tellentire, 2007). Protests were violently repressed (Tellentire,
2007).
1.1.4 SPDC Rule 1988 − 2011
Frustration with the political system erupted in a civil revolt in 1988 called the 8888
Uprising (Khin Kyaw Han, 2003). General Saw Maung responded by staging a coup d'état and forming the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) which declared martial law amidst the protests to restore stability (Khin Kyaw Han, 2003). It was the SLORC that changed the country’s official name from the “Union of Burma” to the “Union of Myanmar” in 1989
(Zaw, 2006). In 1990 the SLORC held the first free election in almost 30 years. Nobel Peace
Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy won a 'landslide victory' (Fink, 2007). Unfortunately, the SLORC did not concede power. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and the SLORC continued to rule until 1997 when it changed its name to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) (Khin Kyaw Han, 2003). It was in 1997 that the SPDC was admitted into the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 11
(Chapman, 1998).
In an attempt to crush the Karenni independence movement the SLORC, in 1996, launched a displacement campaign to remove villages which supported the KNPP (Chapman,
1998). This campaign lead to the emergence of the relocation sites, and refugee camps (discussed in more detail in sections 2.11 and 2.14). The SLORC/SPDC was receiving huge sums of money from private sector firms as well as from the governments of China, India and Thailand in exchange for off-shore oil, agricultural land, concessions for the extraction of natural resources, and the construction of large infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dams (CHRE, 2007).
The rebel groups turned to logging activities to fund the conflict as well (CHRE, 2007).
1.1.5 The Saffron Revolution and the Elections 2010
Buddhist monk led anti-government protests in 2007, known as the Saffron Revolution, were peaceful protests in reaction to the increase in fuel prices, and was violently cracked down upon by the government (Fink, 2007). They protested human rights violations, the lack of democracy and the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi (Fink, 2007). More than 110 monks and many more civilians were killed (CHRE, 2007). The Saffron Revolution led to the Burmese
Constitutional Referendum of 2008 which promised a “discipline-flourishing democracy”
(Marshall, 2011). General elections were held under the new constitution in November 2010
(Marshall, 2011).
Observers described the election day as mostly peaceful. There were, however, irregularities at the polling stations leading the United Nations and many Western countries to condemn the elections as fraudulent (Marshall, 2011). The military-backed Union Solidarity and
Development Party (USDP) declared victory with 80% of the seats (Fink, 2007). Positive results 12 did however come out of the elections. Amnesties were granted to more than 200 political prisoners (although many more remain in custody), and Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest (Marshall, 2011).
1.2 The Current Situation
The total population of Karenni is 259,000 (TBBC, 2007). Of that number 18,674
Karenni refugees living in Thailand. An estimated 81,000 people are internally displaced people in Karenni, 10,000 of whom are hiding in the jungles (TBBC, 2007). This displaced people usually go uncompensated for the loss of their land. Some, however, are given 327 Kyat
(Approximately $0.50 CND) compensation for their land, which has lead to the colloquial saying, “it's only enough to pay for the front stairs” (KDRG, 2006).
1.3 Literature Review on the Environmental Issues of Displacement
The UNHCR has identified three potential environmental issues that can arise in refugee camps. Firstly, high population densities can lead to natural resource depletion and land degradation. Secondly, there is a tendency for refugees to migrate to, and for refugee camps to be set up on, environmentally fragile areas. This can in turn lead to natural resource depletion and land degradation. Thirdly, there is often a lack of incentive amongst refugees to preserve the environment, because the land isn’t theirs and they view their land tenure as temporary (Keane,
2004).
These environmental concerns have application inside Burma. There is a high concentration of populations in places to which displaced people migrate, and they view their stay is potentially temporary. Furthermore, Karenni is part of a fragile, and diverse ecosystem 13 which could be in jeopardy. These claims are based on observation only, and Keane, working with the UNHCR, admits there is a lack of evidence to support these claims (Keane, 2004). This displacement could be leading to land degradation, natural resource depletion and changes in environmental management practices which have negative implications for the environment.
Keane's proposition of three factors leading to environmental issues in refugee camps, will be used as a benchmark for comparison in this research.
1.3.1 Land Degradation
Seventy five percent of the Burmese population is rural and 60% of those people work five acres of land or less (CHRE, & South, 2007). This issue of land degradation effects the majority of Karenni people and is driven through a plethora of processes. Slash and burn agriculture, for example can be sustainably managed on a local scale (People's Forum on
Ecology, 1999), but only if the land is left fallow for a sufficient amount of time to allow soil fecundity maintenance without the use of fertilizers or other synthetic inputs (People's Forum on
Ecology, 1999). However, in the face of population growth, or population concentration
(Kondylis uses the term “villigization” to describe this phenomenon) fallow periods may not be maintained (Kondylis, 2008).
Political conflict, and land mines in particular, limit the mobility of Karenni people. The restriction on movement to fields and markets was reported by Karenni respondents to be the largest threat to livelihoods, ahead of arbitrary taxation and forced labour (TBBC, 2007). People are being forced to put stress on their land because of their poverty (KESAN, 2005) and they are attempting to increase agricultural yields by prematurely using land that traditionally would have been left fallow for 7-10 years. Lack of mobility means that people in hiding who return to their 14 homes to cultivate their land usually can only harvest 40 to 50% of their crops, and are unable to guard their crops against pests and animals that eat them (CHRE, 2007). People are also discouraged from shifting their cultivation leading to shorter fallow periods (KESAN, 2005).
Finally, the conflict in Karenni often involves the burning and shelling of land which can contribute to degradation (CHRE, 2007).
It has been suggested that when farmers are absent from their fields, they can loose their agricultural skills and when they return they are more likely to settle in degraded areas, leading to their further degradation (Kondylis, 2008). This is also true of people new to farming. Political persecution, as well as displacement, can also lead to the cultivation of cash crops such as opium that are easy to hide, and transport (Kondylis, 2008). It has also been noted that farmers may change their crop choice to ones that are less likely to be pillaged which may not be the best choice from an environmental perspective (Hintjens, 2006).
1.3.2 Natural Resource Depletion
Seed storages have been destroyed by the SPDC, and livelihoods have been threatened by political persecution and long standing cycles of poverty (KESAN, 2005). This situation is causing people to become more reliant on forest resources (KESAN, 2005) and to cut down trees close to home to supplement land, leading to drought and contributing to climate change (Saw
Eh Ka Lu Moo, 2009).
Population growth and the concentration of populations can have huge implications for the depletion of natural resources and the loss of biodiversity. Keane (2004) suggests that there are three reasons for which the areas surrounding refugee camps become depleted of forest resources. Firstly, vegetation is being stripped away for fuelwood and shelter which can lead to a 15 change in the soil water balance, erosion, soil fecundity depletion, and decreased productivity of the land. Secondly, refugees must generally rely on natural resources to feed themselves especially before aid arrives. It is not only the refugees that rely on the natural resources in the area, but also the host population. The host population, however, may make efforts to mitigate this effect and protect the local natural resources, for if refugees exhaust natural resources, the host population may not want to host them anymore. Thirdly, the sudden arrival of migrants can have large effects on fragile environments especially for biodiversity, when they infringe on protected or pristine land.
Kondylis (2008) suggests that in the short term environmental degradation could occur in locations of concentrated populations, and at the same time allow abandoned areas to go fallow and be preserved. When conflict ends, populations may migrate back to an environment that is thriving (Kondylis, 2008). This idea assumes, however, that indigenous people were having a negative impact on the environment before displacement and that while they’re displaced the environment would have the ability and opportunity to recover (Agrawal & Redford, 2009).
Displacement of indigenous people off of their land can also lead to a shift from viewing natural resources as subsistence capital to viewing it as monetary capital (Nesheim, et al., 2006), therefore making those resources more vulnerable to exploitation.
When considering land degradation and natural resource depletion it is important to consider how vulnerable the environment is to degrading activities and how quickly it is able to recover from such activities. This includes the soil’s resilience to degradation as a factor of the amount of stress put on it (Kibreab, 1997).
Deforestation can lead to erosion. The erosive ability of rainfall, topography, erodibility of soil, and the density of vegetation cover also play a role in determining the extent of that 16 erosion (Kibreab, 1997).
The number of threatened and endangered species that depend on that environment need to be considered. The Salween basin is the most diverse turtle community on earth, and one of the last great teak forests (Rutherford, 2005). More than 140 fish species are said to live in the
Salween Basin, one-third of which are endemic to the region (Rutherford, 2005). The World
Wildlife Fund identified ~200 ecological hotspots with Karenni falling within the Kayah-Karen
Montane Rainforest hotspot (KDRG, 2006). The ecological hotspot is second richest in bird species, and fourth richest in mammal species in Mekong Subregion (KDRG, 2006). The UN estimated, that between 1990 and 1995, a total of 3,874 km² of forest was lost per year in Burma
(1.38%), and that the forests left are very degraded (Wood, 2007). The forests have been stripped of valuable species such as hardwoods and what is left behind is malformed and diseased trees, easy-to-burn waste, and invasive weeds and vines (Wood, 2007). There is no question that
Karenni State has a lot to lose in terms of biodiversity, and that their biodiversity is already quite threatened.
1.3.3 Environmental Management Problems Driven by the Concentration of People
It has commonly been found that overcrowded cities or towns become unable to provide social services such as sewage, potable water, health care, education and waste management.
This has huge environmental implications and leads to the emergence of slums (Westing, 1994).
There is a need to address population issues, to support environmental education, to protect biodiversity, to foster participatory governance, to generate alternative income options, and to foster political security to avoid these negative environmental impacts (Westing, 1994). 17
1.3.4 Loss of Traditional Environmental Protection Mechanisms
The loss of preservation activities and land tenure can be problematic. It is difficult for ethnic groups to enforce traditional environmental regulations and laws with the army in town, as they face organizational challenges (Karen Rivers Watch, 2004). Kibreab (1997) argues that land tenure is a motivating factor for one to protect the quality of their land. Without that incentive, conservation efforts may not be as strong because the “transformation of peasantries into workers or proletarians divorces them from their means of rural existence” (Bush, et al., 2011).
Newcomers may even ignore local environmental management mechanisms (Kibreab, 1997).
Furthermore, while displacement may lead to a decrease in incentives for conservation in places to which displaced people migrate, it may also remove the environmental protection mechanisms in the places from which they are moving. Unsustainable communities mean unsustainable environments, for long term projects and management cannot be implemented if communities are constantly being disrupted (KESAN, 2005). Segregation of populations breaks up management networks (Kibreab, 1997), and internally displaced people, due to their break from the state, no longer have access to national channels of appeal for the purposes of environmental protection (McDowell & Morrell, 2007). Indigenous activism and transnational advocacy networks have been effective in many places at pushing environmental interests, but displacement can isolate people from those networks (Gellert & Lynch, 2003). Indeed, a role for communities, local populations, and indigenous people has been incorporated into the projects of many conservationists (Agrawal & Redford, 2009), but this is difficult to implement in government controlled areas, and with members of displaced communities living in hiding.
There is a widely held assumption that dispossessing farmers and limiting people’s access to land and natural resources is a necessary feature of modernization, increased productivity, and 18 government revenue generation (Bush, et al., 2011). The political and business classes have an interest in this, and often facilitate land deals which dispossess indigenous people (Bush, et al.,
2011). The removal of local systems of environmental management through the process of displacement, enables groups motivated by political and business interests to exploit environmental resources (Kibreab, 1997). Bush et al. (2011) note how this phenomenon has taken hold in many African countries leading to the “current ‘scramble’ on the continent for its metals, minerals and marine resources”.
1.3.5 Environmental Exploitation through Macro-Development Projects
As has been shown, displacement enables environmental exploitation by the economic interests of businesses and the political as well as economic interests of governments. These projects include mega dams, logging operations, infrastructure construction and mining, and are produced by a combination of material interest and ideological practice (Gellert & Lynch, 2003).
They guide the process toward outcomes that are displacing and ensuring that their effects will be unequally distributed (Gellert & Lynch, 2003). There is the risk that the state will be an enabler for private sector actors without any effort to justly distribute economic benefits. As a result, those within the reshaped landscape lose, while those outside of it are either indifferent or gain (Gellert & Lynch, 2003). David Harvey takes Marx’s phrase “accumulation by disposition” to describe this process (Harvey, 1993).
The environmental impacts of these activities are wide ranging. They include deforestation, displacement of large volumes of rock and soil, changing hydrological patterns, erosion and the displacement of a variety of species through habitat fragmentation and transformation (Gellert & Lynch, 2003). It is estimated that Burma is losing 1.4% of its forest 19 cover each year (CHRE, 2007). The creation of dams often results in the fragmentation of animal migration corridors, and logging which leads to increased flooding and landslides due to an increase run-off (CHRE, 2007).
Furthermore, in January 1989 the Thai government imposed a complete ban on corporate logging in Thailand. Suddenly, the business of many Thai logging companies was threatened, and the timber needed to supply Thailand's demand for wood would have to come from outside of the country. As a result, many Thai logging companies moved their operations into Burma, and started exporting timber to Thailand, which exacerbated the issue of deforestation in Burma
(CHRE, 2007).
1.3.6 Exchange of Environmental Knowledge Through Migration
Kondylis (2008) has suggested that refugee camps can serve as a hub for the exchange of agricultural knowledge, and that resettled farmers can produce higher yields because they may have an increased motivation to succeed. Conversely, Nesheim (2006) writes that language barriers, disregard for local resource management practices, lack of access to knowledgeable people or education, lack of social integration, gender roles and confusion about environmental information are all challenges to local knowledge transfer. Kondylis (2008) found that environmental knowledge transfer of Rwandans was increased among those displaced by the
1994 genocide. When comparing environmental knowledge transfer in Rwanda to the situation in
Karenni, there are some key considerations to take into account. The degree of environmental similarity, the language barrier, and the relevance of environmental knowledge all impact the level of knowledge transfer (Kibreab, 1997). For Karenni people, their traditional knowledge is less applicable to land that they have not used in the past such as sloped land, virgin forests, 20 watershed areas, and wetlands (KESAN, 2005). The level of integration between new comers and natives may not be high, and therefore, methods of learning (eg. literacy and language skills) may be inaccessible (Nesheim, et al., 2006). The disruption of culture and loss of species is putting traditional knowledge, and traditional management bodies at risk of being forgetten
(KESAN, 2005).
One of the major differences between this case study of Karenni and the larger body of academic literature on the environmental effects of displacement and migration is that Karenni people are often migrating from land that is not degraded and places where resources are not depleted to places which are already under high levels of environmental stress. The migration of
Karenni people is usually dictated by political rather than environmental reasons.
1.4.1 Research Problem
This research will examine the environmental effects of conflict-induced migration. To my knowledge, the impacts on natural resources, agriculture, andthe cultural ramifications of displacement, including the loss of traditional knowledge and changing livelihood strategies, in a conflict situation have not been examined. Most of the academic literature focuses on post- conflict situations (Agrawal, 2009; Hintjens, 2006; Kondylis, 2008). The accumulation of wealth by the government and the private sector at the expense of the dispossessed and at the expense of the environment is a common theme in many places around the world (Bush et al., 2011;
Glassman, 2006). This research uses Burma’s Karenni state as a case study to contribute to academic discussions on the aforementioned subjects. Karenni State is a biodiversity hotspot and a vibrant ecological zone which has been hosting violent conflict for more than 55 years.
Displacement in Karenni is an issue which has been talked about extensively from a 21 human rights perspective, but rarely from an environmental one. A participatory process which included local organizations was employed in deciding upon a research topic. Stakeholders have indicated that this research would be useful, with complements to other work being conducted in the Karenni State. Gaps in the literature and research have been agreed upon, and this work could help fill such gaps. This research contributes to the scholarly community as well and contributes to the discussion about displacement in the Karenni State, and in Burma more generally.
There is a pressing need for environmental perspectives on issues related to conflict in
Burma. Empirical research is limited as a result of the difficulty of conducting research in a conflict zone where foreigners are rarely allowed to legally enter. The empirical research that has been conducted in Karenni has been limited to a handful of the most stirring topics. Updates of the status of the conflict, progress of major “developmental” projects such as dams and mines, and the ensuing poverty and poor health of the people dominate the publications coming out of
Karenni (KRW, 2004; KDRG, 2006; Magee et al, 2006; SSEO, 2006; TBBC, 2009). The desperation around these situations has caused many other topics to be overlooked.
There exists little empirical research addressing the environmental consequences of the conflict in Karenni. The closest and most relevant study is entitled “Diversity Degraded” published by the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network. It focuses on the loss of cultural and biological diversity as a consequence of the political situation in Karen State. This research takes a wider lens on environmental issues and focuses on Karenni state (not to be confused with Karen state, home to ethnic Karen people).
There have been a number of authors who have explored the environmental effects of migration, notably Locke, Hintjens, Kibreab, Kondylis, and Nesheim. These authors have analyzed environmental narratives from places like Rwanda. Karenni's unique ecosystem (it is in 22 the middle of the Kayah-Karen montane rain forests, included by the World Wildlife Foundation as an “ecoregion” in their “Global 200” publication), and its unique political situation merit an expansion on what is currently known. Theoretical contributions mostly deal with migration in post-conflict situations (Hintjens, 2006; Kondylis, 2008; Nesheim et al., 2006), and don't look at the direct consequences of war such as displacement, and the loss of social and political freedoms.
This study contributes to the existing knowledge of the political, economic and social situation in Karenni by investigating environmental data, and expanding the theoretical discussion on the environmental effects of displacement by studying Karenni's unique political, economic and social situation.
1.4.2 Research Question and Objectives
What is the effect of conflict-based displacement on the Karenni's traditional knowledge and livelihoods strategies and with what consequences for the sustainable environmentally based livelihood strategies? This question will be answered with four research objectives:
Objective #1: To identify the geographical patterns of displacement and the living situations in which displaced people find themselves.
Hypotheses:
1. When people are forced to abandon their homes and fields they select where they will go
based on social, economic, environmental and political factors.
2. Living conditions lead people to electively relocate. 23
3. There are environmental effects of condensed living.
Objective #2: To identify and describe the effects of displacement on agriculture and natural resource availability.
Hypotheses:
1. Displacement affects the sustainability of agricultural practices, soil quality, and
agricultural inputs.
2. Displacement is affecting deforestation, biodiversity and the availability of other natural
resources.
3. Displacement is changing consumption patterns with environmental consequences.
4. Migration has environmentally beneficial and detrimental impacts.
Objective #3: To investigate environmental management problems in relation to changing social and cultural dimensions and consequential effects on traditional institutions of natural resource and agricultural management.
Hypotheses
1. Land owners and managers are changing with environmental ramifications.
2. Institutions responsible for protecting traditional knowledge and practices are changing.
3. The ability of longstanding social institutions that address these problems changed due to
displacement.
4. Vast local environmental knowledge bases are being lost as a result of displacement. 24
Objective #4: To identify the effects of activities undertaken by political organizations and private sector firms, which are environmentally exploitative and enabled by displacement. 25
Chapter 2: Methods
2.1 Study Areas
This research was conducted near the Ban Mai Nai Soi Karenni refugee camp in Mae
Hong Son province, Thailand (fig. 1) from October 2010 to August 2011. Contributors included people working in the field of environmental conservation and development. Travel into Karenni
State was not possible due to safety concerns, so displaced people who had crossed the border were relied upon as participants. As Mae Hong Son province borders Karenni state, all Karenni refugees, the overwhelming majority of Karenni migrant workers, and the Community Based
Organizations that work for Karenni people are located in Mae Hong Son. The hub of cross border environmental and development work and a high concentration of Karenni people is in and around Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp.
The World Wildlife Fund characterizes Karenni has having monsoonal climate with warm, moist summers and dry winters that are cool especially at high elevations. Average annual rainfall is between 1500 and 2000mm. West facing slopes receive more precipitation than their eastern facing counterparts closer to the Thai-Burma border which lay within a partial rain- shadow. These forests are a mixture of deciduous and coniferous trees, with more coniferous species found in the wetter regions. The area is the fourth richest in the Indo-Pacific region for mammals, and second richest for bird species. The relatively large and intact habitat means that the region is of conservation importance especially for carnivores such as tiger who require large ranges (Wikramanayake, 2001).
According to the Myanmar Information Management Unit (2011), the best agricultural soils in Karenni are found in the flat valleys and plains, covering 341,524 acres of land, with meadow and meadow alluvial soils. The thick clay/loam soils are suitable for corn, rice, 26 vegetables, and soybean and have intermediate levels of all main soil nutrients including phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. These soils are ideal for agriculture and cultivation can be sustainably managed with the use of fallow periods.
Karenni State sits at the eastern most edge of the Himalayan Mountain range. It is characterized by lush rolling mountains and steep slopes. As a result, most of Karenni is covered with mountainous red forest soils which are a mixture of sand, loam and gravel, are of medium depth, are on sloped land, and cover 2,156,484 acres of land in Karenni State. These soils are not ideal for agriculture as they are low in phosphorus, high in potassium and have intermediate levels of nitrogen. These soils are much more susceptible to degradation and erosion, but population concentration, growth, poverty, and a lack of livelihood options force people to use these areas for agricultural purposes when no other land is available. They require long fallow periods to avoid soil nutrient depletion (MIMU, 2011).
2.2 Study Samples
Research participants were sought that were both men and women, from all seven townships in Karenni State, and from Kayah, Kayin, Bamar, and Pa-O ethnicities. Participants were refugees living in Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province. There are 23,794 refugees in
Thailand's Mae Hong Son province (according to Thailand Burma Boarder Consortium refugee camp food distribution records from 2010). Participants were reached via a snowball method, and through friends, co-workers, and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) with which I have worked or have connections with.
Local people from grass-roots organizations who have carried out environmental and developmental work in Karenni state were also approached. Participants were required to be 27 adults of at least 18 years of age, but a variety in the ages of participants was preferable. They were to have experienced and observed the direct and indirect effects of displacement, be able to offer first hand observation, and thus were relevant to the research.
2.3 Data Collection
The most significant source of data was gathered through a semi-structured interviews format. The interview were used to explore displacement's effects on agriculture and natural resource availability, data on farmer's yields, and variables that could explain those yields.
Natural resource availability data was obtained by inquiring of people how much of a given resource people were able to collect compared to the product of their efforts.
Interviews were also used to gather data on past and present patterns of displacement, when and to where people where displaced, on what they perceived their options to be and what influenced those perceptions. Data was collected on consumption patterns and the level of accessibility participants had to purchased goods as opposed to the natural resources that their ancestors traditionally depended on. Finally, data on the dynamics of local knowledge surrounding environmental protection was gathered though the interview as well as through ethnography.
Figure 3. Interview Outline
Background Information:
Name, age, ethnicity, number of dependants, location and name of past residence
Displacement:
When were you displaced? 28
What was the reason for your displacement?
Was agricultural land, infrastructure, plants or animals damaged or killed in the process?
Where did you go after you were displaced? Who went with you?
Did you have the power to choose where you moved to? What were your options as you
saw them? Why did you pursue the option you did?
How long did you spend in this new location?
NOTE: The following questions are asked in regards to participants' point of origin, second location and third location if applicable
Agriculture:
How did you make a living/livelihood for yourself?
(If farmer) What did you grow? How much land did you have? Did you plant one crop a
year or two? What was your average yield? How did these factors change over time?
How did you fertilize your land/maintain the fertility of the soil? What was the average
fallow period?
What agricultural inputs did you use and in what quantities?
If you were forced to put stress on your land/soil why?
Land Management:
Did you own the land you cultivated? What system was in place to divide up the land?
How did your community manage natural resources?
Did the land you cultivated change while you were living in this place? What was the
quality of the new land?
Did you own animals? Which animals, for what purpose and how many?
Natural Resources: 29
What forest products did you use? What did you use them for?
How stable was the supply of these products?
How did you learn to identify and use these products?
How else did you depend on the environment for your livelihood?
How did the aforementioned aspects of your life change before you were displaced
Was the change in any of these factors a cause of your displacement?
Changing Consumption Patterns and Waste Management:
How many shops were there? What things did people purchase? In what quantities?
Were there any waste management issues? How was non-organic waste disposed of?
Religious and Traditional Beliefs:
What is your religion? What is the local religion practised by most people?
What role did religion play (if any) in the respect for or management of natural
resources?
What traditional beliefs do people have about the forest and all forms of life in it?
2.4 Methods for Gathering Information
The most significant method of data collection was through semi-structured interviews.
Which typically took one to one and a half hours. Data was collected from leaders of displaced communities, Community-Based Organization/Non-Governmental Organization workers who have worked inside Karenni State, and most importantly, Karenni people who had been displaced themselves. People who have worked with, lived in, and depended upon Karenni ecosystems have intimate knowledge of their condition. From the narrative descriptions of their hardships, experiences, and observations the subtleties of how these changing conditions have effected their lives was obtained. Interviews consisted of specific questions aimed at exploring all four of the 30 main research objectives.
Interviews were heavily relied upon to obtain information regarding all of the objectives, which related to both the environment as people experienced it, and people's experiences themselves. Since it was not possible to go inside Karenni state to examine environmental conditions first hand, interviews remained the most accessible data collection method. The open- ended and in-depth nature of interviews suited the objectives most favourably. Information could not always be encapsulated in a simple answer. Explanation and dialogue was required from the participant and this could not be reached though other methods.
Parts of the research were ethnographical. This relates to the third objective of exploring the role of local knowledge and environmental management systems in environmental protection, and how that role is changing due to displacement. As an outside observer it was possible to observe religious and cultural practices and beliefs as they relate to the environment.
Related to this third objective a lot of document review was done, especially reading about Karenni Animist religion and its creation story. A lot of reports were read which were written by grass-roots organizations working inside Karenni to collect data on the political situation as well as the state of biodiversity and natural resources in Karenni. These reports were also useful in gathering information about the state and impacts of development projects such as hydroelectric dams and logging operations.
Interviews, questionnaires and ethnographical observation data were all conducted simultaneously from February 2011 – July 2011.
2.5 Data Analysis Procedures
Data was coded and categorized using analytical sub-categorizations. This data was 31 organized into discrete groups on the basis of the types of living situations participants lived in
[existing/long standing villages (2.7.2), relocation sites (2.7.1), migrant communities (2.7.3), and refugee camps (2.7.4)]. It was further organized based on the reasons for their displacement [the four-cuts policy (2.6.1), fleeing poverty, human rights violations and violent conflict (2.6.2), and land seizer for government development projects (2.6.3)]. Details about these subcategories are presented below. Data was analyzed for relationships and trends relating to the research questions.
Data was prepared by transcribing interviews and cataloguing data. Data was put into tables and figures and qualitatively assessed for trends. The data was cross analyzed to see how it fit with different explanations offered in the literature related to the research question. Finally, different sets of explanatory factors were explored.
Categorization of Data Groups
2.6 Reasons for Displacement
The reasons for displacement as well as the locations to which displaced people migrate, have been categorized. This allows for a comparative analysis of environmental degradation relative to different location categories and categorizations of drivers of displacement. Authors who have written about displacement categorize the causes of that displacement differently. Most include violence or armed conflict and threatened livelihoods as drivers of displacement
(Westing, A.H., 1994; CHRE, & South, A., 2007). Others include the escape of political persecution (Westing, A.H., 1994), or large development projects such as the construction of dams, or logging operations as an explanation for displacement (CHRE, & South, A., 2007). In this section three categorizations of drivers of displacement are defined which include the 32 military government's “four-cuts policy”, threatened livelihoods or abuses of human rights and macro “development” projects.
2.6.1 The “Four-Cuts Policy”
The “four-cuts policy” is an SPDC military strategy that focuses attacks on villages rather than armed forces, for they believe this is where the ethnic opposition armies get their recruits, information, supplies and finances (Thailand Burma Boarder Consortium, 2007). In 1997 a letter was sent to the village headman of Daw Sey (fig 2) ordering the entire village to move to a relocation site about a one day's walk away. The villagers were went without compensation for their homes, their land, or the livestock lost in the process of the move. This relocation site was directly adjacent to an SPDC military barracks, as all relocation sites are. Two other villages had also been relocated to the same site so that the SPDC could easily monitor them and ensure they were not assisting the Karenni Army (KA).
The SPDC frequently came to Daw Sey before they were relocated to steal food, take money, or demand slave labour from the villagers. If anyone was suspected of assisting the KA they'd be threatened or brutally assaulted. The village headman was shot in the arm to serve as an example of just how brutal the army could be. As their leader stood on the village's dirt road reading the eviction notice, clutched in the hand of his bandaged arm which he couldn't even lift, the villagers were quiet. Their stomaches must have churned and sank as they realized that defiance would mean risking their lives, and compliance would mean living under the nose of their oppressors. Using forced-labor the SPDC ordered the construction of a fence around the relocation site, assisting in the prevention of villagers from leaving the site without permission.
The participant compared the relocation site to a prison, and a concentration camp. 33
In 1996 the SPDC launched a campaign that was designed to displace every Karenni village east of the Salween river (fig 2). Despite the fact that this area was a KA strong hold, the campaign was successful. Today there are no villages east of the Salween river that are not under direct military control. Those displaced from villages near the borders fled into Thailand and founded the refugee camps.
2.6.2 Fleeing Poverty, Violence, and Human Rights Violations
I spoke with a participant who grew up on the outskirts of Loikaw, the capital city of
Karenni (fig 2) which is home to more than 20,000 people. One year their crops were devastated by rats that ate all of the rice seeds before they could take root in the ground. To supplement their income, his father had to travel into the forest for days at a time to find teak trees that he could sell to logging companies. The SPDC authorities assumed that anyone traveling for long periods of time in the forest must be doing so to meet the KA in the jungle. He was arrested. He was thrown in jail where prisoners are malnourished, questioned and routinely tortured.
After three years in prison he was free and called for his son to meet him in a nearby village where they could start a new life away from the watchful eye of the SPDC. The participant believes his father must have escaped, because when he arrived in the village anxious to meet his father, he couldn't find him. His father's body was found murdered in the forest three months later.
Seed storages are destroyed by the SPDC (Karen Environment and Social Action
Network, 2005). They are known to routinely takes people's food, force villagers to do slave labor, and arbitrarily tax vilalgers to support the government's military. Arrests, threats, torture, rape and execution are used to get information out of people and assert government interests. 34
Violence, land mines, and SPDC restrictions are implemented to make the monitoring of small groups of people easier, but they limit the mobility of many.
Limited mobility is a huge problem undermining the ability of Karenni people to generate a livelihood. Limited ability to travel to fields and markets is reported by Karenni respondents to be the largest threat to their livelihoods, ahead of arbitrary taxation and forced labour (TBBC,
2007). Lack of mobility means that people in hiding who return to their homes to cultivate their land usually can only harvest 40 to 50% of their crops and are unable to guard their crops against pests and animals that eat them (The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 2007). People are also discouraged from shifting their cultivation which leads to shorter fallow periods (Karen
Environment and Social Action Network, 2005). Many people flee their villages to go to places of relative safety such as the refugee camps or other villages with less of an SPDC presence.
Many have had to flee violent conflict in Karenni State which often involves the burning and shelling of agricultural land. The swapping of control over territory between the SPDC and the Karenni National People's Party (KNPP) means that management of natural resources most often appears to be non-existent (CHRE, 2007). It is difficult for ethnic groups to enforce traditional environmental regulations and laws with the army in town because they face organizational challenges (Karen Rivers Watch, 2004). All of these factors drive Karenni people into displacement.
2.6.3 Land Seizures for Macro-Development Projects
After a meeting with the director of a Karenni grass-roots, human rights organization, the
Sekhuay (fig 2) village headman went to tell 30 men, sitting on the bamboo floor of his home, what an NGO worker had told him. He said that 20 kilometres away from Sekhuay a Japanese 35 corporation was beginning construction on the Mobye Hydroelectric Dam under concessions sold to them by the Burmese military junta. They were told that the Balu river would be dammed, and when finished, it would create a flood plain that would stretch up stream, flooding their paddy fields, and washing away their homes. They would need to leave their village and their fields.
The men sat in disbelief. They could not accept that it was possible to dam a river as wide as the Balu. The village headman implored the men to take the warning seriously but most wouldn't. Surely, they had received misinformation, they thought.
In time the dam was completed. The water inched closer and closer to Sekhuay and they could not deny what was happening any longer. They picked up and went to clear the forest and build a new village that they would call Shwe San (fig 2). No one would ever come to Sekhuay or Shwe San to offer information or compensation for their loss.
Large scale 'development' projects, allow the SPDC to exploit and degrade the environment by eliminating the local people's ability to protect their land. The way is cleared for hydroelectric dams which disrupt aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and logging which leads to increased flooding and landslides due to the increase in run-off and erosion (CHRE, 2007).
2.7 Living Situations
Karenni people who are displaced move to a wide variety of places. For the purposes of the study these places have been subdivided into five categories: 1. government controlled relocation sites; 2. other existing villages where participants have had kith or kinship ties; 3. newly formed villages; 4. migrant settlements which are usually in the uncleared jungle and regularly flee conflict between the SPDC and KA; and 5. refugee camps in Thailand. 36
2.7.1 Relocation Sites
Relocation Sites are amalgamations of a number of villages into one village that is next to a military barracks. This is done to enable the junta to easily monitor the villagers, and make certain they are not in contact with the Karenni Army. They are heavily regulated and characterized by abuse, poverty, malnutrition and restrictions on the mobility of inhabitants.
Suicides are very common, and crowding often leads to poor sanitation and disease (CHRE,
2007). One participant described the restrictions on mobility as follows:
“In the summer it’s no water, so the relocation site a lot of people is there... they just
allow to go out at 6am and 6pm. They come back home, if they see in the forest they
shoot.”
There was not enough fertile land near the previously quoted woman's relocation site, so family had to travel back to their old village to set up a farm. Restrictions on travel made this a huge risk. Every time they snuck away from the relocation site they risked arrest, physical abuse, forced labor, rape or death as possible punishment. As a result, less then half of the people in relocation sites farmed rice (CHRE, 2007) because they could not travel to their fields.
Collecting forest resources was also difficult.
The junta's soldiers would take food, money, labor and anything else they wanted from the villagers. The exploitation and lack of freedoms in relocation sites lead to poverty and unique livelihood strategies.
“They free to get like the chicken when they saw, and everywhere they can take, take,
take.” 37
2.7.2 Villages Where Participants had Kinship Ties
Displaced people often go to villages where they have friends or family. These places have a wide variety of circumstances but are often the most favourable option. Through family and friends one has access to social support networks which are the most important social safety nets in Karenni society (3.2.3). Here they would be free from the abuse and restrictions found in relocation sites. The difficulty is that family and friends have often been displaced themselves, or were living in non-ideal situations. For example, after 1996 all the villages east of the Salween
River were displaced so there were no unaffected villages in the area.
One of the participants for example was able to move from Parlough to a relative's town called Layli (fig 2) after some relatives came and told them that good farm land was available.
People aren't always willing to welcome too many new arrivals into their village because they fear overcrowding, so this situation isn't an option for most participants.
2.7.3 Newly Formed Villages
In very rare cases, entire villages would relocate and clear an area to build a new village.
This occurrs when villages were displaced for the purpose of pursuing macro-development projects. Flood planes are created by hydroelectric dams or land is cleared for logging which would displace entire villages. Unlike villages that are displaced as part of the government's
“four-cuts policy”, there may not be a motivation to monitor these population so they may not have been ordered to relocation sites. Instead they are left to find somewhere new to live on their own. In these situations entire villages cleared areas of forest and built entirely new villages somewhere else.
These places may be in areas that have not previously been settled because they are 38 environmentally degraded areas or because they encroach upon the territory of nearby villages.
This necessitated a sharing of agricultural land and natural resources which may increase the demand on those things leading to degradation.
2.7.4 Migrant Settlements Constantly Fleeing Violence
“The SPDC make the big operation, the whole village, many village move, they afraid
from the fighting... so we afraid and move. And at that time there was very bad
communication and transportation, so we just carrying the burdens carrying the
things...my uncle, relatives or like some of my father’s soldier help us to carry some
things, but we cannot bring the whole things at our house, just the materials we can eat in
the jungle, for eat and sleep.”
People hiding in the jungles survive by clearing areas in forests for small farms, by fishing in streams, and by foraging for food, all of which has the potential to deplete natural resources (CHRE, 2007). Migrant communities may also be cut off from markets, and may not be able to buy or sell food or other goods (CHRE, 2007).
Many Karenni people have, at one time or another, lived along the front lines of the battle between the junta and the Karenni Army. They live in constant threat of violence and perpetual migration is a major challenge for agricultural activities. They often live in the jungle without permanent shelter. The fear of violence limits their ability to collect forest resources. Even lighting fires to cook food may not be possible because the junta forces may see the smoke
(CHRE, 2007). The people who try to subsist in these places depend on hidden rice storages and food rations from the KNPP, but their resources are very limited.
There are some benefits to living in these places. If one is in close proximity to the 39
Karenni Army, they will be protected from human rights violations by the junta. The junta cannot impose forced labor, and arbitrary taxation without going through the Karenni Army.
“If it’s the SPDC comes or the military groups come, there will not ignore the village they
will fight or they will like trouble to them, because it’s like the KNPP controlled area. The
KNPP people are there.”
2.7.5 Refugee Camps
There are two official Karenni refugee camps along the Thai-Burma boarder: Ban Mai
Nai Soi and Ban Mai Surin (fig 2), which together are home to 20,000 people. The Karenni camps moved many times before settling into their present locations in 1996. The Thailand
Burma Boarder Consortium (TBBC) supplies the refugees with rations.
Refugees are not permitted to practice agriculture. The areas surrounding the camps have recently been declared the Sa La Win National Park and the Namtok Mae Surin National Park
(Go to Thailand, 2003), so refugees have been forbidden from cutting down trees for use as firewood or otherwise.
The refugee camps are environmentally and socially unique situations, with people living in very high densities .This leads to environmental problems that most Karenni People have not had to deal with in the past such as wet and dry waste management, river pollution, the wide- spread depletion of natural resources, and water sanitation. An upper level NGO employee working in the camp described the Karenni as mainly:
“hunter gatherers. And they live in small like 5 or 6 family groups. So when you suddenly
bring everyone together and they’ve never had experience with actually having to
coordinate huge numbers of people, it becomes very difficult.” 40
Environmental management is a huge obstacle in the camps. There are no traditional systems or practices which address many of the current environmental problems. Environmental management challenges were articulated by explaining that,
“there’s no single body that is in charge of managing [environmental issues], so
traditionally in a refugee scenario it would be the UNHCR but here they're not quite as
strong as they could be, so camp management is done by a camp committee. By refugees.
And there’s no single person who is overseeing the whole thing, it’s very disorganized…
Normally there should be a whole set of regulations that aren’t in place now and haven’t
been followed.”
2.8 Temporal Categorizations of Displacement
A temporal categorization was developed for the purpose of analyzing the data. Four categorizations have been separated. Firstly, there is the point of origin which is usually the location in which participants were born. It is defined as the location where a participant or their family had lived before they were displaced. The second categorization will be referred to simply as 'location #2' or 'the second location' and it is the place that a participant or their family relocated to after the displacement. The third categorization is referred to as 'location #3' or 'the third location' and is defined as the location the participant relocated to after the second displacement. The second and third locations include villages where participants have kinship ties, relocation sites, and migrant settlements. The fourth categorization is a 'refugee camp' which was the final destination for most participants, but some participants were not refugees and had never lived in a refugee camp. In no situation had a participant gone onto a subsequent location after living in the refugee camp. 41
Chapter 3: Results and Discussion
3.1 Socio-Demographics of Participants
Twenty participants were interviewed and make up the data set analyzed in this chapter.
The table below includes the names' of the participants location as well as the categorization of this location (section 2.7), the temporal categorization of the location (section 2.8) and the categorization of their reason for displacement (section 2.6). If there is no indication that a residence is a relocation site, refugee camp or newly built village then it can be assumed that this is a pre-existing village.
Participant 9 is left out of the table for he was a foreign NGO worker who has never been displaced. All other participants are ethnically Kayah, and included 5 women and 15 men.
Table 1: Temporal and geographic displacement of participants
Point of Partic Birth Origin and Reason for Second Reason for Third Reason for Refugee -ipant Year Reason for Displacement Location Displacement Location Displacement Camp Displacement Na Owa, Ban Mai Nai Pruso Bawlakeh four cuts Soi refugee 1 1970 township: fled violence NA NA township: policy camp: 1996 - Birth - 1989 1989 - 1996 present Phu Kara Khu Ban Mai Nai (pop. 200), fled poverty Soi refugee 2 1987 Pruso and human NA NA NA NA camp: 2004 - township: rights abuses present Birth - 2004 Beb Soe (pop. Ban Mai Nai fled poverty 250), Pruso Soi refugee 3 1982 and human NA NA NA NA township: camp: 2011 - rights abuses Birth - 2011 present Daw Ta Ma Gyi (pop. Ban Mai Nai fled poverty 900), Soi refugee 4 1987 and human NA NA NA NA Deemawso camp: 2000 - rights abuses township: present birth - 2000 5 1986 Daw Soo four cuts NA NA NA NA Ban Mai Nai Kyeh (pop. policy Soi refugee 500), Shadaw camp: 1996 - township: present 42
Birth - 1996 Daw Ta Ma Daw Ta Ma Gyi (pop. Gyi new fled poverty 900), village 6 1980 and human NA NA NA NA Deemawso location(pop. rights abuses township: 1200): 2000 - Birth - 2000 present Daw Saw: Daw Sey (pop. Ban Mai Nai new village fled poverty 100) Shadaw four cuts Soi refugee 7 1988 location and human NA NA township: policy camp: 1998 - (pop. 40): rights abuses Birth - 1996 present 1996 - 1998 Parlough Fled Daw Sey (pop. Ban Mai Nai relocation fled poverty Lawli village violence, 150), Loikaw four cuts Soi refugee 8 1987 site (pop. and human (pop. 400): poverty and township: policy camp: 2005 - 1200): 1997 - rights abuses 1999 - 2005 human rights Birth - 1997 present 1999 abuses Shwe San Sekhuay (pop land seizure (pop. 500), fled poverty 600), Tuang for macro- newly 10 1985 and human NA NA NA Gyi township: development created rights abuses Birth - 1992 project village: 1992 - present The Poh Daw Tar Klue Gloh returned to Ban Mai Nai (pop. 650), fled poverty fled poverty four cuts relocation point of Soi refugee 11 1988 Pruso and human and human policy site (pop. origin: 2000 - camp: 2010 - township: rights abuses rights abuses 2000): 1996 - 2010 present Birth - 1996 2000 Daw Tar Klue Ti-Biang Eh returned to Ban Mai Nai (pop. 650), relocation fled poverty fled poverty four cuts point of Soi refugee 12 1991 Pruso site (pop. and human and human policy origin: 2000 - camp: 2010 - township: 600): 1996 - rights abuses rights abuses 2010 present Birth - 1996 2000 fled violence, fled violence, Ban Mai Nai Loikaw (pop. Weiy Kye poverty and poverty and Soi refugee 14 1992 20,000): Birth (pop. 600): NA NA human rights human rights camp: 2008 - - 2007 2007-2008 abuses abuses present Loikaw Loikaw township fled violence, returned to township four cuts relocation poverty and 15 1983 point of NA NA (pop. 400): policy site (pop. human rights origin Birth - 1996 5000): 1996- abuses 1997 Gay Gah Per Gay Gah Per (pop. 900), new village four cuts 16 1969 Pasawng location: NA NA NA NA policy township: 2003 - Birth - 2003 present 17 1985 Daw Ga Law four cuts Loikaw (pop. fled poverty NA NA NA Ku (pop. 450), policy 20,000): and human Loikaw 1996 - rights abuses township: present 43
Birth - 1996 migrating Ban Kwai camp closed, Ban Mai Nai settlement on refugee camp refugees Soi refugee 18 1983 Thai-Burma fled violence NA NA (pop. 4,500): relocated to camp: 2002 - boarder: Birth 1993 - 2002 another camp present - 1993 Daw Ta Ma Gyi (pop. Ban Kwai camp closed, Ban Mai Nai fled poverty 900), refugee camp refugees Soi refugee 19 1989 and human NA NA Deemawso (pop. 4,500): relocated to camp: 2002 - rights abuses township: 2000 - 2002 another camp present Birth - 2000 migrating Karenni Army Ban Kwai camp closed, Ban Mai Nai settlement on base, Shadaw refugee camp refugees Soi refugee 20 1982 fled violence Thai-Burma fled violence township: (pop. 4,500) relocated to camp 2002 - boarder: 1982 - 1987 1993 - 2002 another camp present 1987 - 1993 migrating Ban Mai Nai Shadaw settlement on Soi refugee 21 1976 township: fled violence Thai-Burma fled violence NA NA camp: 1996 - birth - 1987 boarder: present 1987 - 1996
3.2 Land Degradation and Management
Table 2: Quality of land as reported by participants
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 2 declining NA NA 3 very low NA NA 5 good NA NA 6 fine decreasing NA 7 good good NA 8 good worse than in point of origin worse than in point of origin 10 good good NA 11 decreasing continued decrease continued decrease 12 decreasing worse than point of origin same as point of origin 14 not Good same as in point of origin NA 15 fine same as in point of origin NA 16 fine NA NA quite variable from year to year 17 worse NA and place to place 20 NA extremely variable from year NA 44
to year and place to place extremely variable from year to 21 very good NA year and place to place
Forty four percent of respondents reported that the quality of land in their second location was of a lower quality than that of the land in their point of origin (table 2). Fifty six percent replied that land was of the same quality, and no respondents found land of a higher quality in their second location as compared to their point of origin (table 2). Of the three participants that lived in a third location before coming to the refugee camp, two found land of similar quality to their point of origin and the third had to cultivate land of a lower quality than the land in their point of origin.
Table 3: Food availability as reported by participants
Location #1 After Location #2 After Participant Point of Origin Displacement Displacement 1 sometimes struggled NA NA 2 often struggled NA NA 3 often struggled NA NA 5 always had enough food NA NA 6 always had enough food never had enough NA 7 always had enough food now food is not enough NA 1st and 2nd year 80-90% of the 70-75% of the food as in point amount of food as in the point 8 sometimes struggled of origin of origin beyond that food was 60-65% yields remained the same, but 10 always had enough food less food per person because of NA population growth 11 usually had enough much less food same as in the point of origin 12 usually had enough much less food same as in the point of origin 14 sometimes not enough food same amount of food NA 15 often have food shortages same amount of food NA often have food shortages and 16 they're increasing in frequency NA NA and intensity 45
17 often have shortages often have shortage NA 20 usually had enough food much less food NA
The lower quality of land experienced in second and third locations contributed to declining agricultural yields leading to food insecurity. Seventy percent of respondents experienced an increase in food insecurity in the second location relative to their point of origin, while 30% experienced no change (table 3). There were no instances where participants had more food in their second location than in their point of origin. Of the three participants who lived in a third location before they migrated to the refugee camp, two experienced no change in their food insecurity relative to their point of origin and the third had less food than he had in his point of origin, but more than he had in his second location. The drivers of food insecurity are multi-faceted, and will be revisited later. This section will focus on explaining the causes of land degradation.
3.2.1 Fertilizer Use Dynamics
Table 4: Fertilizers used in different temporal location categories
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1 ash & manure ash & manure NA 2 ash & manure NA NA 3 ash NA NA 5 0 NA NA 6 ash ash NA 7 ash ash NA ash & manure (even less 8 ash & manure ash & manure (less manure) manure) 10 ash synthetic fertilizers NA 11 ash & manure same same 12 ash & manure ash ash, manure 46
14 ash ash NA 15 ash & manure ash, manure NA 16 ash & leaf litter NA NA ash, manure & occasionally 17 ash & manure NA chemical fertilizers
Only 20% of respondents made a change in their fertilizer use as a method of addressing land degradation (table 4). These respondents started using synthetic fertilizers as a response to food insecurity. In all other cases, families used animal manure when possible and ash from the burning of forests cleared for cultivation. In two cases, the use of manure decreased in the second location because of the loss of livestock during the violent displacement process. Of the three participants who went onto a third location before the refugee camp, fertilization methods didn’t change for two, and one participant lost livestock during the violent displacement process which decreased their ability to use manure as fertilizer (table 4).
The lack of change in fertilizer use fails to confirm objective 2 hypothesis 1, and should not be mistaken for an indication that the soil had remained fertile. Synthetic fertilizers are expensive and so are animals that produce manure suitable for agricultural purposes. Most respondents did not have capital available to them to make that kind of an investment. Also, synthetic fertilizers have not been, and are still not widely used in Karenni. Traditional methods have been effective for a long period of time, so the lack of synthetic fertilizer use was not seen as the problem. There is a perception that the safest way to maximize one’s agricultural yields is by using the tried, tested and true methods. The benefit of this is that the negative environmental impacts, such as eutrophication, associated with unsustainable, petroleum-based fertilizer production and use are avoided. Synthetic fertilizer production is energy intensive, and relies on fossil fuels (Lawrence, 2004). Phosphorus and potassium mines are being depleted globally, and 47 synthetic fertilizers use can lead to eutrophication, and may not replenish soils with trace nutrients that they require to be fertile (Lawrence, 2004).
3.2.2 The Dynamics of Other Agricultural Inputs
Table 5: Participants' use of non-traditional agricultural inputs other than fertilizer
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1 0 0 NA 2 0 NA NA 3 0 NA NA 5 0 NA NA 6 0 0 NA 7 0 0 NA 8 0 0 0 10 0 0 NA 11 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 14 0 synthetic pesticides NA 15 0 0 NA 16 pesticides (rat poison) NA NA 17 0 0 NA 20 0 0 NA 21 0 0 NA
Excluding the use of fertilizers (both natural and synthetic) 92% of respondents did not use any kind of conventional agricultural inputs (including pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, non-traditional tools or machinery) in their second location that they did not use in their first
(table 5). This was rarely a strategy employed to increase yields and decrease food insecurity.
Almost none of the participants used any kind of chemical pesticide, herbicide or fungicide and none of them ever had access to any motorized agricultural tools. One participant began using 48 synthetic pesticides in his second location to boost his yields, but his situation was unique. His father was a village headman and as a result his family was quite wealthy relative to others in their community, and could afford to purchase pesticides. None of the other participants were in an economic situation which allowed the use of agricultural inputs beyond hand tools. KESAN
(2005) claimed that poverty exacerbated by displacement could lead people to put stress on agricultural land, but the use of agricultural inputs was not a way that this was happening. This portion of the data does not support objective 2 hypothesis 1.
3.2.3 Plot Size Dynamics
Table 6: Change in agricultural plot size as reported by participants
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 6 normal size no change NA 7 normal size no change NA 8 normal size no change no change 10 normal size no change NA 11 normal size smaller normal size 12 normal size smaller normal Size 14 normal size no change NA 15 normal size no change NA 16 sized Increased NA NA 17 sized Increased no change NA 20 none very limited NA
Seventy percent of plot sizes were similar in second locations relative to participants’ point of origin (table 6). In 30% of cases participants were forced to decrease their plot size due to limited space. All three participants who went on to cultivate land in a third location did so on a plot of a size similar to that of their point of origin. In cases where plot size was reduced, this 49 was because of overcrowding. This is not surprising given the concentration of populations into higher density living situations, such as in relocation sites, or in villages that are receiving an influx of displaced people.
These statistics do not tell the whole story of overcrowding either. A number of participants developed strategies to avoid having to cultivate in over-crowded areas. Many participants traveled long distances, sometimes all the way back to their point of origin from relocation sites for example, to cultivate land. While this type of strategy may help to alleviate land degradation in some places, it comes with serious safety risks for the participant. Those who were living in relocation sites had their mobility restricted by the junta, and traveling away from the relocation site could have meant beatings, arrests, rape, torture, threats or other forms of political persecution. The immense risks that people were willing to take are a testament to how much of a problem land availability was, and how important it was to these people’s livelihoods to have access to suitable agricultural land. The fact that they would travel back to their point of origin to cultivate land indicates the relative fecundity of the soil. Others avoided cultivation in over-crowded areas by employing alternative methods of supplementing their livelihoods as outlined in section 3.2.3 and table 12.
3.2.4 Changes in the Number of Harvests Per Year
Table 7: Participants' number of harvests per year
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1 1 NA NA 2 1 NA NA 3 1 NA NA 5 1 NA NA 6 1 1 NA 50
7 1 1 NA 8 1 1 1 10 1 1 NA 11 1 1 1 12 1 1 1 14 1 2 NA 15 1 1 NA 16 1 NA NA 17 1 1 NA 20 1 1 NA 21 1 NA NA
All participants harvested a single crop each year in their point of origin, while 90% of respondents continued to harvest a single crop each year in their second location. All participants who could provide information on a third location harvested a single crop each year in that location (table 7).
This portion of the data also does not describe the effect of stress put on land as a result of poverty as described by KESAN (2005). Increasing the number of crops harvested in a year was not something that was possible for most. The one participant who could harvest two crops a year was the son of the relatively wealthy village headman. He had access to synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation in their second location enabling them to grow a second crop in dry season. Because rice paddy fields need to be flooded, only sunflowers or maize can be grown in the dry season. These crops require non-traditional agricultural methods, and access to markets, for sunflower and maize tend not to be dietary staples and are sold for income instead.
Furthermore, a second crop planted in one year on the same land will degrade that land significantly. One needs access to fertilizers and ideally pesticides to have a successful harvest, and maintain the fecundity of the soil which only one participant did have. Most found that 51 without access to agricultural inputs they were better off in the dry season to get income via other means as outlined in section 3.2.3 and table 12.
3.2.5 Crop Diversification
Table 8: Crops grown by participants
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1 rice, corn, betelnut none NA rice, corn, peanut, vegetables, 2 NA NA maize rice, corn, vegetables, fruit, 3 NA NA peanut rice, corn, pumpkin, 5 same NA vegetables, beans, fruit more peanuts, sesame seeds, 6 rice, vegetables, peanut and corn & less brass NA blowpipe rice, vegetables, chilli, beans, 7 same NA maize, fruit peanuts, rice, veggies, corn, 8 same same fruit rice, beans, sunflowers, and 10 rice NA chic peas 11 rice, peanut, brass blowpipe, same NA rice, peanut, sesame seed, 12 only rice NA brass blow-pipe 14 rice, peanut, vegetables corn instead of peanut NA 15 rice, peanut, veggies, fruit same NA 16 rice, vegetables, pala (grain) same NA rice, bean, corn, peanut, 17 same NA vegetables
Crop diversity in this section refers to a high number of crops grown and in fairly equitable quantities by a participant on their plot. Fifty five percent of participants’ crop diversification did not change between their first and second location, while 18% grew the same 52 crops but in different quantities (table 8). Twenty seven percent changed their crops as a strategy to improve food security. All participants who grew crops in a third location before coming to the refugee camp, maintained crop diversity, and grew the same crops as were grown in previous locations.
There is no identifiable trend towards the preference of one crop over another. Again, a failure to confirm objective 2 hypothesis 1 was found in this portion of the data. All participants grew rice as their main crop. Most also grew peanut, corn, vegetables, beans, and brass blow pipe which is a kind of grain used to make wine (table 8). All of these are crops which Karenni people have cultivated for a long time, and the shifts in crop diversity were usually shifts made within this group of crops. The one notable outlier to the data set was once again the participant who was the son of the village headman who grew sunflowers and chick peas in the dry season.
They were enabled to do this through their access to fertilizers and irrigation. Generally, changes in crop diversity were not perceived as viable strategies for increasing yields.
3.2.6 Fallow Periods
Table 9: Fallow periods (in years) employed by participants
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1 5, 6, or 7 NA NA 2 3 NA NA 3 5 or 6 (use land for 3 years) NA NA 5 didn't rotate NA NA 7 7 or 8 7 or 8 NA 8 6 or 7 4 3, 4, or 5 10 good amount of time didn't rotate NA 11 3, decreasing same same 12 3 years couldn't rotate 3 years 14 3 or 4 3 or 4 NA 53
old growth forest cleared for old growth forest cleared for 15 NA plots plots 16 4 to 8 NA NA 17 3 to 7 5 NA 21 8 to 10 NA NA
Fallow periods are defined as lengths of time in which land is left untouched between periods of cultivation. The purpose is to allow the soil to regenerate its fertility. Thirty eight percent of respondents were forced to use land in their second location that had been fallow for a shorter amount of time than the land that they used in the point of origin. Sixty three percent of respondents continued to have access to land that had been fallow for approximately the same amount of time as the land in their point of origin. All respondents who went onto a third location did not experience a decline in the fallow period of their cultivated land (table 9).
It is important to note that there was a huge range in fallow periods contingent on many different factors including the fecundity, and resiliency of the soil in various locations. In respondents' point of origin, land was used that was fallow for anywhere between three to ten years. Three years may seem like a short period of time, but the best agricultural land, such as land along the edges of rivers, may only need three years to maintain its fertility.
Those who were displaced and migrated to relocation sites or nearby villages would have gone to places where the best land would already be picked over. One participant explained that,
“we had problems with new arrivals want to make farm, but people who already in this
place own land near to the village. New arrivals come from other villages, and cannot
make farm near the village in land the people who already there say they own. We have to
go very far to make farm”
In this situation the best land had already been taken. Although the participant employed a three year fallow period in both her point of origin and in the relocation site, this was enough 54 time to maintain the fertility of the soil in her point of origin, but was not sustainable in the relocation site area.
The data on fallow periods provides the first part of an explanation on how marginalization manifests itself as stress put on agricultural land (KESAN, 2005), supporting objective 2 hypothesis 1. The increased concentration of people was the driving factor leading participants to shorten fallow periods. That said, many participants still had access to good quality land despite the concentration of populations, they just needed to travel increasingly further away from their villages to find it.
3.2.7 Land Tenure
The ownership of land suitable for non-rotational farming among Karenni people is passed down from father to son, and management of that land is controlled by the father. As
Karenni is very mountainous, there is very little land suitable for non-rotational farming, and very rarely is that small amount of land not already in use. In situations where families have been displaced this land may become available, neighbours divide the land between them, but it goes back to the original owners if they return.
Most Karenni people however practice rotational farming, which uses a very informal system of land ownership. Individuals find a plot of land that has been fallow for a suitable amount of time. This is determined by the size of the trees found on this land. Large trees are an indicator of land that has been fallow for a long time and therefore indicates that the soil is fecund. Karenni people do not go through any kind of process to receive permission to cultivate land, and local decision makers (such as village headmen) are not involved in the process of plot selection. 55
There are some religious practices which restrict the areas where land can be cultivated.
For example, land cannot be cultivated near burial sites, and offerings must be made to the forest spirit to seek permission to cultivate forested land. Karenni Animists believe that the forest spirit can communicate to them through their dreams, and nightmares can signify that they do not have permission to cultivate the land which they hope to.
Further restrictions on land cultivation may arise as a result of the political situation. The
SPDC will sometimes prohibit cultivation in certain areas if they believe the site is near to a KA base. Especially in relocation sites, the SPDC will limit cultivation to areas that are easily monitored, so that they know people aren’t going to contact or assist the Karenni Army.
This system of land ownership means that when displaced people arrive in new places they do not have access to the best land which is passed down through family lines. In this sense, objective 3 hypothesis 1 is confirmed. New arrivals are pushed onto more marginalized land which require longer fallow periods in order to sustainably retain their fertility, but this is not always possible leading to land degradation, showing the validity of objective 1 hypothesis 3 which predicts environmental impacts from condensed living.
3.2.8 Community Exchange of Land Management Information
Table 10: Environmental knowledge exchange as reported by participants
Participant Location #2 (Post-Displacement) Location #3 (Post-Displacement) didn’t learn anything new from people from 2 other villages that he couldn’t have learned in NA his own village 8 didn't gain any new knowledge minimal knowledge sharing 11 minimal knowledge sharing NA 15 knowledge was not shared NA 56
Fifty percent of respondents said that there was some environmental knowledge sharing in second and third locations between people who came from other places, but in these cases the amount of knowledge shared was minimal (table 10) such as the introduction of new crops. As one respondent explained, it only occurred if they were introduced to an educated person or someone who could share knowledge they had gathered through their work experience.
Objective 3 hypothesis 4 is confirmed; the general consensus was that traditional environmental knowledge that had been passed down through generations did not vary much from village to village considering that the people they were introduced to through their migration process were usually from neighbouring villages that would have had at least a minimum level of communication before hand. It is interesting that this is in direct contrast to Kondylis' (2008) findings on migration and exchange of environmental knowledge.
3.2.9 Summary on Land Degradation
The problem of land degradation was very dynamic and while it was experienced by most participants increasingly after displacement, there were a number of different drivers. The lower quality of land to which most respondents had access after displacement was due to population concentration, but it was exacerbated in some cases by deforestation.
Forty four percent of participants experienced an increase in deforestation in their second location as opposed to their first. Forty four percent experienced a decrease and 11% experienced no change. All participants (3) who went onto a third location before coming to the refugee camp experienced an increase or no change in the level of deforestation (table 19). Deforestation by logging companies causes soil erosion, and the land is less likely to be used by participants if they can’t burn the vegetation on the plot to use the ash to fertilize the soil. This limits the land 57 available, pushing participants onto more marginalized lands, and leading to stress being put on the good agricultural land that remains.
Some people cultivated smaller plots of land as a result of deforestation and population concentration. Problems associated with the use of synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides were not present, largely due to the lack of access to such products. Few people cultivated during the dry season, but some participants were forced to use land that was left fallow for an inadequate amount of time. Unfortunately, objective 3 hypothesis 4 was confirmed by the data and the exchange of environmental knowledge between different communities was very minimal.
Keane (2004) identifies three potential drivers of environmental problems in displaced communities. The data on land degradation supports his claim that high population densities can lead to land degradation. There is nothing in the data on land degradation to support Keane’s claim that displaced people have less of an incentive to preserve the environment because they view their stay as temporary. Cultivation and land selection practices used in second and third locations were similar to those the participant used in their point of origin.
3.3 Food Security
Low levels of food security was a common theme amongst participants. Seventy percent of respondents experienced an decrease in food security in the second location relative to their point of origin, while 30% experienced no change. There were no instances where participants had more food in their second location than in their point of origin. Of the three participants who lived in a third location before they migrated to the refugee camp, two experienced no change in food security relative to their point of origin and the third had less food than he had in his point of origin, but more than he had in his second location. 58
The fact that food security decreases after displacement is intuitive in this situation but different from situations where people migrate for ecological or economic reasons in search of a better livelihood. In these situations migration is a strategy to mitigate food insecurity. Land degradation was a commonly sited driver of food insecurity amongst participants as has been discussed above, but it wasn’t the only driving factor.
3.3.1 Drivers of Food Insecurity
Table 11: Drivers of food insecurity as reported by participants
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) 1. Livelihood challenges due to political situation 2. unsustainable environmental 2 NA NA practices by locals and government, 3. Climate Change 1. livelihood challenges due to 3 NA NA political situation 5 Usually had enough food NA NA 1. Livelihood challenges due to 6 Usually had enough food NA political situation 7 Usually had enough food Usually had enough food NA 1. climate change 2. decreased price of crops 3. pop growth 4. 8 Usually had enough food NA challenges imposed by the SPDC 1. climate change and 2. 10 Usually had enough food challenges imposed by the NA SPDC 1. challenges imposed by the 1. less able to work land as his 11 Same as in the point of origin SPDC parent got older 1. challenges imposed by the 12 1. No space to shift cultivation Same as in the point of origin SPDC 1. climate change and 2. 1. climate change and 2. 14 challenges imposed by the challenges imposed by the NA SPDC SPDC 15 1. lack of development 2. 1. climate change and 2. NA 59
challenges imposed by the challenges imposed by the SPDC SPDC 1.climate change and 2. 16 challenges imposed by the NA NA SPDC 1. climate change 2. Deforestation 3. population 1. Large family with kids too 17 growth/concentrations 4. NA young to work challenges imposed by the SPDC 1. challenges imposed by the 20 NA NA SPDC
Eleven percent of respondents were driven to land degradation in second locations after not having to put stress on their land in their point of origin. Seventy seven percent did not experience land degradation in either location and 11% experienced less land degradation in their second location than in their point of origin. No respondents experienced land degradation in their third location (table 11).
Stress is often put on land as a result of food insecurity. Declining yields were caused by a large variety of factors. Fifty four percent of respondents said that in their point of origin food insecurity resulted from actions, restrictions or stresses imposed by either the government or the
Karenni Army as a direct result of the political situation (looting of food storages, theft of livestock, forced labour, limited mobility, arbitrary taxation etc.). Climate change has led to rain arriving later in the rainy season, meaning that wild animals will eat the seed planted by farmers in their fields before they can establish roots in the soil; 23% of respondents reported that this was a problem in their point of origin. One respondent reported that each of the following things led to food insecurity; large family size, lack of development, and deforestation.
In second locations, 70% said that the political situation, 50% said climate change leading to late-season rain arrival, 20% said that population growth from either increased birth rates or 60 population concentration as a result of displacement, 10% said that deforestation, and 10% said that decreasing food prices lowered their food security. In third locations both respondents reported that the political situation was the only factor contributing to their food insecurity.
3.3.2 Strategies Implemented in Situations of Food Insecurity
Table 12: Strategies for increasing food security in different locations
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Camp Displacement) Displacement) support from church, 2 NA NA NA community food sharing eat a mixture of rice and corn, sell peanuts, work 3 for meals (farms, NA NA NA industries), sell brass blowpipe 5 usually had enough food NA NA NA sell forest resources 7 same NA NA (turtles, meat) 8 use savings, debt same same NA logging for 9 NA NA NA income 11 debt sell forest resources, debt debt NA 12 usually enough food, debt increased debt debt NA 14 sell timber (teak), debt same NA NA 15 usually had enough sell wild meat NA NA 16 crowd fields with rice NA NA NA 17 debt, bigger farm debt, chemical fertilizers NA NA KNPP support, hidden 20 NA NA NA food stores in the jungle smuggle animals & 21 cheroots (cigars) into hunting, food sharing NA NA Thailand
Strategies for mitigating food insecurity were wide-ranging. Fifty percent of participants used some form of food sharing, or debt between community members as a strategy for 61 mitigating food insecurity. Of those respondents that went onto a second location, all who used debts or food sharing in their point of origin continued to do so in their second location (62.5%)
(table 13). This was the most common form of food insecurity mitigation, but there was a wide variety of other strategies employed.
Communities also often kept hidden food storages in the jungle if they were vulnerable to looting by the military. Other participants tried changing the types of crops they grew to increase productivity (corn, peanuts, and brass-blowpipe were experimented with in place of rice). In one case, a participant started smuggling animals and cheroots (cigars) into Thailand from Burma to sell for income generation.
Nine percent of participants relied upon the collection and sale of environmental resources in their point of origin and 38% of participants only started to use environmental resource collection as a livelihood strategy in their second location in response to increased food insecurity (table 13). This result supports objective 2 hypothesis 2 which predicts that displacement is affecting natural resource depletion. All of the participants who employed this strategy in their point of origin continued to do so in their following locations (table 13).
Primarily, teak wood was cut and sold, but flowers, turtles, and other wild meats where also sold to supplement family incomes.
It has been well documented that people turn to environmentally degradative livelihood strategies in times of economic vulnerability and poverty (Keane, 2004; KESAN, 2005; Locke et al., 2000). This phenomenon was present in most participant's situations, but most were also found to rely more heavily on kith and kinship security networks than environmentally degradative livelihood strategies. The one notable exception to this is in the collection and sale of natural resources, which can lead to natural resource depletion, and the loss of biodiversity 62
(Keane, 2004; Nesheim, et al., 2006; Kondylis, 2008). Natural resource depletion, and its environmental and ecological effects are revisited in more detail in the following sections.
3.3.3 Generation of Economic Vulnerability by Political Organizations
Table 13: Human rights violations experienced by participants in different locations
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Displacement) Displacement) forced labour, violence, four 1 forced labour NA cuts policy killings, burn food storage, curfew, restricted mobility, 2 NA NA forced labour, violence, arrests, torture, arbitrary taxation looting, arbitrary taxation, 3 forced labour, arrests, torture, NA NA threats, 5 none NA NA 6 NA looting, forced labour NA lack of mobility, looting, 7 forced labour, arbitrary land-mines, forced labour, NA taxation, crop damage, torture, looting, arbitrary forced labour, torture, land- same, but no lack of mobility, 8 taxation, forced labour, lack of mines, looting, arbitrary arbitrary taxation mobility taxation, lack of mobility lack of mobility, land mines, 10 looting, crop damage, NA arbitrary taxation forced labour, torture, arrests, same as in point of origin 11 threats, looting, land mines, except no permission to farm Same as in point of origin lack of mobility and less mobility, forced labour, torture, arrests, Same as in point of origin 12 threats, looting, land mines, except less mobility and more NA lack of mobility looting forced labour, arbitrary forced labour, arbitrary 14 taxation, land-mines, arrests, taxation, torture, killings, NA torture arrests forced labour, arrests, killings, forced labour, looting, land- 15 land-mines, looting, lack of NA mines, lack of mobility mobility forced labour, looting, 17 none NA landmines from dams, 63
constantly fleeing, violence, 20 none NA looting, burning crops constantly fleeing, violence, 21 none looting, landmines, forced NA labor
The junta carries out a wide range of activities which compromise the Karenni people’s food security. In their points of origin:
83% were subject to forced labour
58% had food or money taken from them by the military
50% suffered from political persecution in the form of torture, rape, arrest, threats or
killings
50% had their mobility restricted
33% lived in areas with land-mines in close proximity to their village (table 12)
In second locations:
83% were subject to forced labour
75% had food or money taken from them by the military
42% suffered from political persecution in the form of torture, rape, arrest, threats or
killings
58% had their mobility restricted
66% lived in areas with land-mines in close proximity to their village (table 12)
In second locations however, oppression at the hands of the SPDC was highly contingent upon the type of location people moved to. All of those who were ordered to relocation sites experienced an increase in the frequency of things such as forced labour, torture, threats, and lack of mobility. As one respondent put it,
“they live with the village, they don’t have troop. Because they around to patrol, and then 64
they come to live like one week or two week and live in the village…when they arrive in
the relocation site and the village no body go to outside because the people is very afraid to
SPDC because SPDC when they arrive in the village they have many question and they
arrest village headmaster and the beat and they torture”.
Relocations sites are always in close proximity to SPDC barracks so that the SPDC can easily monitor and control the population. This close proximity makes those who live in relocation sites easy targets for exploitation whenever the SPDC is in need of forced labour, food, information, or other resources.
The experience of participants who fled to new villages where they had kith or kinship ties was more wide ranging. Some participants had the ability to migrate to villages that would be more safe from SPDC exploitation and oppression, while others were forced out of the relative safety of their isolation and migrated to villages that were easier for the SPDC to access. One participant, for example, had never seen the SPDC in his remote village until they came to burn it down and order the residents out.
Those living in villages that were perpetually migrating, lived along the front lines of the conflict between the SPDC and the KNPP. These communities suffered the direct consequences of violence more than others, such as wounds from conflict or land-mines, as well as restricted mobility for safety reasons, and looting of food storages and animals when territory was lost. The
KNPP was able to protect them from forms of SPDC exploitation such as forced labour, arrests, torture, threats, looting, and arbitrary taxation most of the time.
All participants who went onto a third location reported that the problems they encountered from the SPDC were similar to those experienced in their second locations. 65
3.4 Natural Resource Depletion
Table 14: Availability of natural resources used by participants ranked on a five point scale
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Camp Displacement) Displacement) 1 5 2 NA 1.5 2 4 NA NA 1.5 3 2 NA NA 1.5 4 NA NA NA 2 5 4 NA NA 1.5 6 5 2 NA NA 7 4 1 NA 1.5 8 5 3 2 1.5 9 NA NA NA 1 10 5 1 NA NA 11 4 1 NA 1.5 12 4 2 NA 1.5 14 2 4 NA 1.5 15 5 4 NA NA 16 4 NA NA NA 17 5 2 NA NA initially 4 but 18 NA NA 1.5 decreased to 2.5 initially 4 but 19 NA NA 1.5 decreased to 2.5 20 NA 4 NA 1.5 21 5 5 NA 2
Table 15: Availability of specific natural resources in the point of origin
No. of Respondents Using Product Availability Average Availability the Resource vegetables 7 #, 2, #, 4, 5, 5, # 4 fruits 5 #, 2, #, 5, 5 4 medicinal plants 3 #, 4 4 timber 8 #, 5, #, 3, #, #, #, 5 4.3 66
bamboo 4 #, 5, 3, 4 4 flowers 3 4, #, # 4 animals 8 4, 2, 5, 4, 5, 5, 3, # 4 birds 2 #, # # chickens 1 # # wild boar 3 #, 5, 5 5 deer 5 #, #, 3, #, 5 4 frog 1 # # monkey 5 #, #, 5, 3, 4 4 big rats 4 #, 3, #, 4 3.5 fish 4 #, 5, #, 4 4.5 bear 5 #, #, 5, #, 4 4.5 tiger 3 #, 1, 3 2 wild buffalo 1 # # turtles 1 4 4 rabbit 1 # # snake 1 4 4 wild dog 1 4 4 *** The “#” indicates a respondent that reported a natural resource was available but did not rank its availability
Table 16: Availability of individual natural resources in the location #2
No. of Respondents Using Product Availability Average Availability the Resource turtles 2 5, 3 4 flowers 2 5, 3 4 vegetables 4 5, 3, 5, 3 4 animals 3 5, 2, 1 2.7 trees 4 1, 1, 1, 5 2 bamboo 2 1, 5 3 fruit 2 3, # 3 animals 3 1, 5, 4 3.3 deer 3 4, #, 4 4 rabbit 1 4 4 birds 2 3, 4 3.5 67
cat 1 # # pig 2 #, 4 4 bear 2 #, 4 4 buffalo 1 # # rat 1 4 4 monkey 1 4 4 snakes 1 3 3 fish 1 4 4
Table 17: Availability of individual natural resources in the location #3
No. of Respondents Using Product Availability Average Availability the Resource animals 1 1.5 1.5 bamboo 1 2 2 trees 1 2 2 fruits 1 2 2 vegetables 1 2 2
Table 18: Availability of individual natural resources in the refugee camp
No. of Respondents Using Product Availability Average Availability the Resources birds 2 2, 2 2 fish 2 2, 1 1.5 vegetable 1 3, 3 frogs 1 2.5 3.5 turtles 1 5 5 big lizard 1 5 5 bamboo shoots, 1 5 5 mushrooms 1 5 5 “long squiggly vegetable” 1 5 5
Eighty two percent of respondents had fewer natural resources available to them overall in their second location as compared to their point of origin. Nine percent of respondents had 68 about the same access to natural resources in both locations, albeit there was variation in the specific availability of individual resources, and 9% of respondents had more access to natural resources in their second location as compared to their point of origin.
Natural resource availability in second locations was on average ranked two points lower on the five point scale than points of origin. The one respondent who went onto a third location before coming to the refugee camp experienced a one point drop in overall natural resource availability as compared to his second location and a drop of 3 points as compared to his point of origin.
Seventy seven percent of respondents had more natural resource availability in their second location as compared to the refugee camp, and 100% of respondents had better natural resource availability in their point of origin as compared to the refugee camp. There was an average 3 point drop in forest resources in the refugee camp as compared to respondents’ points of origin.
This stark drop in forest resources with every stage of displacement is startling and the explanation for such a drop is multi-dimensional. The three dominant explanations are that natural resource depletion is driven by the concentration of populations into smaller areas leading to a higher number of people extracting forest resources, for their own consumption and for sale, from a smaller geographic area. The explanation also includes the exploitation of natural resources by large logging companies, as well as the government and other armed forces in an effort to fund civil conflict, and an increased reliance on natural resources as a food insecurity mitigation mechanism. These findings support Keane's (2004) explanation of natural resource depletion in refugee settings.
It must also be kept in mind that migrations of people over space overlap with changes 69 that are occurring over time. Population growth as a consequence of high birth rates were reported by many participants to be a significant trend. Displacement doesn't impact natural resources in a vacuum. There are other factors creating noise in the data.
3.4.1 Deforestation
Table 19: Deforestation as reported by participants in different locations
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Refugee Camp Displacement) Displacement) 1 lots of deforestation not much deforestation NA lots of deforestation 2 lots of deforestation NA NA lots of deforestation 3 lots of deforestation NA NA lots of deforestation none, but the area was completely logged 5 NA NA lots of deforestation after the village was displaced 6 lots of deforestation more deforestation NA NA none, but the area was 8 completely logged some deforestation lots of deforestation lots of deforestation after displacement lots of deforestation 9 NA NA NA and increasing none, but the area was 10 flooded after lots of deforestation NA NA displacement slightly less 11 lots of deforestation lots of deforestation deforestation than in lots of deforestation the point of origin slightly less 12 lots of deforestation some deforestation deforestation than in lots of deforestation the point of origin 14 lots of deforestation No data NA lots of deforestation some deforestation and 15 lots of deforestation NA NA decreasing 16 lots of deforestation NA NA NA 17 some deforestation lots of deforestation NA NA 18 NA some deforestation NA lots of deforestation 70
19 NA some deforestation NA lots of deforestation 20 NA some deforestation NA lots of deforestation 21 some deforestation none NA lots of deforestation
Thirty eight percent of participants that left villages which were completely displaced of all their inhabitants were able to confirm that the forest surrounding their point of origin had been either completely or heavily deforested after the area was made vacant due to the villager’s displacement. Moreover, after being displaced, many participants never returned or received information about the environmental state of their point of origin, so it stands to reason that 38% is an underestimation of the number of villages whose forests were cut after they were displaced, because many logging operations would have been carried out without the awareness of the participants.
Forty four percent of participants experienced an increase in deforestation in their second location as compared to their point of origin. Forty four percent experienced a decrease and 11% experienced no change. All participants (3) who went onto a third location before coming to the refugee camp experienced an increase or no change in the level of deforestation. Fifty eight percent of participants said that the deforestation around the refugee camp was more than that in their previous location, and conversely 42% reported that deforestation in the refugee camp was less than or similar to that in their previous location (table 19). This result somewhat reflects the trends identified by Keane (2004) as leading to increased deforestation in refugee camps. It also supports again objective 2 hypothesis 2; displacement affects natural resource depletion.
The refugee camp has an extremely high population density (~15,000 people on ~2.5 km2 of land). This high level of population density would lead to large levels of deforestation inside Burma, but there are a number of reasons why deforestation in the area surrounding the 71 refugee camp is minimal. Agricultural activities are prohibited in the refugee camp, refugees are dependent on aid for food as opposed to agriculture. This means that slash-and-burn agricultural practices which generate a large amount of deforestation in Karenni are not processes occurring in the refugee camp. Refugees also get monthly rations of charcoal reducing their dependency on fuelwood. Finally, in 2003 the Thai government established the Namtok Pha Suea National Park, in which the Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp is situated. This means that now any form of commercial logging or natural resource extraction is illegal in the area. It also means that refugees are prohibited from cutting down trees for fuelwood.
There is some deforestation however resulting from illegal logging activities, that have been on the rise over the past few years. One participant explained the situation very clearly.
Over the last five years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people being resettled from the refugee camp to third countries. This is in large part due to the fact that the
USA has removed its quota on the number of Burmese refugees it will accept into the country each year, leading to a flood of refugees being resettled to the USA. Over the past 5 years more than 5,000 people have been resettled,
“when you had resettlement… refugees resettling to a third country would get a job,
earning US dollars and send it back. So you had the remittance economy, and suddenly
people were able to afford a lot more. So there’s more disposable income in camp and so
there were more shops, prices went up, salaries went up…the other thing that happened at
the same time was that people working with NGOs got salary increases. But people
working with local [community based organizations] didn’t, so you had a big disparity in
incomes. Some people were able to afford more expensive things which were suddenly
available in camp, whilst the majority couldn’t”. 72
Refugees are using illegal logging to supplement their incomes. On top of that, the amount of food offered to refugees has dropped from 2,180 calories per person per day to 1,850 calories per person per day since 2007 (TBBC, 2011). TBBC’s (Thailand-Burma Boarder
Consortium) budget for food basket provision has been cut as a result of a lack of funding due to the recent global financial crisis. One of the ways in which refugees have started to generate income is by selling their charcoal rations and cutting down trees for fuelwood to replace it.
Some people have also started selling timber to illegal logging companies. There are Thai people in the village (Nai Soi) nearby the refugee camp who purchase teak and other woods illegally taken from the forest by refugees, but the scale of this black market logging operation is limited, because the Thai authorities do make efforts to limit these activities as they are illegal (the refugee camp is in the middle of a Thai National Park).
In participant’s point of origin logging companies paid commissions to villagers for trees
(especially teak) in 29% of cases. Twenty percent of participants in second locations, and 33% of participants in third locations had logging companies near their village that gave commissions to local villagers for timber.
Logging operations were carried out by the SPDC in forests that participants depended on for the collection of forest resources in 36% of the participants' points of origin. Ten percent of participants in second locations were affected by SPDC logging operations, 10% by KNPP operations, and 0% of participants in third locations were affected by SPDC or KNPP logging operations.
Driving this deforestation is the vulnerability of Karenni people who do not have environmentally sustainable income generation options available to them, but it is also generated by the willingness of the junta to sell logging commissions to international logging companies. It 73 provides the junta with quick, easy cash to fund their military efforts, and the logging operations occur in the ethnic areas, away from where the ethnically Burmese people live. The deforestation doesn’t directly affect the ethnically Burmese junta, and the hardships and costs of such operations are outsourced to the ethnic minority groups such as the Karenni.
3.4.2 Environmental Management
As has been hinted at thus far, natural resource management strategies have large environmental implications especially for natural resource depletion, but also for land degradation. In the Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp there are two bodies responsible for environmental management; there is the Thai government and the Refugee Committee. In most refugee settings the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) takes a much more prominent role, but in Ban Mai Nai Soi,
“they’re not quite as strong as they could be, so camp management is done by a camp
committee.”
The refugee camp is a very different situation than anything inside Karenni. Ban Mai Nai
Soi is the second largest concentration of Karenni people anywhere in the world. The vast majority of Karenni people in the camp come from small villages of maybe 100 people, so they’re not used to dealing with the new set of environmental challenges that have arisen in the refugee camp and they don’t have traditional systems which address those problems.
“Normally there should be a whole set of regulations that aren’t in place now and haven’t
been followed. So things like not putting a pig pen on top of the river, not putting a latrine
close to the river, not putting a rubbish disposal area near to the river. These regulations
aren’t there and they haven’t been followed.” 74
This result supports objective 3 hypotheses 1 and 3; 1. land owners and managers are changing with environmental ramifications, and 3. the ability of longstanding social institutions that address these problems changed due to displacement. This result is also in line with claims made by Karen Rivers Watch (2004), KESAN (2005), Kibreab (1997), and Gellert & Lynch
(2003). A more in-depth look at specific environmental management activities and strategies employed in the camp can be found in the following sections.
Inside Karenni, various natural resources are managed to varying degrees by various parties. The most stringent party with the most clearly defined rules and regulations would be the
Karenni National Political Party, which imposes natural resource laws in sovereign territories which the Karenni Army control. The most significant piece of environmental legislation that they have is the prohibition of commercial logging. Trees can be cut for the clearing of agricultural land, or for village construction purposes but not for sale to logging companies. They protect some rare species of trees from logging such as Saw-Noh-Mway (a Kayah word), and they also enforce hunting regulations which prohibit the hunting of many endangered and threatened species such as elephants, tigers, wild cows and gibbons.
Most respondents reported that there were no formal structures or restrictions implemented by the community, on the natural resources they could take or the locations where they could set up farms with a couple of minor exceptions. Deforestation near burial sites was usually forbidden out of respect for the dead. Occasionally villages had agreed to prohibit deforestation near river banks or near the edges of lakes to prevent erosion. In a couple of cases efforts had been made within the community leadership to limit the number of trees that could be sold to logging companies to slow deforestation, but this wasn’t often seen as a viable option because it was usually turned to as a last economic resort for the poorest families to feed themselves. 75
Traditional religious practices played a larger environmental management role within those communities.
3.4.3 The Role of Animist Religion in Environmental Management
Karenni Animism provides an informal kind of environmental protection. Engrained in the belief is a respect for the natural environment. A participant explained that in,
“animism the belief is that everything has a spirit that protect it. Lets say the mountain,
the mountain spirit protect the mountain, the forest has the forest spirit, and the water
source has a spirit, and the living they also have spirit, the animal has its own spirit, and
everything you have to respect the spirit, not upset the spirit.”
Respecting spirits is done through making offerings and carrying out rituals for the spirits as well as only taking what one needs and sharing what one takes from the environment with the whole community. For example,
“there is tradition, we call geh-poh-mi all the big animal you hunt you cannot bring it to...
your own house. You have to bring it to the elder and they help you cut it and divide it no?
So if you hunt, you get 50% of the meat. The rest 50% is divide into small piece equally to
every household”
Animism puts a large emphasis on the management of deforestation. It offers direction
“when you cutting in the forest for selecting your farm” for the belief is that you may,
“upset the forest spirit or the mountain spirit get upset and make you sick or harm you
make you die… The elder in the village they decide that you cannot go and cutting there or
farming there is a strong spirit…We not need police to punish the people.”
It is harder for traditional Animist beliefs to influence the actions of logging companies 76 which may or may not share their beliefs, but as one participant put it,
“when the logging community come in I know it already, and there are big tree very nearby
my village, and we believe that the big tree there are spirit, and we never cut that big tree
cause we are scared of the spirit. And the company come for logging and the elder tell them
you cannot. There is spirit. The spirit will be upset. So its a kind of protection.”
Animist beliefs are likely to have an impact on the people who the logging companies depend upon for cheap labor, the local people who are not formal employees of the companies but are paid concessions to cut trees from the forest and sell them to the large firms.
Probably the most significant role that Animism plays in environmental protection is the way in which it promotes the idea that the environment is not something that people are the owners of, or the conquerors of, or that they are entitled to. The natural world to Karenni people belongs to something bigger than themselves. They see themselves as interacting with the natural world rather than having a unidirectional relationship with it that involves them simply taking all they can. The only control on that exploitative mindset being the threat that they might not be able to take as much from it in the future. They truly know that the environment can affect them just as they can affect the environment. This fact is appreciated with a depth that is not seen in the Western world.
A really interesting example of this in a ritual called Swarma. It was described that
“When you pound rice for cooking you put the rice into the basket this way with the turtle
shell, and it mean the turtle is slow so you take it this way slowly and respectfully. If you
take it quickly it mean the rice will run out. Not to waste it. All this belief if you translate,
in conclusion you save, you care, you respect, but people not fully able to translate what
they are doing into that way. The elder apply the spirit to dread the society to be humble, to 77
take only what you need. That what it mean in my interpretation.”
This participant recognizes value in conservation; there is value in taking only what one needs and no more. And the teachings of this are applicable to the mindset the Karenni take towards the environment and the ways in which they interact with it everyday. Unfortunately, traditional Animist practices are being slowly lost as people are increasingly converted to
Christianity, or Buddhism.
Table 20: Historical religious conversion of participants' families
Participant Religion Practice many religious rituals intertwined with the 1 Baptist, grandparents converted culture and they still practice converted to Roman Catholicism in 94 - can’t do any of the rituals, never learned but 2 believes a bit in both believes in them family converted to Roman Catholicism in 3 NA approximately 1970 4 Animist NA 5 Animist NA 6 Animist NA 7 Animist NA 8 Buddhist, grandparents converted still practice many traditional religious rituals 9 Baptist NA 11 converted to Roman Catholicism in 1994 still de facto animists, still do traditional rituals Baptist, family converted in approximately 12 NA 1975/1980 14 Buddhist, mother converted still practice traditional practices 16 Baptist NA most converts, “they practice more 21 Animist compromised thing with this belief.”
Thirty six percent of participants called themselves followers of the Animist faith. Of the participant’s families who converted to Christianity or Buddhism from the traditional Animist religion, 71% did so quit recently (during their parent’s generation, or their own). All of the
Christian or Buddhist participants still practiced some traditional animist religious rituals and 78 held many animist beliefs, although to a lesser degree (table 20). As one participant put it, although there is still a large community of Animists, many converted people have started to practice a more, “compromised form of animism”, without doing as many rituals or without as much emphasis on traditional beliefs.
It is hard to know how displacement has affected the level of religious conversion. A few participants said that the access to social services provided by religious charities was the main reason they converted. Certainly, exposure to these groups and to people of other religions is integral to the conversion process. In the refugee camp there are two bible schools funded privately by an American church in Florida, and the international agency which funds and manages most of the education system in the camp is Jesuit Relief Services (JRS). Unlike the bible schools, JRS works with children of all faiths, but these organizations may be representative of a higher level of exposure to the Christian faith which may influence the rate of religious conversion amongst people in the refugee camp.
I propose that the findings on the ways in which religious practices have changed, support objective 3, hypotheses 2 and 4; 2. institutions responsible for protecting traditional knowledge and practices are changing, and 4.vast local environmental knowledge bases are being lost as a result of displacement. This is supported by claims made by KESAN (2005).
Inside Burma however, most international aid agencies are still prohibited from working, and foreigners are prohibited from traveling in Karenni State due to the violent conflict. These factors may serve as a sort of protection, preserving Animist beliefs from being washed away by the tides of globalization, which still have not heavily penetrated Karenni. In a lot of ways
Karenni is very shut out from the rest of the world, but many working on the Thai-Burma boarder claim that this is beginning to change, and Burma is becoming more accessible to 79 foreigners and foreign organizations. It will be interesting to see how this affects rates of religious conversion in Karenni.
3.4.4 Summary on Displacement's Effect on Natural Resource Depletion
The dynamics of changing environmental management practices are impacting the environment in various ways and it would be inappropriate to make an unconditional claim that the changes have been positive or negative. Certainly the KNPP’s loss of territory has been detrimental, as they have been much more responsible environmental managers than the junta has been. That said, they are not without their negative environmental impacts. They have granted logging concessions in controlled areas, but on a much smaller scale than the SPDC.
The KNPP is the political organization which holds the vast majority of the support of the
Karenni people, so one could say that their relatively strong efforts to protect the environment are a testament to the value of local control. On the local level, environmental protection mechanisms were fairly unorganized and informal, but that comes out of the low impact that traditional Karenni livelihoods have had on the environment. That said, displacement is changing the living conditions of the Karenni people. In these situations there has been a limited capacity to respond to these issues. This is what has been seen in the refugee camp. In many cases there has been a lack of willingness to change traditional practices to address new problems, because those practices have been sustainable and effective for such a long time.
The data from this study supports Keane’s (2004) three drivers of natural resource depletion amongst displaced populations; they rely on natural resources more heavily to sustain their livelihoods, they extract natural resources on top of what host populations were already extracting, and rapid changes can affect fragile environments. The last point in particular is 80 illustrated in the inability to respond quickly to rapidly degrading environments.
3.5 Environmental Recovery of Abandoned Areas
In large part, I have focused on the environmental impacts that migration has on the locations to which displaced people are migrating, but as a large portion of the literature states: environments from which people are displaced are often left fallow and thus given the opportunity to recover (Locke, et al., 2000; Kondylis, 2008). Access to data on the ability of environments to recover after displacement was limited, as participants don’t have first hand experiences with areas after they've left them and it was not possible to conduct research inside
Burma.
There was however a refugee camp on the Thai side of the border which was abandoned in 2002, as the Thai government chose to amalgamate the five refugee camps that existed in Mae
Hong Son province at that time into two larger camps. One participant explained that this was so that the refugee population would be easier to control, and so that the refugees could be moved further away from existing Thai villages. Also, they had just established the Thai Namtok Pha
Suea National Park in which the camps were situated, so they wanted to limit the areas that would be environmentally degraded to reduce habitat fragmentation of wild populations. It was possible to visit one of these camp sites that had been abandoned for nine years, and interview some of the previous inhabitants of that camp.
The camp was home to 4,410 people before they started being relocated to other sites
(TBBC, 2002). People were moved out gradually, and needed to take everything they had which included taking their houses apart so that they could be rebuilt in the next site. As a result the only things left behind were a few concrete pads that were floors in some of the old buildings, 81 such as the clinic. Limited environmental restoration efforts were made, but the waste was cleaned up by the refugee community.
Vegetation had begun to return to the area and most of the old site was covered with early successional species. Few large trees remained as most were cleared while the refugees lived there, but some teak had been replanted through a tree-planting community initiative in the nearby Thai village of Nai Soi. These teak trees were still small.
A lot of the land that was cleared for the refugee camp was being cultivated by either
Thai people, or Padaung refugees (The small group of ethnic Padaung refugees were permitted to live in a village outside the refugee camp, because the “long-neck women” who wear brass rings around their elongated necks are a tourist attraction which supports the Thai economy). This is an indicator that the soil remained fecund enough, and uncontaminated enough, so that it was suitable for cultivation.
Despite the fact that a high concentration of people were living at this refugee camp site for upwards of ten years, the fecundity of the soil, and the return of vegetation indicate that the site is recovering, and in time would return to a forested state. I believe that this case study is representative of what would occur in most Karenni villages after people have been displaced from them. One unique feature of this case is that people took the materials used to build their houses with them. None of the participants did this in Karenni when they were displaced, but their houses are made of bamboo, and the roofs of leaves, so they would be completely biodegradable. The lack of pollution, and toxic chemicals used in Karenni due to its complete lack of rural industrialization make it fair to hypothesize that the environments surrounding displaced Karenni villages would be able to recover quite well in the absence of human activity.
The negative environmental effects of displacement have been highlighted in this paper, but this 82 is a beacon of hope for the current environmental situation in Karenni. It confirms objective 2, hypothesis 4; migration has environmentally beneficial and detrimental impacts.
3.5.1 Waste Management
Waste management was not perceived as a problem by any of the participants in the point of origin, largely because very few goods were purchased and their villages generated very small amounts of waste that were not biodegradable, however the small amount of waste that was generated was usually managed in a fashion that was not ideal. Trash was often flushed down rivers, or burned, which has implications for the health of terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems and the people that interact with those ecosystems.
Fourteen percent of respondents perceived waste management to be a problem in their second location. Those participants migrated to towns near Loikaw (the capital of Karenni) where people tend to rely much more heavily on industrial goods which generate inorganic waste. Especially problematic were plastics which were burned in Loikaw.
Table 21: Amount of goods purchased in different locations
Location #2 (Post- Location #3 (Post- Participant Point of Origin Refugee Camp Displacement) Displacement) very little – cloths and 3 NA NA lots food, 5 none NA NA NA 9 NA NA NA lots same as in the point of 11 some, mostly food less lots origin same as in the point of 12 some, mostly food less lots origin 15 none very little NA NA some, start using 16 western medicines and NA NA NA other imported goods 17 almost nothing a lot NA NA 83
18 very little less NA quite a lot 19 very little less NA quite a lot some - cloths, and 21 same NA a lot more tools
The amount of goods purchased in shops by communities relative to the reliance on natural resources is a strong indicator of waste generation, as non biodegradable waste is almost always generated through industrial processes. Those purchased goods are, for the most part, made out of inorganic compounds which don't decompose or have packaging that won't easily decompose, generating a waste management challenge. Sixty three percent of participants purchased more things in their second location as opposed to their first, while 25% purchased less. Of the participants who purchased fewer things in their second location as compared to their first, this was because of more severe poverty in their second location which didn’t allow them to purchase very many things. All participants purchased more things in the refugee camp than they ever had before (table 21).
The most common things that participants purchased from shops, in order of frequency with which they were purchased, were food, clothes, agricultural tools, medicines and very rarely motorbikes.
The initial thinking with regards to objective 2 hypothesis 3; 'Displacement is changing consumption patterns with environmental consequences' was that because the process of displacement usually sent people to places with higher population densities, people in these places would have more access to goods for purchase. Indeed, many participants did not have a shop in their point of origin. The nearest one was, in some cases, a number of days walk away.
There was a general trend of increasing reliance on goods purchased from shops, but I believe this was a change that happened over time regardless of whether or not people were displaced. 84
Many participants saw shops open up over the past twenty years without any population growth occurring. There has been an increased demand for purchasable goods especially amongst young people because they are seen as superior to traditionally used natural resources, and in some cases because of economic changes leading to greater purchasing power.
The refugee camp is an almost urban environment where there are many shops selling all sorts of things. With the recent increase in remittences from resettled refugees and the exhaustion of many natural resources because of the high density living, it is easy to understand why refugees rely on purchased goods much more than those inside Karenni. An International Rescue
Committee employee said that the waste management situation in Ban Mai Nai Soi held similar challenges to the situations they face dealing with waste in other refugee camps around the world.
While waste management was not in most cases perceived to be a challenge or of particular importance, it is a problem that is growing in importance to the Karenni people. Small villages usually don't have facilities to deal with solid waste so the waste is burned, flushed down rivers, or left in an open pile. Westing (1994) similarly found that structural management challenges arising from migration made waste management a problem. It can lead to problems for wild life that eat garbage or get caught in it and the leaching of toxic chemicals leads to water pollution if flushed down the river and to atmospheric pollution if burned. 85
Chapter 4: Conclusions
4.1 Final thoughts
Forced displacement has had a mixture of effects on the environment. To reiterate, Keane
(2004) provided three channels through which environmental issues can arise in situations of displacement: firstly, high population densities can lead to natural resource depletion, waste management problems, sanitation problems and land degradation; secondly, there is a tendency for refugees to migrate to environmentally fragile areas, which can in turn lead to natural resource depletion and land degradation; and thirdly, there is often found to be a lack of incentive amongst refugees to preserve the environment, because the land isn’t theirs and they view their stay there as temporary (Keane, 2004).
This paper supports Keane’s first two claims. Population concentration in relocation sites and villages that hosted newly displaced arrivals led to land degradation. Land degradation was also found to a lesser degree in newly founded villages, usually because they were built in close proximity to other villages, or because they were forced to build their village on more marginalized land. Newly arriving populations were forced onto more marginalized lands, and fallow periods were shortened to meet the demands for agricultural land. These results confirm objective 2 hypothesis 1. The use of marginalized land supports Keane’s second claim that there is a tendency for refugees to migrate to environmentally fragile areas (Keane, 2004).
Agricultural practices and land selection methods showed minimal elasticity in trying to address land degradation due to the lack of education about alternative agricultural methods leading participants to believe that traditional agricultural methods, which have been used for generations, were the most sustainable and productive options to them. Contrary to the hypotheses, participants were rarely able to use modern agricultural inputs and technologies such 86 as fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural machinery due to their severe poverty.
Population concentration led to a strangling of natural resources in relocation sites, refugee camps, and villages that hosted newly displaced arrivals due to the fact that increasing numbers of people were extracting forest resources from the forests adjacent to their pertaining village, and also due to the fact that increasing levels of poverty, driven largely by the oppression of their political situation, led participants to increasingly rely on the collection and sale of natural resources to supplement their income. Hypothesis 2 from objective 2 was confirmed with this data.
Waste management and sanitation issues only became a problem that was perceived by participants as significant in the refugee camps. Population concentration was part of the explanation for this, but in places where population growth had occurred inside Karenni these were not perceived to be significant problems. The different outcomes in different situations provided a mixture of confirmation and rejection of objective 2, hypothesis 3. The remittence economy from resettled refugees generated an increase in deposable income in the refugee camps which allowed refugees to purchase manufactured goods which generate waste especially through their packaging. There have been some positive behavioural changes through the work of many NGOs. Refugees have gotten better at participating in the waste management system over the past 15 years.
I found nothing to support Keane’s third claim that there is often found to be a lack of incentive amongst refugees to preserve the environment, because the land isn’t theirs and they view their stay there as temporary (Keane, 2004). The data shows that land degradation, natural resource depletion, waste management and sanitation problems were usually generated out of a lack of alternatives. In most cases participants didn’t see any alternatives to their actions that 87 were both viable and environmentally sustainable.
There were incentives for displaced people to attempt to maintain their environments in their new locations. Relocation sites, refugee camps and villages that hosted newly displaced arrivals were all in places, or very near to places, where native populations continued to live. As a result, social forces compelled them to maintain good relations with people who had always lived there and who would continue to live after they left, which meant taking measures to conserve the environment. Apathy towards environmental problems was not something that was found even in the face of other hardship, as opposed to Kibreab's (1997) findings.
Also, many participants view the political situation in Karenni as very bleak. There has been violent conflict in Karenni since the 1960’s. At the time of this study, most participants had never known Karenni to be peaceful. They didn't expect to be able to return home anytime soon, and as a result recognized that they needed to conserve the environments that they were in.
Migrant settlement which are constantly fleeing violence didn’t tend to have a large impact on their environments in any of the aforementioned ways. Due to the fact that they were constantly on the move, they couldn’t stay anywhere for long enough to cause any significant level of neutral resource depletion, land degradation, waste or sanitation problems. In most cases they could not even cultivate rice paddy fields, as they were constantly on the move, and relied on the KNPP to provide them with food rations.
Keane’s three drivers of environmental issues amongst displaced populations are incomplete. Two additional drivers of environmental degradation need to be identified. Firstly, displacement can exacerbate poverty by stripping people of their land, and people lose a lot of what they own in the process of displacement. For example, 100% of the participants lost at least some of their livestock in the process of each displacement. This happened for one of two 88 reasons; either the livestock was taken by the government forces for food, or they had to flee in such a hurry that some of the livestock were left behind. Furthermore, displacement often happens in a large context of exploitation and oppression. It certainly does in Karenni. This context exacerbates poverty and drives people to pursue activities that may be environmentally degradative in order to sustain their livelihoods.
The other way in which displacement leads to environmental issues is that it enables industrial exploitation of the environments from which people are displaced, confirming objective 3, hypothesis 2. This process is well recognized by authors such as Gellert & Lynch
(2003), and led Harvey (1993) to coin the term “accumulation by disposition”. In Karenni this is the most significant way in which displacement leads to environmental issues. Massive scale deforestation (largely without any reforestation efforts to follow), habitat fragmentation, and landscape alteration, caused by logging and hydroelectric dam projects dwarf the effects that
Karenni people have on their environments.
The other side of the environmental effects of displacement is the ability for previously inhabited areas to recover after people are displaced from them. The case study of previously inhabited camp three on the Thai side of the boarder indicated that the environments which are are degraded by the activities of people are able to quickly recover. This supports objective 2, hypothesis 4 by showing that indeed displacement can have environmental benefits as well as detriments. However, the application of this case study to villages inside Burma is uncertain, as the living conditions in camp three were unique in some ways, namely there was a higher concentration of people than would be found inside Karenni, and there was no agricultural activity.
There is a massive area of land east of the Salween river, comprising approximately one 89 third of the geographical area of Karenni state which is nearly void of human settlements after the displacement campaign launched in 1996 by the junta. The extreme remoteness of the area, lack of infrastructure and difficulty of access has meant that the natural resources in the area have still been fairly unexploited. This area might be acting as a de facto national park with a large, un-fragmented natural habitat for thriving biodiversity and wild life populations, but to what extent this is the case is relatively unknown, because of the difficulty in accessing the area and the lack of people with knowledge of the current environmental state of the area.
4.2 Areas for Further Research
Research needs to be conducted from inside Karenni on the environmental effects of displacement. One of the major limitations of this study was that it was based on perceptions of participant’s environments rather than on direct observation. This could also help control for the possible bias that came from exclusively using participants on the Thai side of the boarder. It would also offer more current information, as this study often included participants who hadn’t been inside Karenni for many years.
There are similar environmental issues in all of the ethnic states found along the perimeter of Burma. All of these states dominated demographically by ethnic minorities are fighting against the central Burmese junta, and face issues of displacement and other forms of political persecution and oppression. Research done in these states would be useful.
It was also wished that there had been more of an emphasis in the study on the ways in which environmental knowledge is being lost. The issue was touched upon briefly, but the study didn't go into enough depth. It became clear while living with the Karenni community, that young people did not have nearly the same level of environmental knowledge as older people, 90 nor did they have the motivation to gain this knowledge. I believe that religious conversion to
Christianity and Buddhism and the view of western education as superior to traditional knowledge transfer, are parts of this loss of traditional knowledge. This might have been a phenomenon that is unique to the refugee camps due to the fact that people are not depending on their traditional environmentally centred livelihoods, and instead relied on the food rations from
NGOs, but there are many unknowns in this field. 91
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