Are We Ready for a Trans-boundary Compensation Mechanism for Water Benefit-sharing?

/
Are We Ready for a Trans-boundary Compensation Mechanism for Water Benefit-sharing?

The Greater Mekong Forum on Water Food and Energy provides a great chance for participants to exchange their knowledge and views on international rivers in the region. At the most recent Forum in Bangkok, in November 2016, my attention was caught by a presentation titled “From MRC (Mekong River Commission) to LMC (Lancang-Mekong Cooperation) towards a healthy economy and healthy river in Greater Mekong: the core transboundary compensative mechanism for water benefit-sharing.” During the forum, when Professor He Daming from Yunnan University proposed a transboundary compensation mechanism for water benefit-sharing after introducing the Chinese-initiated Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, launched in 2016, participants around my table first understood that after building eight dams on the upper Lancang-Mekong mainstream, China finally admitted those dams caused negative impacts to downstream states and would like to offer certain compensation under the LMC. However, when the presentation reached its end and a short discussion followed, several pairs of eyes widened when they found out that what was being proposed instead was that downstream states might get a bill under the transboundary compensation mechanism if they expected river flow augmentation from the upstream dams during times of drought, or that they had to offer to pay China if they asked for no more dams to be built on the upstream.

Read More

Mapping Gaps And Opportunities For Inclusive Hydropower Governance In Myanmar

/
Mapping Gaps And Opportunities For Inclusive Hydropower Governance In Myanmar

By Peter, MK31 Fellow

The political transition in present-day Myanmar has brought forward tremendous economic, social, and environmental change and an associated expansion in challenges and opportunities: accelerating capital investment, intensifying resource use and extraction, and heightened conflict partly due to non-inclusive development model.

Read More

Ethnobotanical Study of Lashio District’s Medicinal Plants and Herbs, and their Daily Uses

/
Ethnobotanical Study of Lashio District’s Medicinal Plants and Herbs, and their Daily Uses

By Dr. Mar Mar Aye, MK31 Fellow

Traditionally, local communities throughout Myanmar have extensively relied on plants for medicinal and health purposes. In today’s world, this traditional herbal approach to medicine still occupies a central role within many rural communities, given the clear lack of transport and health infrastructure in the region, as well as the remoteness of the villages.

Read More

Changing Lives In Xiao Shaba “New Village”, Yunnan Province

/
Changing Lives In Xiao Shaba “New Village”, Yunnan Province

By Zhong Mei, MK31 Fellow

Faced with a large and ever-expanding population, China’s employment issue has been a growing concern for the country and its people. With a plethora of ethnic minorities, Yunnan province has been strongly impacted in terms of employment due to the growing population, economy, and new policies. In addition, disparities between men and women have prominently widened amidst overall unemployment concerns. My research focuses on Liuku Town, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province, and aims to uncover and analyze employment differences between men and women in a resettlement area village called Xiao Shaba that has been built for the planned Liuku hydropower project.

Read More

Co-producing Research Along the Nam Kong River

/
Co-producing Research Along the Nam Kong River

By Kim, MK31 Fellow

In Myanmar, my whiteness, my gender, and my language flag me as an outsider and in the Shan state they are my anti-passport, preventing me from traveling to the brown-zoned countryside. I set out this past summer wanting to investigate how this contestation of natural resource use along the Salween river effects local communities, but quickly hit barrier after barrier. My hands tied by my identity and my location locked by my foreigner status, I couldn’t figure out how to actually do the research.

Read More

Changing Land Cover And Socio–economic Conditions In Bawlakhe District In The Thanlwin River Basin

/
Changing Land Cover And Socio–economic Conditions In Bawlakhe District In The Thanlwin River Basin

By Dr. Khin Sandar Aye, MK31 Fellow

The Thanlwin River Basin is one of the four major watershed areas in Myanmar covering the Shan, Kayah, Kayin and Mon states. In Kayah State, the Thanlwin River flows from North to South and is characterized by a variety of ethnic groups living amongst an extremely bio-diverse environment. Local ethnic people are crucially dependent on this watershed area for their survival, through its importance in terms of food, water, security, fuel and income more generally. In addition, the economy of this area relies to a very large extent on agriculture, forest extraction, and mining, which are all land-intensive activities.

Read More

How Can We Strengthen Water Governance on the Salween River?

/
How Can We Strengthen Water Governance on the Salween River?

By Saw John Bright, MK31 Fellow

In late February 2013, the Burmese government announced six dam projects that were to be built on the Salween River in Shan, Kayah (Karenni) ,and Karen states. The investment and know-how would come from Chinese and Thai corporations in cooperation with three Burmese corporations. However, the proposed dams are located in active civil war zones, which will make their development and construction even more complicated.

Read More

Turning Points in the Life of a Young Social Worker and Researcher Along the Thanlwin River

/
Turning Points in the Life of a Young Social Worker and Researcher Along the Thanlwin River

By Nang Shining, MK31 Fellow

In this blog, Nang Shining presents the perspective of a youth researcher who is working with her in her participatory action research-designed fellowship project on women’s engagement and their role in water governance particularly at the proposed Mong Ton hydropower project in Shan State, Myanmar. Nang Shining highlights both some of the initial findings of the field work, and also the lessons learned by the researcher herself.

Read More

While Optimistic About the Nu River’s Future, Chinese Women Environmentalists Also Face Government Clampdown

/
While Optimistic About the Nu River’s Future, Chinese Women Environmentalists Also Face Government Clampdown

By Hannah, MK31 Fellow

Chinese politics and civil society can seem both complex and difficult to understand for outsiders. However, my curiosity to better understand what is happening in the world’s rising superpower led me to choose women’s civil society in China as the focus for my fellowship research on water governance on the Salween River (known as the Nu or Nujiang in China).

Read More

Local Voices Still to Be Heard In Wan Hsala Village, Shan State

/
Local Voices Still to Be Heard In Wan Hsala Village, Shan State

By Hnin Wut Yee, MK31 Fellow

Wan Hsala is a secluded village along the Wan Hsala Stream housing a little over 30 households with a total population of approximately 100. As one of the small villages along the Salween River in the Eastern Shan state, the majority of its villagers are part of the Shan ethnic minority, while a few are ethnic Lisu and Bamar. Today, these villagers are facing actual and potential negative impacts from a hydropower construction project started about a decade ago. The local villager's limited knowledge of their rights and their lack of participation in the project have caused them to be taken advantage of. It is crucial that a solid framework of national and international standards reinforced with a strict enforcement vehicle is in place before any further project decisions are made.

Read More

Thanlwin River Estuary – Challenges for Fishing Communities

/
Thanlwin River Estuary – Challenges for Fishing Communities

By Dr. Cherry Aung, MK31 Fellow

As one of the longest trans-boundary rivers and the only major one that still flows freely without dams in Southeast Asia, the Thanlwin river supports the livelihoods of approximately 10 million people. The river hosts rich fisheries and supports fertile farmland vital to the food security of many ethnic minority communities living along the river banks and beyond. Yet, like most rivers in the world, it is facing multiple pressures from both natural and human causes along its length, which could affect the ecosystem and the livelihoods of thousands of local people who depend upon them

Read More