Timber logging usually takes a break in the monsoon. Even smugglers halt their activities from mid-May to early October to avoid the rainy season. However, Salai witnesses 15 to 20 timber trucks passing each day near his village in Hkamti, Sagaing Region—a highly forested region in northwest Myanmar between the border with India and Kachin State.
Category: Myanmar
Human rights claims undermine China’s investment abroad, report finds
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre logged 679 charges of human rights abuse against Chinese companies operating abroad between 2013 and 2020. Among the key findeings were problems associated with lost livelihoods linked to a rail project in Laos were noted, the vast majority of the renewable energy complaints were related to hydropower projects, and Myanmar saw the most allegations of any country with 97.
Myanmar receives funds from China for projects under LMC Special Fund
The 21 projects cover the areas of non-traditional security, human resources, vaccine production for animal diseases, culture, agriculture, natural disaster prevention, science and technology, environmental conservation, forestry, border trade, tourism and finance.
Myanmar junta pushing ahead with China-backed Kyaukphyu SEZ and port
Beijing considers the KPSEZ and the deep-sea port especially vital to the BRI, as they will give China direct access to the Indian Ocean, so allowing Chinese trade to bypass the congested Strait of Malacca near Singapore.
Global demand for rare earth elements fuels environmental destruction in Kachin State
In the remote mountains of Kachin State, rare earth elements used in everything from wind turbine generators to television screens are being mined illegally with seemingly toxic chemicals.
‘Weapons, power and money’: How rare earth mining in Kachin enriches a Tatmadaw ally
The leader of a Tatmadaw-controlled Border Guard Force in a remote region of Kachin State has emerged as a key player in the global rare earth trade, and has turned the territory under his de facto control into a mining hub at a high environmental cost.
Myanmar Junta Weaponizing Aid
is no surprise to anybody. It is just one more crime against humanity committed by the regime, which has already committed a long list of genocidal actions, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Ethnic communities in Myanmar opposing a coal plant see their fight get harder
In Myanmar’s ethnic areas, Indigenous people have faced the loss of their lands, community forests, and deteriorating health conditions.
There’s still room to save Asia’s hoolock gibbons, study says, but only just
Researchers, whose study was published July 16 in Global Ecology and Conservation, came up with estimates for the area of hoolock gibbon habitat that disappeared between 2000 and 2018, and the area remaining today, across the four countries of Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and China where the apes occur.
Myanmar’s economy to contract by 18% this year: World Bank
The World Bank said the 18 percent contraction in fiscal year 2021 (October 2020-September 2021), coming on top of weak growth in FY2020, “would mean that the country’s economy is around 30 percent smaller than” it would have been in the absence of the pandemic and the military takeover on Feb. 1