Natural Resource Governance Reform and the Peace Process in Myanmar
Publisher: Forest Trends
Author(s): Kevin M. Woods
Date: 2019
Topics: Assessment, Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Governance, Renewable Resources
Countries: Myanmar
This report summarizes the role of natural resources in armed conflict and the current peace process in Myanmar. It serves as a baseline study for efforts to promote equitable and accountable management of natural resources for peacebuilding. The main findings overall indicate a lack of meaningful progress on moving towards natural resource good governance reform in the country and specific to the peace process. Land and resource ownership and governance decentralization within federal structures anchor the central demands of ethnic civil society stakeholders and ethnic armed organizations, but these demands are so far at odds with the 2008 Constitution and Union laws and policies. The future Union Accord peace principles do not yet contain clauses specific to natural resources, and principles specific to land mostly serve to further centralize unitary state control.
The report finds that these discrepancies relate to inequitable structures and processes of decision making within the national peace process, where Myanmar’s military representatives hamper meaningful discussion and the adoption of peace principles that would decentralize ownership and control over land and natural resources in support of political federalism. Global environmental good governance mechanisms could help support decentralization of natural resource governance and peacebuilding, but only if they address and account for the underlying causes of armed conflict and clarify questions over who has which ownership, benefit, and management rights, among other political governance matters. Finally, the current Interim Arrangements (IAs) offer an important opportunity to commit more political will and build capacity to implement natural resource good governance reforms that contribute to contribute to peacebuilding during the interim period.