EDITORIAL
The finding of a report released on Thursday that the rise in foreign investment in Myanmar's ethnic regions risks exacerbating conflicts and environmental destruction should come as a surprise to no one. Throughout history and throughout the world the efforts of more developed nations to obtain the resources of less developed nations have exacerbated conflicts with indigenous peoples and led to environmental destruction. But the report by the Transnational Institute and the Burma [Myanmar] Centre Netherlands, titled "Developing disparity: Regional investment in Burma's borderlands", does serve as a timely reminder that the interests and wishes of ethnic groups in Myanmar must be taken into account by foreign corporations and the central government in order to promote peace, not to mention a good business environment.
The report says: "Foreign investment in these resource-rich yet conflict-ridden ethnic borderlands is likely to be as important as domestic politics in shaping Burma's future. Such investment is not conflict-neutral and has in some cases fuelled local grievances and stimulated ethnic conflict." Of course, there have already been several ethnic conflicts directly associated with foreign-initiated projects in Myanmar. Thai and Chinese companies have traditionally been the biggest investors in the country, and the report singles them out for exploiting border regions, saying that "natural resources are being extracted at low costs and large profits ... with very little reinvested into the area."
A primary cause for the reigniting of hostilities between the central government and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) after a 17-year ceasefire was resentment over Chinese hydropower projects in Kachin state. Work on the Myitsone dam project was suspended indefinitely in September 2011 after widespread protests, and the Dapein dam project has since been forced to shut down because of the fighting in Kachin state. The Chinese-backed Shwe pipeline project, due to begin pumping oil and gas from the Bay of Bengal in May, passes through northern Shan state close to the conflict zone.
China has a direct interest in the conflict for other reasons, for one because it has sent thousands of refugees over its border with Myanmar.
China does deserve credit for breaking with tradition and offering to serve as an intermediary in negotiations between the Kachin rebels and the Myanmar government. The talks held in Ruili, China, on Feb 4 reportedly were considered successful and productive by both sides. It appears that the Chinese may be waking up to the fact that reconciliation is in their interests. As it stands now, the much better equipped Myanmar army looks close to victory in Kachin state, but that is no guarantee of peace. As has been shown time and again, a diffuse, underground rebellion can be harder to stamp out than one revolving around a standing army. For real peace in Kachin state and other ethnic regions, what is needed is a fair assessment of the potential costs in terms of conflict and environmental damage _ at the outset of any mega-projects proposed, before any work is done.
Ideally the initiator and guarantor of such a process would be the Myanmar government, but as the report released last week noted, "the country has yet to develop the institutional and governance capacity to manage the expected windfall" from foreign-backed as well as local development projects. Clearly this should be a high priority for the government, the parliament and the opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who has stressed this point on several occasions.
Part of the difficulty is that Myanmar has never been more than a loose federation of ethnic states ostensibly under the control of a central government led by the dominant Burman ethnic group. It isn't surprising that ethnic groups are unwilling to suddenly consider their traditional homelands as being under the jurisdiction of the central government.
Now as Thein Sein's government, the opposition and many ethnic leaders try to forge a unified nation, some degree of autonomy by ethnic groups over their traditional natural resources is essential.
Development and infrastructure projects are probably necessary for the peace and prosperity of the new Myanmar, but unless they are done thoughtfully and with full participation from all affected parties, they can only have the opposite effect.
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/02/24/foreign-investment-a-double-edged-sword/
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