distribution by state and region in Myanmar
78 All data on leases and concessions is in principle managed by the Department of Agricultural Land Management and Statistics (DALMS), under MOALI. While DALMS holds data on agribusiness ventures and other permits in VFV lands, concessions on forestland are granted by Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MoNREC). Currently, the government has no unified database on land concessions or land permits that have been issued. There is also no functional mechanism at present to coordinate data sharing or management at the district, region/state and national levels.
Data source: RUM, 2013
State of Land in the Mekong Region State of Land in Myanmar 125
State of Land in Myanmar
Land use permits have been granted on VFV land for agricultural production since 1991, however, the rate at which they have been issued has fluctuated considerably (Figure 39). Despite a peak in 1999, the issuance of permits on VFV land largely took place between 2006 and 2011 during the final years of the military government. Most agro-industrial investments operating today are from this period.
Up to 2006, land use permits on VFV land were granted predominantly by regional commanders and to a lesser extent by the previous Central Com-mittee of the Cultivable Land, Fallow Land and Waste Land. Between 2006 and 2011, this Central Committee became the main body to grant VFV land (San Thein et al., 2018).
When reforms commenced from 2012 onwards, there was a sharp decrease in permits granted on VFV land with a temporary stop in 2013 and a gradual increase from 2014 onwards ( Figure 39). This drastic reduction coincided with the military proxy Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) coming to power, led by President Thein Sein, embarking on a series of national reforms.
The Myanmar Investment Law permits the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) to approve foreign investment on land leases of up to 50 years, with two possible extensions of ten years each. With approval
Figure 39: Issuance of land use permit granted on VFV land from 1991 to 2016
from Parliament, longer leases can be granted by the MIC to investors whose projects operate in the nation’s least developed and remote regions. (BEWG, 2017).
Extended tax exemptions are also offered to investors operating in areas that are considered “least -developed”. Both aspects pose a significant threat to landholders in Myanmar’s ethnic borderlands, where tenure security is weakest. There are some safeguards, such as sections 65(s) and 41(c), which require investors to “respect and comply with the customs, traditions and culture of the national races in the Union” and prohibit investment projects that
“may affect the traditional culture and customs of the racial groups within the Union”. However, there is no clear guidance on how this should be carried out and it is rarely followed.
The extractive industries sector is still operating within a framework of limited information and relations between the government, companies, civil society and communities are characterised by grievances over land conflict and benefit sharing. Currently there is no concession data available for mining, however a recent study identified 222,495 acres of potential mining areas in Myanmar, of which 58 percent (129,265 acres) was assigned high certainty, 29 percent (64,868 acres) medium certainty, and 13 percent (28,363 acres) low certainty (LaJeunesse-Connette et al., 2016).
Source: San Thein et al., 2018
Large-scale land conversion for oil palm development
Oil palm development in Myanmar began in 1999, when the military government initiated an industrial palm oil scheme as part of a drive for national self-sufficiency and a broader plan for economic development. Oil palm production takes place exclusively in Tanintharyi Region, which was chosen for its suitability due to high annual rainfall and an extended monsoon season, which allow for commercial production (Map 47). Over forty companies currently hold oil palm concessions. Since national-level reforms began in 2011, investment in the oil palm sector has come solely from joint ventures with foreign investors (TNRW, 2018).
In total, 1.8 million acres of oil palm have been allocated to the private sector (35 percent of all agri-business concession areas nationally) (BEWG, 2016). Of the 1.8 million acres, only 535,000 acres, or 29 percent of the total area granted, was planted by the end of 2016 due to high investment costs (Table 5). Poor land use planning has allowed oil palm companies to clear cut large areas of High Conservation Value (HCV) forest, including critically endangered lowland Dipterocarp rain forests (Woods, 2015).
Oil palm expansion in Tanintharyi has caused many land conflicts, as agricultural households have not been able to register their land due to civil war. Until 2007, the government categorised the entire area as a “black” area, or a zone where insurgents operate (TNRW, 2016). In these areas the government does not provide state services. With no government
0
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Area of VFV allocated annualy (acres)
Thousands
Cumulated area of VFV allocated (acres) Millions
Cumulated area Per annuum Cumulated area Per annuum
presence aside from security forces, it has been impossible for farmers to register their land.
Many oil plantations have been allocated on land customarily belonging to local ethnic communities.
Historically, as a result of government-initiated offensives against the Karen National Union (KNU), there has been widespread violence against ethnic Karen communities, which led to multiple cycles of displacement and forced-relocation. To this day, approximately 11,000 refugees, who hope to return to their villages in Tanintharyi region, are based on the Thai border. Permits for oil palm are allocated from the centre and approved by the Central Committee for Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land, however in practice there are no safeguards to check actual land use. The 1894 Land Acquisition act is used when acquiring land for “public purposes”, however key tenets of carrying out adequate notification and allowing for objections are seldom followed (TNRW, 2016). For instance, in the MSPP concession out of 49,227 acres, 38,900 belonged to communities in 4 separate villages (Ibid.).
Special Economic Zones
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are an increasingly popular model of development and investment in southeast Asia. They typically involve major investments in infrastructure and demand large amounts of land. The term SEZ describes clearly delineated geographic areas where legal and regulatory regimes relating to business and trading activities vary from standard regulation in that region (Oxfam, 2017). Their success is usually viewed in terms of economic impacts, overlooking wider social and environmental implications.
In the late 2000s, the military government initiated the development of SEZs in Myanmar. In 2014, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government implemented the Special Economic Zone Law. In 2016, the National League for Democracy (NLD) government affirmed its commitment to SEZ projects previously initiated in Thilawa (operative since 2016) and in Dawei and Kyauk Phyu, which are currently both non-operative. In total, there are 29 known zones, though the geographic extent of these is not available. Data source: Department of
Industrial crop development,
MOALI, from Tanintharyi Hluttaw News, No.8, August 19th, 2015, page 44
The SEZ Law confers responsibility for land acquisition to the Ministry of Home Affairs, however it does not specify which national laws governing land apply in zones designated as SEZs. In practice, the 1894 Land Acquisition Act has been the primary law used for State land acquisition in SEZs. However, neither the law nor the accompanying rules and regulations offer provisions for planning or carrying out resettlement for persons whose home, land and/or livelihoods are displaced (ICJ, 2017). Failure to have fully developed compensation and resettlement provisions has led to dispossession of land from smallholder farmers such as in Kyauk Phyu in Rakhine State.
Protected areas
Myanmar has 40 Protected Areas and 10 proposed Protected Areas (MoNREC, 2017). Myanmar’s 40 Protected Areas extend over 9.68 milion acres acres, or 6 percent of the total land area. This represents an increase from less than 1 percent in 1996. Older Protected Areas tend to be smaller whereas the more recent ones aim to protect entire landscapes to preserve species with large home ranges such as the tiger and Asian elephant.
Due to the presence of a few large Protected Areas in Kachin and Sagaing, a number of ecoregions such as the Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows (96 percent in Protected Areas), Northern Triangle temperate and subtropical forests (36 percent in Protected Areas) are well-represented, whereas seven separate ecoregions have less than 1 percent or no protection, including 4 ecoregions classified as critically endangered (MCRB, 2017). Conserving large landscapes in the north that support highly threatened charismatic megafauna is likely to be a priority in the context of limited resources and those sites are less likely to come into conflict with other competing land uses.
Protected Areas have the potential to protect wildlife whilst reconciling community needs and access to forests, and providing regulating and provisioning ecosystem services to downstream users. However, in Myanmar, PAs are delineated with the explicit purpose of wildlife and biodiversity conservation.
Protected Areas are governed under the Nature Wildlife and Conservation Division (NWCD), a division within the Forest Department. The 1994 Protection of
State of Land in the Mekong Region State of Land in Myanmar 127
Citation: Saxon, E.C., and S. M. Sheppard, 2016. Atlas of Spatial Data for Forest Planning, Taninthayi, Myanmar. Taninthayi Conservation Program Report, Fauna and Flora International. Yangon: Fauna and Flora International. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 4.0International License. High resolution print files and GIS format files available on request from foresti@forestinform.com. See full publication for data sources and acknowledgements.
Map 47: Land concessions in Kawthawng, Tanintharyi, Myanmar