Description:
"Myanmar central government and military authorities have
long supported rubber production as
a strategic industrial agricultural crop for export to earn foreign exchange. The history of rubber
cultivation is
important to consider in order to better understand the newly emerging political
economy of rubber in the country during the current transition period.
Rubber has been
cultivated in Myanmar since the British colonial period in the early 20th
century, mostly in Mon
State.
These ?traditional? rubber growing areas in Mon State mostly comprise smallholder
rubber plantations that have greatly contributed to the livelihoods of Mon households.
Since the
past decade, however,
a new ?untraditional? frontier area has been targeted for rubber plantation
development. In
northern Myanmar in
Kachin State,
northern Shan State,
and eastern Shan State,
especially including
the
Wa Self
-
Administered
Region,
rubber concessions have swept across the
hills in areas that
were formerly swidden fields. While rubber in Mon State, Kayin
State,
and
Tanintharyi
Region
follows more of a smallholder model approach
but which
is
mostly
embedded in Chinese rubber markets with Chinese middlemen, rubber development in northern
Myanmar follows a private large-scale concessionary model mostly financed by Chinese
investment
from China?s national opium substitution programme.
In the past few years
new areas
yet again
in Myanmar
are
being targeted by
large-scale
rubber concessions, this time where
smallholder rubber farms already exist,
such as
in
Rakhine State,
Mon State, Kayin State,
and
northern
Tanintharyi
Region.
Local government officials, regional
military
commanders, and non-state armed groups have
allocated rubber concessions through rubber-growing areas in Myanmar over the past decade.
These concessions are located in what the government labels
?wastelands?, often in the uplands, which in fact are farmed by local households as ?taungya? (shifting cultivation) plots.
Therefore,
rubber development in Myanmar that follows the agro-industrial model,
are
causing
serious
impacts
on local farmers? subsistence livelihoods, as
is the case with
other industrial agricultural
|
concessions. Rubber concessions in former customary swidden fields seriously impact local food
security and
resource access
to forests and agro-fields, while rarely providing
adequate
alternative livelihoods
through wage labour employment
for local populations.
New agricultural
wage labour migration for large-sca
le rubber concessions, especially in the new production areas
in northern Myanmar, is introducing new socio-economic and political tensions to farming
communities..."
Source/publisher:
Global Witness
Date of Publication:
2012-12-00
Date of entry:
2014-12-10
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
964.46 KB