Text Box: Destruction and Degradation of the Burmese Frontier Forests Text Box: # Text Box: people to conserve traditional forest management are disencouraged by the offical forest administration. Civil war As part of the SPDC ‘Four Cuts policy’, restrictions have been placed on the movements of villagers. Villagers are not allowed to do rotational farming outside a distance of a one-hour walk. They may work their fields only from 6 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock in the evening and everyone has to be back in their community by that time. If anybody is seen walking at other hours he or she will be considered an enemy and faces immediate execution. This has seriously limited the availability of farmland and affected the traditional rotational cultivation, where plots are left fallow for seven years. Fallow periods have been reduced to three years, with detrimentary effects on the fertility of the soil. Another curfew usually issued just before harvest time prohibits farmers to leave their village for harvesting. They must wait at least 7 to 15 days before they can start harvesting. This leads to a considerable reduction in agricultural yields. Besides these curfews, if there is any fighting between SPDC and KNLA troops near or within the area of a village, that village has to pay a very heavy fine to the SPDC. Every year in the dry season the SPDC troops burn the forest to clear KNLA hiding areas. This fighting method is very destructive to forest regeneration, especially to the fallow plots. Introduction of monoculture Logging roads open access to the movement of SPDC troops into an area, and increase their control of local resources. In the village of Zee Woun (Saktaraw) farmlands and grazing land were seized by SPDC troops. They set up their bases on people's lands or turned them into rubber or sugar cane plantations. The conversion of farmland or communal forests in mono-plantations for the production of rubber, sugar cane, cashew nut and sesame significantly changes the traditional forest system. It also leads to a cultural change in attitudes of farmers from self-sufficient agriculture to market-oriented plantations. All of these factors have destroyed the self-sufficient livelihood of local people and forced them to change their traditional way of forest use and management. One of the local villagers from Taung Lweh village said: “Since the generations of my ancestors, we never thought of making money by selling the forest that we live in. We thought that the forests we live in are for rotational cultivation, and that some forest areas are to be kept protected for wild animals to live in and for our traditional hunting. But now since the logging we have started to think about making money from the forest.” The forest-use system is changing from common property ownership to individual ownership. This shift encourages more and more people to go out and encroach on forest areas and causes more damage to the already degraded forests. Many farmers have become casual labourers in logging or on mono-plantations. More and more villagers are making money by cutting down small trees for fuelwood. There is also a growing concern that the religious beliefs of the local people will be lost. For the Taung Lweh community their sacred forest area has become a lot smaller than before. People's concerns and possible solutions In May 2003, KESAN gave a workshop on environment training in Billin Township, near Taung Lweh (Ta Uu Kee) village. Before this, villagers in the Doo The Htoo district had never heard about environmental awareness. But the villagers present at the workshop, women and men, young people and elders, realized the consequences of the logging and deforestation. Their situation, they understood, depends on protecting the forests and their livelihood in their area. They planned to organize their villages for the protection of the villages' forest, rivers, and wildlife. In Taung Lweh village, the elder responsible for making traditional medicine organized the youth in the village. His objectives are to school the youth in the arts of traditional healing, and to protect the forest as a secure habitat for animals and medicinal trees. The training participants from Ta Uu Kee and Por Kee went back to their village and shared their knowledge with the other villagers. They want to mark out a separate area for their community and

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