Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how ethnic Karen farmers in Myanmar mobilize forest conservation as a means to defend sovereignty in a region haunted by armed conflict. It will be argued that local conceptualizations of conservation are at odds with those held by international conservation organizations.

Paper long abstract:

In 2016, amid concerns that a state sponsored conservation project, the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve Park (TNRP), would enforce restrictions on local forest access and that its jurisdiction would encroach upon their own customary zones of use, ethnic Karen inhabitants of the Kamoethway Valley in Southern Myanmar inaugurated a community forest conservation project of their own. In declaring their own conservation zone, in direct opposition to the TNRP, which they understand as a threat to their livelihoods, the villagers argued that it was not the activities of farmers such as themselves that posed a threat to local biodiversity, but rather that the forest was threatened by the very forces of well-financed development encouraged by the government . In this paper, I seek to understand how this configuration of circumstances came to be, firstly, by situating it within the history of armed conflict that haunts the region, and, secondly, by examining how the inhabitants of the Kamoethway River Valley think about and engage with forests and the materials that constitute them. Specifically, I seek to comprehend how the people of this valley mobilize the concept of forest conservation as a form of social action to achieve territorial sovereignty. Of particular interest is how the everyday livelihood practices of Karen villagers inform and shape those conservation strategies. The central question here will be: to what degree can an ethic of conservation that springs from practical skilled engagement with a particular place, a specific lived environment, inform actions that expand political futures?