Welcome to SEARCA Knowledge Center on Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management in Southeast Asia (KC3)

Myanmar

Published on 6 February 2019
From endangered to endangering Mangrove trees can store five times the amount of C02 as terrestrial trees and provide a range of other vital functions to protect life below water and on land. “Mangroves are often underappreciated, but they are in fact super-ecosystems that are critical for food security, coastal protection, water quality, and climate regulation,” said Gabriel Grimsditch, a coastal ecosystem expert…
Published on 15 January 2019
Dr Aaron Russell, Ingvild Solvang, Luis Miguel Aparicio and Programme Officer Thiha Aung met with remote communities and Forest Department on the Delta to discuss community forest restoration activities. The establishment of community forestry projects is seen as a useful means to stabilize and reforest mangrove forests. Local communities strongly recognize the importance of mangroves to provide households with firewood, house and boat building…
Published on 15 January 2019
Potential outcomes of fuel efficient cookstoves for climate change. In a series of workshops and site visits around the Delta, GGGI facilitated discussions as to why distribution and usage of fuel-efficient cookstoves remain low. Cookstove manufacturers discussed barriers to their production, including costs and difficulties with attaining and transporting raw materials, a lack of access to start-up finances, labor-intensive manufacturing process, and a lack…
Published on 15 January 2019
“We gave three years of hard work in planting these trees. Now they are growing tall. Soon, they will be the biggest assets of our people,” he says, pointing at the forest and the tiny dot of houses that appear on the horizon. The restored mangrove forest in Shwe Thaung Yan sub township in Ayyerwady region of Myanmar. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS Mangroves in…
Published on 3 July 2018
More than 1,000 local residents were affected and dozens of homes were inundated with mud as floodwaters in the area washed the waste soil into residential areas on Monday. According to local residents, the nearby Uru River commonly floods in the monsoon season. However, the muddy floodwaters that have inundated the area since 2006 have been even more damaging than regular floods, they say. “Jade…
Published on 6 June 2018
Conyat Create Equipping businesses with the tools and knowledge to become more sustainable, Conyat Create’s 10-strong team of mostly women work from an office full of reclaimed materials in Hlaing township. Conyat Create. (Facebook) Citing Myanmar’s vulnerability to climate change as one of her main motivators, Howe realized that “not only businesses but the wider community didn’t understand sustainability.” “Our consumption of plastic is over…
Published on 23 May 2018
Merchandise exports grew by an estimated 15%, following a 0.3% fall in FY 2016/17, with the report crediting the 2.8m tonnes of exported rice – the highest level in half a century – as a key factor behind the increase. While agricultural growth was below overall GDP expansion of 6.8%, the ADB said it expects the sector to grow robustly in the present financial year…
Published on 21 May 2018
The vice president, who is also chairman of the National Natural Disaster Management Committee, assured that he will do all he can to utilize the power of the government to mitigate the impact of the monsoon on townfolks, especially in the central plains. On Wednesday, U Henry Van Thio observed the construction of a riverbank protection wall along the Myitthar River between Kalay and…
Published on 2 May 2018
Worldwide, 35 percent of the world's mangroves are now lost. Only 16 percent of the original cover is left in the vulnerable Delta Region where the mangroves are being destroyed at rates three to five times higher than global deforestation. "At the moment, mangrove conditions are severely degraded," says Win Meung, a seasoned ecologist who heads a mangrove regeneration project in Myanmar. "In the…
Published on 26 April 2018
The scaling out of climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices (CSA T&Ps) using community-based adaptation (CBA) strategies is a potential solution to food security and nutrition challenges in Myanmar. To realize this goal, the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Southeast Asia (CCAFS SEA), has worked for the establishment of Climate-Smart…
Published on 7 March 2018
The promising gains in connectivity mean there is vast potential for innovative solutions aimed at including the 80 percent of people who are outside the formal financial system. But digital financial services via mobile technology – also known as financial technology, or in tech – can do more than make financial transactions safer, quicker and more efficient. They can also serve as the rails upon…
Published on 23 February 2018
As she watches her workers haul in this year's harvest, the 35-year-old is in a triumphant mood, ascribing her victory over the seasonal scourge to advice received via the app about effective pesticide use. "We used to just farm the way our parents showed us," she told AFP, in her village of Aye Ywar west of Yangon. "But after getting the app, I now see…
Published on 5 December 2017
At a workshop on practical lessons obtained from establishing policies for natural disaster response held on Monday, he said that for that to happen, cooperation will be sought with the Rural Development Department and the Department of Relief and Resettlement. “I envisioned the nation to be one that can withstand the impact of climate change,” said U Hla Maung Thein. Moreover, he is…
Published on 12 November 2017
One of the seven giant paper mache elephants that make up the sculpture piece ‘We Love Our Momos’ was made with old newspaper clippings of environmental stories which includes coverage of the brutal killings of elephants for their skin to waste disposal problems in Yangon. ‘We Love Our Momos’, on display from November 4 to 6 at Mahabandoola Park in downtown Yangon, is part of…
Published on 31 October 2017
“We (FAO country programme) are focused on … food security, nutrition, and food safety,” said Xiaojie Fan, FAO’s representative in Myanmar, at the celebration of the organization’s 40th anniversary in Myanmar held in Yangon last Friday. She said FAO also wants to help Myanmar “strengthen the governance and sustainable management of land, forest, and natural resources; and enhancement of more resilience of…
Published on 8 October 2017
Myanmar's coastal areas of Tanintharyi, Ayeyawaddy and Rakhine are abundant with coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass beds, mud flats, estuaries and sand dunes, playing an important role in environmental diversity and the sectors of agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. However, part of the mangroves are being damaged by locals, who clear the areas for prawn breeding, fishing, mining, waste disposal and oil spilling, while the…
Published on 19 September 2017
The bus ride to Hakha, a city in Myanmar's northern Chin State, begins with a prayer for a safe journey. It's just after dawn on a drizzly gray Monday in the provincial border city of Kale. I was supposed to leave the day before, but although Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist nation, Chin is a Christian state, so no buses depart on Sunday. Eleven of…
Published on 6 September 2017
According to the 2016 Climate Risk Index, Myanmar is the second most vulnerable country in the world to the effects of climate change. The intensity and regularity with which cyclones make landfall have increased with every year, with the delta region affected by tropical storms and the dry zone impacted by debilitating droughts. Researchers at the Center for Climate System Research at Columbia University, in…
Published on 21 August 2017
Mangroves protect coastlines in the face of storms and rising sea levels, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and boost fish stocks, experts say. Yet Myanmar has lost more than 1 million hectares (about 2.5 million acres) of mangroves since 1980, said Arne Fjortoft, founder and secretary-general of Worldview International Foundation (WIF), which has worked with two local universities to restore mangroves in the Southeast Asian…
Published on 14 August 2017
Myanmar’s conflict-ridden areas are not only populated with soldiers and rebels, they are also home to indigenous communities which aim to protect the forests of their ancestors. This is the case of the villagers starring in The Kheshorter: Indigenous Karen’s Community Forest, a documentary screened on August 9 at the Orchid Hotel, in Yangon. The 26-minute film is a look into the indigenous Karen people’s…
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