Communities launch new Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park amid Myanmar civil war

Amid Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, Karen and other ethnic minority communities have officially launched the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park, a new community-led conservation area in the northern Kayin state. The launch lasted December 10-12, 2024.

Organizers of the park say this new conservation area is a move to strengthen their self-determination and agency over lands and resources.

“Launching the park was an announcement of our rights over the lands and natural resources that we have cared for for generations with our customary laws, governance and administration,” said Saw Thaw Tu Htoo, one of the founders of the park’s committee and the secretary of Taw-Oo district.

Covering an area of 575,450 hectares (1,421,967 acres) and 318 villages, the park includes 28 kaws (ancestral customary lands), four community forests, seven watersheds, six reserved forests and one wildlife sanctuary. It is just north of the Salween Peace Park, an award-winning Karen-led protected area of similar size, and is situated in one of the most biodiverse areas of the Asia-Pacific.

The founders of the park’s committee, Saw Ma Bu Htoo and Saw Thaw Tu Htoo, told Mongabay that the conservation area was envisioned back in 2017.

The park was created in a collaboration between communities, the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) civil society organization and the forestry and agriculture departments of the Karen National Union (KNU), a political organization vying for Karen independence. Representatives of these groups sit on the park’s management committee.

Since 1949, the KNU has been in conflict with the Myanmar (formerly Burma) government for political autonomy and territorial control over lands. Following the 2021 coup and ongoing civil war, armed fighting between the KNU’s armed wing and the military government’s State Administration Council (SAC) intensified and included deadly airstrikes against Karen communities.

The Toungoo (Taw-Oo) district, where the park is located, is one of the seven KNU administrative districts and is one of the most ethnically diverse. Six Karen subgroups of different cultures, including the K’nyaw Wa and Kay Ba, inhabit the upland area of the district while other ethnic minority groups are spread across the lowland area. Ma Bu Htoo, who is also land and forest program director at KESAN, said that a diversity of ethnic groups, including Pa’O and Shan peoples, are involved in launching the park.

The aim, he said, is to bring together diverse communities to realize their common goal to protect their lands and territories.

“Apart from this, the park launch strongly aims to revitalize their knowledge and culture and preserve biodiversity and natural resources for future generations,” Ma Bu Htoo told Mongabay. “As committee leaders, we wanted to ensure the process is an outcome of collective leadership from the district community people.”

Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC) did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment by the time of publication.

A charter to strengthen self-determination

With the park launch, the communities also marked the ratification of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park’s charter. The charter includes a set of customary laws, guidelines and governance systems defined by the communities to decentralize power and strengthen community rights to self-determination over their lands and territories.

The charter has allocated kaws as lands that are protected for wildlife and watershed conservation. A few of the areas include fishing-restricted ponds, protected sacred forests and areas that are designed for rotational farming and cultivation of durian (Durio zibethinus), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) and mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana).

Unarmed forest rangers part of the Kawthoolei Forestry Department (KFD) under the KNU will be patrolling the territories and protecting the safety of the land and people, said Ma Bu Htoo. However, he told Mongabay, park leaders want their rights, ownership and self-determination to be respected and protected through the community-developed charter.

“The park’s governance structure says, along with the advisory group, representatives from three main groups including KNU, civil society organizations and Indigenous communities will actively work together to maintain good governance,” he said. “The aim is to decentralize power to the district, township and village level and promote peace and power sharing.”

The sources told Mongabay that they aim to launch this new park to contribute to the conservation process that won the Salween Peace Park the Equator Prize 2020 for conserving 5,400 square kilometers (2,084 square miles) of continuous ecosystem. This park, just south of the new Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Conservation Park, is reportedly home to tigers (Panthera tigris), Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica) and clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa). A group of community forest rangers under the administration of the KNU-led forestry department also patrol the peace park.

According to a brief on the Salween Peace Park Charter circulated by KESAN, the park was launched in 2018 as an alternative to mining and dams and “to demonstrate what truly good governance could be and provide a people-centered alternative to top-down, militarized development.”

Since 1948, the central government has exercised laws that state all natural resources within the country belong to the government, making civilians, including the Karen communities, campaign for self-determination. Amid decades-long armed conflicts between the military wing of the KNU and the government’s military regime, Karen communities conserved and mapped their lands throughout Kayin state as acts of self-determination and resistance against large-scale development projects, like dams. However, some Karen villagers have also lost their lands to KNU authorities after they allocated them as gold mining sites.

“From food to medicine, everything we need comes from our forests and natural resources so we want to have the rights and ownership to conserve them not only for the future generation but as a contribution to meet the biodiversity conservation targets outlined by the Convention on Biological Diversity,” Thaw Tu Htoo said.

For generations, Karen communities practiced cultures and lifestyles that have supported forest and biodiversity conservation, such as believing in the sacredness of trees and observing ceremonies that conserve tree species.

“When a baby is born, its umbilical cord is placed in a bamboo container and hung on a fruit tree, which is restricted from cutting,” said Sunita Kwangta, a Karen researcher at KESAN.

Likewise, sources said community people consider the hornbill, tiger, rhino and other species as signs of omens and good fortune. Since the newly launched park covers forests and wildlife sanctuaries, the community aims to manage them under their customary laws that restrict animal killing.

“Karen people see gibbons [Hylobatidae] as their ancestors, so the species are completely protected in the Karen-led protected areas,” Thaw Tu Htoo said.

Planning the park

The concept of another park, Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park, was in the making for nearly a decade.

In 2017, a KNU leader from the Taw-Oo district envisioned the park and the following year held discussions with community people, civil society organizations and Salween Peace Park representatives to learn about their experiences in park conservation, its challenges and management. The park committee then started zoning the areas, implemented community regulations to incorporate in the charter and did charter consultation to officially launch the park.

All of the information in the charter is documented through discussion, and referendum from the community people spread across 18 village areas in the district, Thaw Tu Htoo said.

“It’s not top-down, but we [the committee] have adopted a bottom-up approach to develop the charter to provide the community people authority to make their own decisions and choices,” he told Mongabay.

According to Kwangta, the charter included the equal participation of women in defining the customary laws and guidelines. The Women’s Research Group, she said, played a key role in shaping the charter’s guidelines, monitoring restoration projects and offering data-driven information.

This is because women bring unique perspectives to the table and play significant roles as knowledge holders, passing down cultural practices, ecological wisdom and sustainable resource management strategies, she told Mongabay. For example, women have a deep understanding of local species and ecosystems, identifying culturally and ecologically significant species for protection and leading research and monitoring.

With communities mired in ongoing violence, Ma Bu Htoo said the committee and community people wanted to take a peaceful approach to safeguarding the resources that have been protected since time immemorial.

“Launching the park is our peaceful resistance in the face of these attacks and conflicts,” he said.

 

Banner image: Landscape of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park. Image courtesy of the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park Committee.

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