Burma's misery

http://www.developmentfromdisasters.net/content/view/5882/76/

Thursday, 16 October 2008
Supporters of World Food Day can find in Burma a case study in the lethal combination of climate change, poverty and politics, writes Thaung Htun, the Guardian, Thursday October 16 2008 at http://www.guardian.co.uk.
Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 171008.

Today, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's World Food Day obliges the world and its leaders to consider the issue of global hunger. A particular theme this year is climate change and its impact on poverty and hunger. While the role of climate change is significant, the matter of political will casts a broader shadow across world hunger. This year's World Food Day is, as a result, somewhat hollow.

Burma stands as a case study for the combined effects of poverty and hunger, climate change and politics. In short, the stresses created by these dynamics have created a collapsing system in which the majority of Burmese are in danger of being crushed.

The actions of Burma's military regime represent a situation whereby climate change and its impacts on hunger are actively utilised for political gain. Currently, for instance, there are reports that the regime is creaming off 10% of post-cyclone aid coming into Burma in the wake of this May's disaster as "exchange transfer costs". It's a clear case of profiting from the effects of climate change and hunger.


Under the military, rural communities have been decimated by being forced to destroy vegetable and other staple croplands and to replace them with the regime's designated exportable cash crops, such as tea and biofuels.

A life-threatening famine is emerging in Chin state, western Burma, for instance, while the junta does nothing. Plagues of rats gorging on a rare crop of bamboo flowers are razing community plots and destroying any remaining semblance of food security. Again, politics stands in the way of necessity.

As the government elected in Burma's last free and fair elections, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma is committed to raising Burma's understanding and action on climate change issues, both domestically and regionally, in direct contrast to the current regime.

We will seek to aim funding, such as that which we may be able to attract from foreign donors and investors, to better manage Burma's exposure to climate change and to alleviate hunger. We would look to develop rural investment opportunities as a means of improving the sector's sustainability profile and to help rural communities develop strategies and technologies designed to better manage climate change.

We aim to develop trade relationships that incorporate sustainability issues and would target 100% self-sufficiency in staple crops where sustainable. We would investigate options for improving regional trade exchanges and would discuss the implementation of early warning systems, identifying and tracking climate change focal points and developing joint disaster risk management strategies.

Our approach to climate change and hunger in Burma would essentially be to focus on Burma's farmers – around 65% of the country's workforce – to help them understand climate change and how they might better manage their surroundings, while looking to energise the agricultural sector and industrialise and modernise the economy in environmentally and socially sustainable ways.

Such goals might be well attuned to the World Food Day programme. The FAO have looked to encourage such agendas. We are making the connections between hunger and climate change the world community is encouraging.

We might expect to be held up as a positive case for the World Food Day. Yet, our policies remain trapped in the black hole of Burma's untenable military regime and are themselves starved by the failure of international political will.

Rather than emerging as a positive case study of a nation's approach to hunger and climate change, Burma is something of a black mark. Today, Burma stands as an example of how climate change and hunger, rather than being being tackled by the international community, are actually being
substantiated by inherent political weaknesses and shortcomings of the current methodologies.

The global community remains thwarted by the military junta's stonewalling. As our country's rightfully elected government, we are denied government even as our people starve and climate change, one of hunger's creators, is ignored.

While the broad agendas of World Food Day are worthy of support, no one can deny the political barriers which act as obstacles to activism around climate change and hunger alleviation. Were World Food Day instead focused on questions of political will and global political dysfunction, we might begin to get to the crux of the issue. It's a point the case of Burma proves only too well.

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