http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/08/content_10971778.htm
www.chinaview.cn 2009-03-08 22:41:56 Print
YANGON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar is drawing a 30-year plan involving the participation of private companies in a bid to prevent forest from depletion and preserve natural environment.
Under the plan, a private company of Kaungmyat is projected to grow 200,000 teak plantations in the country, the local Flower News said Sunday, adding that as part of the plan, the company will also grow 405 hectares of wood plantations including teak and hardwood in the first five years.
According to other local report, the private Htoo Foundation has started an initial three-year project (2008-2010) of planting 8,100 hectares of teak in Myitkyina and Bhamo, northernmost Kachinstate of the country.
More companies such as ATSO Green, Yeedagon, NRTC and Honda plan to grow 48,600 hectares and 7,493 hectares in Bago division and Kachin state respectively.
Since 2005, the Myanmar government has granted private companies for cultivation of teak and allotted land for them for the purpose and such allotted land has now reached up to 80,000 hectares in two divisions or states in the country.
Meanwhile, foreign agencies are also helping Myanmar green the country's dry zone in the central part. Of them, the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) has introduced a project worth of 1.5 million U.S. dollars to improve rehabilitation capacity of the deforested Nyaung U region.
Besides, a Japanese company, the Kokusai Kogyo Co., has also offered to provide consultant services for an a forestation project in the same dry zone under a grant aid assistance worth 61million yens (nearly 500,000 U.S. dollars), according to earlier official report.
There are 155,340 square-kilometers of reserve forests and protected public forests in Myanmar with 52,650 hectares of forest plantations, statistics show.
Myanmar is rich in forest resources with forests covering about50 percent of its total land area.
Editor: Yan
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Myanmar drawing private-companies-involved reforestation plan
Myanmar's military capital gets new pagoda
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/258914,myanmars-military-capital-gets-new-pagoda.html
Yangon - In a ceremony presided over by Myanmar's military supremo Senior General Than Shwe and attended by the junta hierarchy, a new pagoda for the capital of Naypyitaw was inaugurated this weekend, media reports said Sunday. Than Shwe and his wife Kyaing Kyaing presided over the hoisting of the umbrella on top of the Uppatasanti Pagoda on Saturday in Naypyitaw, Myanmar's capital since 2004 that is situated about about 350 kilometres north of Yangon, the former capital.
Posted : Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:30:00 GMT
Author : DPA
The couple also donated a Buddha tooth relic, provided by China, to be placed inside the pagoda, the first to be opened in Naypyitaw since it became the country's new capital, The New Light of Myanmar reported.
A pagoda is not complete until the nine-tier umbrella is hoistyed on its top, in olden days a task reserved for Burmese kings.
Attending the ceremony were 583 Buddhist monks, the junta's second most powerful man Army Commander-in-Chief Vice-Senior General Maung Aye and other members of the military and government hierarchy including Defence Minister General Thura Shwe Mann, Prime Minister General Thein Sein and others.
The attending generals all provided gifts to the new pagoda and attending Buddhist monks, making merit for the entire junta.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962 when General Ne Win seized power from the country's first post-independence elected prime minister U Nu.
Although Ne Win launched the country along its disastrous "Burmese Road to Socialism," he kept Buddhism as the state religion.
Ne Win, a strong believer in numerology and astrology, built his own pagoda in Yangon, previously called Rangoon, across from the famed Shwedagon Pagoda.
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