Andrew Nachemson, Eaint Thiri Thu

Lahtaw Kai Ring, a former jade miner and a mother of six, recalls what the area was like when she first moved to the township in 1989. The Uru Stream was clean and clear, and people harvested a freshwater oyster — called n-hypa law in the local Jinghpaw language — in its waters.

“Now [people] don’t even know what n-hypa law is,” she says — they don’t see that oyster in the stream anymore. “Hpakant’s environment is destroyed. Mountains became valleys and valleys became mountains. Rivers, streams and creeks are upside-down, shifted into chaos.”

This year, on July 2, a landslide underscored residents’ concerns. The side of a mining site collapsed, sending a torrent of mud and rainwater into the mining valley below. It killed nearly 200 people, mostly freelance miners searching for jade stones while companies had ceased operations for the rainy season. This tragedy is just one of the many deadly environmental disasters that have happened in the jade-rich township after two decades of intensive mining.

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October 2, 2020

The US government has halted more than $12 million of funding to WWF, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other conservation NGOs in a major blow to the conservation industry. The move follows a bipartisan US investigation into whether federal conservation funds supported anti-poaching guards implicated in human rights abuses in Africa.

Many of these organizations are behind the creation and running of Protected Areas in Africa and Asia (including the notorious Messok Dja) that have ruined the lives of thousands of tribal and local people.

The news was revealed in a leaked government document that also details how conservation organisations such as WWF failed to inform the US government that programs it was funding were responsible for serious human rights abuses in many countries.

In a bombshell for the conservation industry long called for by tribal peoples and Survival International, the leaked memo announces groundbreaking rules on how projects designed to protect nature can be funded, including:

– Conservation organizations will no longer receive federal funds unless they have the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples.

– The US will no longer fund eco-guards, law enforcement or “activities related to relocating communities, voluntarily or involuntarily.”

The memo, from the US Deputy Secretary of the Interior Kate MacGregor, is dated September 18th and contains numerous revelations including:

– US government funding was misused by conservation organizations for purposes prohibited under US laws. These include murder, severe torture, multiple rapes, and abuse.

– WWF and other organizations hid the knowledge of these abuses from the US authorities whose funds they were receiving.

– Conservation organizations refused to cooperate with federal investigators; withheld reports that documented the abuses; and were effectively auditing themselves.

The extent of the abuses described in the report, involving a number of international conservation organizations, demonstrates the scale of human rights violations in conservation projects and the abject failure of international funding bodies to monitor them.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s Director said today: “WWF and other big conservation NGOs have been well aware of their responsibility for gross human rights violations for decades. Survival first pointed them out over 30 years ago. Over the last half century I’ve personally confronted dozens of corporations and governments about their abuse of tribal peoples’ rights. None have been as duplicitous as these big conservation NGOs. These violations ultimately damage our world too. They destroy the planet’s best defenders. “Fortress conservation” must be stopped, and conservationists’ current demand to turn 30% of the Earth into Protected Areas must be rejected.”

Notes:

– This news comes days after the UN Summit on Biodiversity, where numerous heads of government supported WWF and WCS’s call to declare 30% of the Earth as Protected Areas by 2030. The revelations in the leaked report demonstrate how dangerous this would be.

– The new measures mean that the US government can no longer fund WCS-India’s project supporting the so-called “voluntary relocation” of indigenous communities. A letter from Jenu Kuruba villages threatened with eviction, calling on the US authorities to stop “aiding and abetting the government and WCS’s plans to evict us from our forests,” has been sent to the US Fish and Wildlife Service more than 20 times, but is yet to receive a response.

Read in origin link

The KDNG’s main target groups are grassroots communities who are suffering under national economic development projects. As the results, KDNG expects that women will be empowered to participate in natural resources management, which will also lead grassroots communities to speak out about their rights, organize their people and promote sense of ownership. To promote women human rights and nature resources rights through who suffer from mega dam projects and mega mining projects. To promote living standard of women from effected areas by implementing income generation project

• To aware the negative impacts of mining and mega projects then actively participate in anti-mining and no dams campaign

• To get back the community’s original land by promoting organic farming technic of the community

• To create market place for the community of farm products and income generation products

Primary Health Care and Health Promotion for Local Peoples in Kachin State

Kachin Backpack Health Worker Team was founded in 2009 as a branch health department of Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) and association with Backpack Health Worker Team based in Maesot. It provides health care services as volunteer in some part of Kachin State especially rural areas, IDPs camp, relocation camp which places could not access from Ministry of Health Department.

Our implementation activities are Public Health Care Protection, Water and Environment cleaning, Women’s Health and Rights, Capacity building on Child Care, Monitoring and sharing information on seasonal epidemic diseases and others.

Presently, Kachin Backpack Health Worker Team and the Kachin State Covid-19 Prevention Network-KsC19PN are collaborating in raising awareness about the Covid-19 pandemic especially in the vulnerable areas such as IDP camps, quarantine camps, community grassroots areas and providing hand sanitizer, face mask, spray disinfectant and others assistance in Kachin State level.

Gold mining in Tanghpre Village nearby Myitsone, Irrawaddy River

The Hugawng valley was largely untouched by Burma’s military regime until the mid-1990s. After a ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and the junta in 1994, local resi­ dents had high hopes that peace would foster economic develop­ment and improved living conditions. However, under the junta’s in­ creased control, the rich resources of Hugawng valley have turned out to be a curse.

Despite the ceasefire, the junta has expanded its military infrastruc­ture throughout Kachin State, increasing its presence from 26 battal­ ions in 1994 to 41 in 2006. This expansion has been mirrored in Hugawng valley, where the number of military outposts has doubled; in the main town of Danai, public and private buildings have been seized and one third of the surrounding farmland confiscated. Some of the land and buildings were used to house military units, while others were sold to business interests for military profit.

In order to expand and ensure its control over gold mining revenues, the regime offered up 18% of the entire Kachin State for mining concessions in 2002. This transformed gold mining from indepen­dent gold panning to a large-scale mechanized industry controlled by the concession holders. In Hugawng valley concessions were sold to 8 selected companies and the number of main gold mining sites increased from 14 in 1994 to 31 sites in 2006. The number of active hydraulic and pit mines had exploded to approximately 100 by the end of 2006.

Gold Mining in Hugawng Valley

The regime’s Ministry of Mines collects signing fees for the conces­sions as well as 35% – 50% tax on annual profits. Additional pay­ments are rendered to the military’s top commander for the region, various township and local authorities as well as the Minister of Minespersonally. The junta has announced occasional bans on gold mining in Kachin State but as this report shows, these bans are temporary and selective, in effect used to maintain the junta’s grip on mining revenues. Read more…

Hpakant in Myanmar’s northern Kachin State holds the world’s most valuable jade deposits. However, our investigations reveal that the government system for allocating and managing jade mines is fraught with corruption, allowing a powerful elite to cream off most of the profits. Little, if any, of the vast sums generated are spent on the infrastructure, health and education that the people of Kachin State and Myanmar as a whole deserve.
With the possibility of both a new government and a peace agreement with the KIA/KIO around the corner, licensed companies are ramping up their mining operations, using massive machines to extract all the jade they can now, in case a change in the political climate leaves them out in the cold.

Chinese government import data for 2014 indicates that the category of gemstone imports from Myanmar that covers – and overwhelmingly comprises – jade was worth US$12.3 billion.3 This is an astonishing sum. However, as explained below, numerous industry sources have told Global Witness that 50%-80% of jade is smuggled straight over the Myanmar-China border (see next page for map of smuggling routes used). Chinese customs data supports these claims, showing that less than a third of Myanmar’s official jade production entered China legally, even though China is where almost all Myanmar’s jade ends up.4 This suggests that the US$12.3 billion figure, huge though it is, significantly underestimates the true value of Myanmar’s jade production. Read more …

By Michael Greshko

PUBLISHED March 11, 2020

As Burmese amber’s scientific value grows, so too do ethical concerns around its study. Many significant amber fossils start out in the hands of private collectors, raising questions about future scientists’ access to the specimens. Miners also face unsafe conditions, and the mines lie within Myanmar’s Kachin state, home to a long-simmering conflict between the Myanmar military and rebels fighting for Kachin independence. A 2018 military offensive to take over the mining areas displaced thousands of indigenous Kachin, according to the Kachin Development Networking Group.

Read more:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/smallest-ever-fossil-dinosaur-found-trapped-in-amber/