Understanding communities and marine conservation in the Myeik Archipelago, Myanmar

This is a presentation about communities writ large that hail from very different origins and now find themselves in the same location with the same need to engage in MPA establishment. It is about the need to understand these... [ view full abstract ]

This is a presentation about communities writ large that hail from very different origins and now find themselves in the same location with the same need to engage in MPA establishment. It is about the need to understand these disparate origins and the challenges these create for marine conservation. The study area is the 800 island, 400km long Myeik Archipelago in Myanmar. Following 50 years of repressive military rule the country is now awakening to some of the many challenges of the future. One relates to marine conservation as fish catches plummet and many species and habitats approach ecological extinction. The Moken people, a nomadic people of the sea have lived on their boats amongst the Islands for centuries as sea food collectors but now face an acutely declining supply. The Karen people are Highland cultivators from the Tennassirim range that have been fighting the central Government since 1949. Tired of conflict a few communities have recently relocated to the Archipelago and now engage in various fishing activities, some of which are highly unsustainable, such as compressor fishing. The Bamar people are the majority peoples of Myanmar and some have fished the area for centuries. However, driven by poverty and opportunity an increasing number of mainland Bamars are moving to the Archipelago. All these groups have very different traditional livelihood strategies but now have a common dependence on implementing more effective marine conservation. This paper emphasises the need to understand these larger scale origins as well as individual community differences and outlines some of the challenges faced in implementing an MPA network in the area.