The making of land use decisions, war, and state

ABSTRACT

During a civil war and its aftermath, rival powerholders frequently engage in decision-making over land use, for example, via land acquisitions or legal reforms. This paper explores how powerholders influence land use decision-making and what their engagement implies for territorial control. We analyse three cases of land use changes in Myanmar’s south between 1990 and 2015, where the Myanmar state and an ethnic minority organization fought over territorial control. We gathered qualitative data with a mix of methods and visualised actor networks and institutions. Our analysis reveals that the state managed to increasingly control decision-making over local land use from a distance by employing actor alliances and institutions such as laws and incentives, whereas the ethnic organization lost influence. We conclude that engaging in land use decision-making plays a crucial role in influencing the outcomes of a civil war and that it represents a form of war- and state-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Myanmar
• land use decision-making
• land use change
• war-making
• state-making
• actor network

Acknowledgments

The research for this paper was carried out as part of the project titled “Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviation” (Project No. 152167). We thank the regional and local authorities in Tanintharyi Region for their support throughout the fieldwork. We further thank the villagers and all other interview partners for their valuable contributions. Special thanks go to the research team in Myanmar for the wonderful collaboration and great support, to Glenn Hunt and Henri Rueff for contextual feedback and discussions, to Simone Kummer for producing most figures, to Florian von Fischer for mapping the case study area, and to Anu Lannen for editing the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This study both focuses on land issues and was carried out before the military coup of 1 February 2021. Hence, implications of this military coup on land use decision-making are not part of the analysis. However, in our discussion section, we reflect on possible interpretations of the results in light of the current unfolding crisis.

2. There are multiple armed Karen groups under the KNU. The composition and arrangements of these armed groups are highly complex. For more information on the KNU’s history, internal problems, and arrangements with armed Karen groups see (Brouwer & van Wijk, 2013; Jolliffe, 2016).

3. To our knowledge, the KNU never perpetrated such crimes on Bamar villages in this case study area.

4. In some parts, there is even a third actor who claims sovereignty: the New Mon State party (NMSP).

5. In recent years, the KNU has started offering land use certificates to farmers in Village A.

6. Administrative village boundaries are not precisely known by local residents in the case study area.

7. ‘Expert’ refers to individuals with extended knowledge of the core topics, for example, based on having lived in the area for a long time (e.g. elderly villagers) or having conducted relevant research or policy advising over several years (e.g. university professor).

8. ‘Rival’ refers to the respective opponent of given actors: From the perspective of the Myanmar state, the KNU is/was the rival, and vice versa.

9. In addition to the customary system, the KNU had a formal land use policy. However, smallholders in the case study village did not refer to it.

10. The KNU does not provide a description of what ‘self-determination’ means in this context. Besides political independence of a Karen state within a federation, ‘self-determination’ most likely also refers to land governance including the ‘recognition, restitution, protection, and support of the socially legitimate tenure rights of all Karen peoples and longstanding resident village communities […]’ (Jolliffe, 2016, p. 77).

11. Inside the nature reserve – a KNU stronghold – Karen villages continue their agricultural practices and forest use as they did before the conservation status was issued. However, given the new nature reserve regulations, the existence of the villages and their land and forest use are now formally illegal.

12. The KNU still holds an important role for Karen people in the case study area, but it is not influential regarding land uses in the case study villages (at the time of data collection in 2016–2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) [400440 152167]