... Protected areas (PAs) are important tools for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. PAs safeguard ecosystems and their services, such as water provision, food production, carbon sequestration and climate regulation, thus improving people’s livelihoods. They preserve the integrity of spiritual and cultural values placed by indigenous people on wild areas and offer opportunities of inspiration, study and recreation.

Opinion and analysis on business and human rights issues in Myanmar...For the last two days I have been at the Workshop on the National Land Use Policy Formulation held at the Myanmar International Convention Centre in Nay Pyi Taw. Under discussion was the 6th, and likely final, draft of the National Land Use Policy. (Available here: http://www.fdmoecaf.gov.mm/documents)

Customary Tenure and Land Alienation in Myanmar:
"Customary communal tenure is characteristic of many local upland communities in S.E. Asia. These
communities have strong ancestral relationships to their land, which has never been held under
individual rights, but considered common property of the village. Communal tenure has been the
norm and land has never been a commodity. This is an age-old characteristic of many societies
globally. Prior to the publication in 1861 of Ancient Law by the English jurist Henry Sumner Maine,

...In the last six to eight months there’s been a lot of commotion made about land disputes in Burma. Legally speaking, what’s setting the precedent for this to happen now?

Well the whole phenomenon needs to be looked at in terms of the history of the country when it comes to land ever since independence, whereby a system of law, which essentially gave all power to the state when it came to the control, use and allocation of land, was used and very often abused by those who were members of the state or closely associated with the state to acquire land for personal benefit.

နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၂၀၁၄
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ Global Witness ၏
အဆိုပြုလွှာအနှစ်ချုပ်
ဒီမိုကရေစီနိုင်ငံအဖြစ် ပြုပြင်ပြောင်းလဲမှုများပြုလုပ်ရာတွင်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအစိုးရသည်
အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းကို ၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ် အောက်တိုဘာလတွင်ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပြီး
ပြည်သူလူထုနှင့် တိုင်ပင်ဆွေးနွေးရန်နောက်ဆက်တွဲမြေယာဥပဒေတစ်ခုအတွက် အစီအစဉ်များကိုလည်းထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပါသည်။

Summary: "As part of its transition to democratic reform, in October 2014, the Government of Myanmar released a draft national land policy and plans for a subsequent Land Law, for public consultation. The importance of this cannot be understated and Global Witness welcomes both the potential for a strong codified framework for land, and the opportunity for public participation. It is crucial, however, that consultation is meaningful and genuinely participatory, and the resulting feedback is incorporated into the policy and Land Law in a process that is fully transparent.

...[O]n 19th June, 2012, the President of the Union guided on the
following land reform matters to draw and implement the national
development long term and short term plans:
(a) To manage, calculate, use and carry out systematically the
Sustainable Development of natural resources such as land, water,
forest, mines to enable to use them future generations;
(b)To manage and carry out systematically the land use policy and land
use management not to cause land problems such as land use, land
fluctuation and land trespass;

A joint preliminary assessment by
TNI Myanmar Project and TNI Agrarian Justice Programme.....Summary:
"October 18, 2014 saw the official unveiling by the government of
the Republic of the Union of Myanmar

မြနမ် ာနိငု ်င၏ံ
ရေရှညတ် ညတ် သံ့ ည့ ်
မြေယာအပု ခ် ျုပေ် ရးနှင့ ်
စီမခံ န့ခ် ွဲမစှု နစ်ဆသီ ိ့…ု .
မြေယာကဏ္ဍ၏ လိအု ပခ် ျကမ် ျားအပေါ် စစီ စအ် ကဲဖြတမ် ဆှု ိငု ရ် ာ
အကြောငး် အရာအလိကု ် မဝူ ါဒရေးရာမတှ စ် မု ျား

Introduction: "1. Myanmar is a country where the various kinds of ethnic
nationalities are residing collectively and widely in 7 Regions, 7
States and Union Territory. The country is located in Southeast
Asia and is important geographically, economically and politically
in the region.
2. Moreover, Myanmar is a country that has rich natural resources and
environment, including valuable forests, fertile planes, natural gas
and mineral deposits, long coastline, mountain ranges, and rivers

၁။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံတို့ စုပေါင်းနေထိုင်လျှက်ရှိသော နိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပြီး၊ တိုင်းဒေသကြီး ရ ခု၊ ပြည်နယ် ရ ခုနှင့် ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေတို့တွင် ပြန့်နှံ့နေထိုင်လျက်ရှိသည်။ နိုင်ငံတော်သည် အရှေ့တောင်အာရှတွင် တည်ရှိပြီး ပထဝီအနေအထားအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ စီးပွားရေးအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ နိုင်ငံရေးအရသော်လည်းကောင်း အချက်အချာကျသည့်နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပါသည်။

This article traces the revenue category and legal concept of the Waste Land in Burma/Myanmar
from its original application by the British colonial apparatus in the nineteenth century, to its
later use in tandem with Burma Army counterinsurgent tactics starting in the 1960s, and finally
to the 2012 land laws and current issues in international investment. This adaptation of colonial
ideas about territorialization in the context of an ongoing civil war offers a new angle for under-