Environmental Peacebuilding in Myanmar

Date & Time
Jun 17, 2026 | 11.00 - 12.30

Participants
Chair: Carol Sivpey-Te, PeaceNexus (Myanmar)
Jack Jenkins Hill, University College of London (United Kingdom)
Sheila Htoo, York University (Myanmar)
Zung Ting, Just Transition Now! (Myanmar)

Following the 2021 military coup, Myanmar has been the site of a growing and intensifying violent conflict. Conflict has had devastating impacts across the country, displacing over 3.4 million people, while also resulting in a rapid expansion of environmentally destructive mining operations. While natural resource extraction is closely tied to unfolding conflict dynamics, communities, community-based organisations, and resistance organisations are also engaging in local forms of environmental peacebuilding.

This panel explores local understandings and practices of environmental peacebuilding in Myanmar. Bringing together detailed and grounded case studies from across Myanmar, the panel will look at the ways in which conflict has shaped environmental disasters in Myanmar, and conversely how the environment has acted as a space for advancing local notions of self-determination, cooperation and bottom-up peacebuilding.

Contributors will explore cases including indigenous community conserved areas as a means of building peace from the bottom up, community responses to environmental impacts from expanding rare earth mining, and the emergence of local environmental administrations. Through these cases, the panel will explore how environmental initiatives are forming new forms of governance, resistance, and peacebuilding amid ongoing conflict.

Just Energy Transitions: Environmental Peacebuilding amid Conflict and Rare Earth Mining in Kachin

Zung Ting, Kachin Natural Resource Concern Group (Myanmar)

Moving Beyond Negative Peace and Working Towards Positive Peace: The Salween Peace Park as an Embodiment of Justice, Freedom, Equality, and Self-Determination for Karen Nation

Sheila Htoo, Karen Environmental Social Action Network (Myanmar)

Reimagining Environmental Peacebuilding in Myanmar

Jack Jenkins Hill, University College of London (United Kingdom)