Episode #163: The Inconvenient Truth about the Military Coup
“Capitalism and resource exploitation and appropriation have continued to perpetuate struggles,” Jack Jenkins Hill says. “The environmental impact of the coup has been something that's been widely underreported, actually. And so I think having more attention on this space is really critical, because the outlook is incredibly bleak. In many ways, it plays a very important role in the conflict. So it is something that I think we should all think about a little bit more.”
Currently a PhD student at the University College London, Hill has spent the last decade studying such issues as deforestation, mining, and natural resource governance, as well as how indigenous communities have been impacted in Myanmar.
He begins by going back to the colonial era in discussing the history of the exploitation of natural resources. Mass logging took place—the British Navy was basically built from Burmese teak. It seems just about everyone was trying to get in on the profits back then; even future US President Herbert Hoover owned a silver mine. Successive military regimes picked up where the British left off, and further expanded into such areas as jade, and more recently, rare earth metals. In 2021 alone, it was estimated that the exploitation of these natural resources netted over 33 billion dollars!
Focusing first on the timber industry, Hill describes how in the last decade, deforestation has largely come in the guise of agribusiness, such as palm oil and rubber plantations. There are also smaller, illegal logging operations whose lumber is smuggled across the border. These have become increasingly militarized, given the inherent profits.
Hill points out that the Burmese forests have always been a place of conflict. “It's not just a conflict over control, but also it's also a conflict over different ways that we understand the forest,” he explains. “In so many upland areas, where indigenous communities reside, people have very deep spiritual relationships with those forests, and depend upon this forest for many different reasons. But these forests have also been the site of a lot of exploitation for many years.” The widespread clear-cutting—both legal and illegal—has led mass displacement of communities.
Another impact of the coup has been an increase in mining operations, such as gold in the north and tin in the south. “We hear lots of communities talking about rivers drying,” he says. “I'm talking about the expansion of mines into villages, sometimes displacing whole communities! We see rapid expansion of mining into IDP villages.”
As if this wasn’t bad enough, mining in Myanmar is far more hazardous than in other parts of the world. For example, in gold mining, both cyanide and mercury are being used to purify and amalgamate the gold. This is extraordinarily harmful not just for the workers forced to handle it, but also for the wider ecosystem. Hill points to the large amounts of mercury now found in fish in those regions, which of course has had a huge impact on local communities.
Hill also discusses the especially dangerous rare earths mining, which was covered in detail in a past podcast episode with Mike Davis, the CEO of Global Witness. Hill describes this extraction as a “slow violence,” meaning that its toxic pollution only worsens with the years, and can last for generations. He references the myriad health problems that often develop not only in the workers, but in the local communities, including miscarriages.
Hill notes that some recent events are contributing to further exacerbate the situation. For example, he cites how the increased salination of soil in the Delta following Cyclone Nargis in 2008 dramatically impacted the region’s ability to grow rice. This has led, over time, to farmers switching from growing food to cash crops like betel nut and rubber, which is now impacting the country’s ability to feed itself as it now must rely on imports to a larger degree. Like the other forms of extraction, this has also diminished the nutrients in the soil, thus putting at risk the possibility of growing food there in the future. Combined with the increasing desertification now taking place across Myanmar and less predictive rainy seasons due to global climate change, there will be further food instability, and may ultimately bring about vast migration of people.
Sadly, he notes that the general collapse of the Burmese economy has been one of the driving forces in the increase in mining. Because so many are now desperate for work, there are more people willing to do the very dangerous and low-paying work of the mining industry, enabling the expansion their operations. In addition, as both the military and the ethnic armed groups rely on mining to fund their armament needs, they have an added incentive to exploit the land. And making a bad situation even worse, as the rule of law has steadily deteriorated (see our recent podcast conversation with Kristen Simion), few regulations are now being enforced, so bad actors can proceed with impunity, worsening the environmental degradation.
In analyzing the risks inherent in the current crisis in Myanmar, Hill stresses taking a broader perspective and analyzing the underlying rationale of a capitalist system, which assigns financial value to a wide variety of different resources. In the case of Myanmar, autocratic regimes enrich themselves through a version of crony capitalism, leading to further (and often unchecked) degradation of the environment. This dynamic has not only propped up Myanmar’s various military governments, but also given rise to more far-reaching implications. Since this destructive cycle in Myanmar impacts worldwide climate change, Hill encourages people to take a wider perspective and recognize how that “far-away,” regional situation actually carries a global impact.“ As an example, Hill notes that Myanmar is home to some of the largest contiguous rain forests in Southeast Asia, and “the destruction of Myanmar’s forests would have a huge, knock-on effects for both climate change, and also extinction, because many of those forests contain very vulnerable and endangered species. So when we look in the global sense, we can see that the issues of Myanmar are not just national, but international!” He continues, “What are the other things that we can do as individuals? It is very difficult, but I would continue supporting communities and people who are trying their best to rid themselves of this tyrannical regime.”
While many celebrated the transition period as a time of democratic change when the dictatorship’s iron fist relaxed, Hill has concerns about the unfettered and rampant capitalism that also developed during those years. Moreover, now the challenge seems to be evolving. “We see different forms of extraction in the current period,” he notes. “These forms of extraction are pretty rapid, often smaller scale, with less levels of investments, but in many ways more ubiquitous, and so have a different set of damages.”
Hill acknowledges the ambiguity and uncertainty of the current moment, and wonders if “conflict capitalism” might not be an accurate way to characterize it. He is also deeply concerned about what could come next. “What we can see from cycles of conflict in Myanmar with the relationship to land and resource exploitation and appropriation, is that we start to see more forms of dispossession,” he notes. “I'm sure that we'll start to see more larger scale resource extraction in areas of displacement, because it opens up new land and new opportunities for capitalists to start exploiting.”
Because of the widespread exploitation and harm to the environment, Hill can only describe his outlook as “bleak” about the future. “It highlights a really important point,” he says. “If we're looking on a bigger scale between climate change, extinction and the relationship between conflict and authoritarianism, [and how disastrous] closing civic space is not just for people, but also for the environment and the people who depend on that environment. We can see with this coup, this pushes us towards a precipice of climate and ecological collapse across the world too!”
“I don't know when a breaking point or a critical point will come,” Hill acknowledges. “It's really difficult to say. But unless something changes quickly, I'm sure we'll reach it… probably sooner than we expect.” He closes by reminding listeners how the current crisis in Myanmar is impacting a much broader and more serious set of priorities. “If we're really serious about addressing the existential issues that face us all, we need to start looking at cases like Myanmar, in which we will see, in the next few years, very serious ecological issues, which are going to be irresolvable.”