Alliance Fieldtrip to Partner Projects in Myanmar
Written by Theo Ebbers and Christoffer Larsson Tuesday, 13 December 2011 14:59
From 28th November to 3rd December, two teams of Alliance regional partners visited a range of projects in the Irrawaddy Delta and the Dry Zone of Myanmar, which focus on poverty reduction and strengthening rural livelihoods, environmental rehabilitation, conservation and sustainable management of natural resources.
The objective of these visits was to gain a better understanding of local level development challenges in two core regions of Myanmar and how these are addressed by Myanmar development organizations and NGOs.
As one of the core principles of the Alliance is its focus on local level capacity building and enabling local communities and partners to set their own priorities, the visits sought to
- Better understand how these organizations and NGOs engage with local communities
- Identify capacity building needs for local poverty reduction and sustainable resources management
- Identify potential areas and ways of extending the Wetlands Alliance partnerships and networks into Myanmar
The two teams visited about 13 projects, which are implemented by the five organizations that have been identified as potential initial partners for the Alliance’s establishment in Myanmar, i.e. EcoDev, FREDA, Evergreen Group, Network Activities Group, the Myanmar Heart Development Organization.
The projects in the delta focus on livelihood diversification, income generation and community engagement in the management of natural resources, specifically coastal forests and fisheries resources. Among the most pressing challenges identified is the issue of involving landless people in management of resources and generating new options and opportunities for income generation.
The focus of projects in the Dry Zone includes soil conservation, forest restoration, product development, crop cultivation, livestock rearing, revolving funds, village based crop insurance scheme and small-scale enterprise development. A notable product development project is packaged dried onions, which is now at a stage where it employs labor from neighboring villages, and in the process to obtain permission for exports to expand its market.
While all these project greatly benefit from the engagement of very well-informed and enthusiastic staff that work very closely with and within the target communities, there is an obvious gap in the availability of certain technical skill, e.g. in the area of appropriate aquaculture development.
Overall, the two Wetlands Alliance teams were very impressed with the engagement and dedication with which these projects were implemented – often under extremely difficult logistical challenges – one trip in the Delta took about 17 hrs of travel just to reach the destination.
In a workshop that was organized immediately after these field trips, a number of options were identified through which the Alliance can benefit the ongoing projects and the implementation of future projects. Participants recognized the huge potential of the Alliance to provide learning opportunities from across the region through the Alliance’s extensive network of partners in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The projects and programs the Myanmar partners are currently engaged in provide a number of convergence areas in which the Alliance can contribute through creation of synergies and develop common approaches, e.g. in developing systems for improving access to capital to poor households, integration of livelihood and local entrepreneurship development with existing market value chains, developing a common strategy for community forestry and fisheries management, providing access to energy and many other areas in which the Alliance has experiences in other countries.
The workshop ended with an agreement for the new Myanmar Alliance partners to draft initial work plans that will lead to the establishment and strengthening of Alliance partnerships in Myanmar for 2012.
You can find more pictures from the field trip here and here.