Myanmar Part Two: On Your Feet, Son. Get Teaching

The Training. The first part of our Myanmar mission was to run a mangrove restoration training programme for a mix of victims; local villagers who were predominately rice farmers, generalist local NGO types, bemused of the UNDP (another sort of NGO but as organisations like UNDP / UNEP and IUCN have permanent flows of money, they live in a different world of comfy hotels, expenses actually paid, endless conferences in exotic locations and commissioning other groups to actually do the dirty work) and Myanmar forestry chaps. Perhaps 50 in all. Different levels of awareness of conservation issues, values, previous knowledge and interest. 

Jim has had a lot of experience doing these workshops around south and southeast Asia. This would be his 14^th. But Myanmar was new for him as well as me. Normally one would do a recce of the location beforehand, engage a local NGO who would sort out local logistics, find a gaggle of translators and help with the admin. Groups would be smaller and not mixed. Myanmar was different and new as a training venue for both of us. We agonised about how much powerpoint to use (for pictures and illustrations, not huge screeds of verbiage). How much mapping could we use and would be understood? (Mapping is cultural – some places just don’t have an idea of a 2D representation of their 3D world.) Would there be (regulated!) electricity, a suitable venue, a wall to project up on to? Would there be any local mangroves to use for field trips and examples, because life from Google Earth looked pretty grim and barren.

Communications with Dr O, our FAO boss who lived in Myanmar, were very difficult as the government censors often brought all email to a halt while they read through email and attachments. The project had been delayed several times before. And a key member of the team (a colleague of Jim) dropped out with a few weeks to go. So it was a bit fraught trying to organise ourselves, be as prepared as possible and flexible. On top of this, presenting through translators brings down any work rate by 50% and much feedback is lost. You never know how the material is being translated, and for the translators it’s a shattering job.

However, having bouncy-castled our way ten hours north in some vintage vehicles, we were pleasantly surprised to find a large hall in Kyauk Phyu complete with a picture of Than Shwe the current Dictator/Lead General, rather village hall-like in feel, electricity which didn’t cut out once, a projector screen which the FAO had previously given to the local forestry dept and everything else we needed. So having had a rehearsal day with the translating team, San from the forestry department and Khin from FAO in Yangon, we had an amazing evening recce around some local, trashed mangroves and found what we needed for the field trips, close to town.

Those of you of a more pictorial bent might like to go to my Picasa public pages and see what KP’s river looks like. While there in the late afternoon, the light became more and more golden from the local people cooking on a million fires, and just wonderful for taking photos. People were busy floating huge rafts of bamboo down river, fixing boats, flaming bugs out of their boat timbers (local knowledge tip # 54, fill your boat with water first, before setting fire to the outside), moving nypa palm roof sections into town to sell, collecting firewood and fishing. Behind us, as we looked over the river, standing on a huge, hand-dug dyke, was a previous mangrove area, converted to rice paddy. Rice growing is a national obsession in Myanmar, but as it’s rain fed rather than irrigated, they only manage one meagre crop a year, and for the rest of the time the land is useless – on average a gaining a value of only $150pa/ha, a fraction of the ecosystem services mangroves provide for the same unit area. As a result, poor local people practice shifting rice agriculture, impounding vast areas of mangrove, waiting for the stuff to die off, and then farming the area for rice for a few years before moving on, leave a huge, desolate circle of useless, exhausted and slightly saline land, cut off from the tide, where nothing grows. Ironically, Myanmar has loads of gas. Great bubbles of it. Gas balls that my father would be proud of. But it is all exported to China and the people are left to chop down everything standing to cook with.

The next day we got up early to start the training at an appropriate time. Opening my door a waist-high Lesser Adjutant Stork accosted me, fixing me with its surprisingly blue, unflinching eyes. Tame, inquisitive, with straggly neck like a vulture, it pulled my flipflops off the step and tried to run off with them. Nesting material or starting a second hand shoe shop? For either, those shoes would not be my first choice. The next day it found a loop of wire we had in stock. Unfortunately it was just the wrong diameter to walk with, so with the loop in its beak, it would trip down the steps, getting tangled up in the wire.

We got the training hall and started to set up. Pleasingly, many of the attendees arrived early, as they did every day subsequently. While we were setting up, someone told us that the army top local brass wanted to attend and open the show. Desperately we scrambled around for appropriate chairs and gifts for them (cultural thing). And just as some formal wooden sofas arrived from our hotel, we found out that the mining minster was in town, and they wouldn’t be coming, after all.

The first day was ice breaking, finding out what all these people were thinking about, intro to what we wanted to teach etc and finishing with the first field trip. We were surprised by how willing they were to listen, do crazy exercises when we felt they were getting a bit sluggish, chat and so on. The field trip was to the area recced and described earlier. Split into two groups, Jim did the social impacts of what was going on in eyesight, and I did the more scientific / practical and much discussion. Then back on the amazing bus, with a catflap at the back, rattan and plastic window, inappropriate pole dancing pole in the middle to hold the roof up, and visible metal radial showing through the tyre tread, back to the hall to conclude the first day.

The rest of the training went really well. We covered some very basic biology, mangrove zonation, previous failures (ie the majority of mangrove projects), law, hydrology, transects, mapping blah blah blah. The second day we made them run a transect through some mangrove, noting species, soil, features, dbh etc. Having allowed them to draw the next day we were amazed how well they had done it and annotated their work.

At the end of the fourth day, we bought boxes of beer, and at their suggestion we went to a local beach with a lot of snacks for a small party, which they really enjoyed. Locals were bemused and underwhelmed by watching your bloganaught trying to extract a cork from a bottle of wine with pliers and a bottle opener. I wonder what the Burmese is for 'muppet'?

Always prepared, just not for a drinks party. More anon.

Myanmar Pt 1. Wood, Soil and Water

Myanmar, Part 1

Of course the embassy reflects what the country is going to be like, just as dog mirrors owner. Arriving at 8am on a Monday we found a queue of ten already in various forms of ennui. By the time the door opened at 9, perhaps 40 people were waiting. Previously it was possible to put in an application for a visa via an agent. Now one had to turn up in person. Why? Not a question was asked of us.

When the doors opened, which counter to join was not obvious. A small sign at window 4 indicated business visas. So we joined that. However, having got to the front of the queue, the woman said, that we had to join the main tourist queue, to get a queue number, and then re-join the business queue to put the passports in. Several people were caught like this. So we tried to ask at the front of the huge tourist queue, now stretching out the door, causing much wailing and nashing of teeth, as this one window handed out numbers, forms and took in applications, operating treacle-like. So, rejoining the back of the tourist queue, it took an hour to get to the window just to get a number. And then a wait for the number to come up for the biz visa. According to a couple of people who did this application frequently there were often fights and punch-ups.

Needless to say though a/c machines were present, they were only ornaments. 60 people were serviced by one ineffectual fan in a small, hot, common-sense proof concrete bunker. Pick up, the next day, was equally dumb, made more urgent by closing the day after for 'Peasants Day'. All this could have been solved by one member of staff walking along the orderly queue outside the embassy before the doors opened to hand out forms and appropriate queue numbers. This stupidity, shouting, fighting, sweating, dismal human condition is played out day after day.

Disappointingly, the visa issued was only for the days planned in the country, rather than six months or a year. So any logistics fluff-up, breakdown, internal flight commandeered by an army commander wanting to get his farm’s fruit to Yangon market in a hurry, and we were going to be in trouble.

The next day, Jim and I flew from BKK to Yangon. Yangon? Who the hell flies to Yangon? Who on earth can get in? Our security clearance took six weeks alone. All the traffic flows the other way, driven by economic refugees and the very poor Burmese looking for work in Thailand. Thailand is kept moving by Burmese prepared to work for wages a Thai wouldn’t stop eating their snacks for. We were expecting to be rattling around in an empty plane, playing tiddly winks with the crew and taking turns flying the the plane. Actually a shockingly smartly dressed crowd of senior Italians and Dutch, coloured cords and Hermes scarves, were on a package tour and the flight in an aged Airbus was rammed. Our tiddles and winks didn’t see the light of day.

Since I was last in Myanmar in 2002 they have built a new international terminal. All efficiency, smiles and granite. Some porter had managed to do the Indian trick of picking out all our luggage before we had cleared immigration and had it loaded up on a trolley. Jim, being the good soul, let him get us out of airside, and into a taxi for the short ride to the domestic terminal, the old terminal I remembered, which resembled and smelt like a cross between a crumbling Indian bus station and Krabi hospital outpatients dept. Meeting Dr O and two local FAO staff, we got onto our internal prop flight up to Thandwe, a short 45 minute hop up-country. Surreal experience # 7, bouncing around at 14,000 feet over this notionally militarised country, in an old Alitalia prop, listening to ‘Close To Me’ by The Cure. 

This was the easy bit. This flight got us part way up the country to the popular resort of Ngapali, where we chilled out for the rest of the day, trying to working out how many inches of Kyet local currency to the dollar, in a nice little set of low-tech bungalow rooms facing the sea. Elec from 6pm to 6am. 

The next day, however, we needed to drive 10 hours in a minivan and old car further up country from Ngapali to Kyauk Phuy (KP). The problem with these roads is that the surfaces are so bad, the teakwood bridges so rickety and fully of tyre-pricking nails sticking their heads up from the warped boards, that time travelling by road is downtime. Seatbelts would be a huge help to stop passengers from banging their heads on the vehicle ceiling and to hold bags in place. Unfortunately, old minivans and cars in this end of the world are rarely equipped with the aforementioned and all the shocks are worn out, causing sickening thuds when they bottomed out in a big pothole. So travel is watching the world go buy. And this was in the dry season.

Fish and rice drying out in the sun. Huge piles of rice straw piled up in cones, off the ground. Mini terraced rice paddies, lying uselessly in the sun for eight months, waiting for the one rain-fed crop per year. Filthy kids playing in the road, seeming unphased by the huge dust clouds we threw up. Vast areas of trashed landscape and trees mullered for cooking fuelwood. Pagodas rather than the temples of Thailand. Surprisingly clean and free of rubbish because the local people can’t afford snacks and shite in plastic wrappers. And a hundreds of collapsing bridges (note the split in a main beam). 

Having left at 7am we arrived at the town we were going to work at (KP) by 5pm in Rakhine State. We had a good look at this on Google Earth before coming as it’s in a ‘restricted area’ due to being close to Bangladesh. Ie no whities, tourists, reporters or anyone who isn’t in the oil and gas world. After a lot of grief Dr O had found a hall for us and for four days we were going to conduct mangrove restoration training for the FAO, as part of a much larger mangrove project. We knew Dr O from a mangrove training in India in 2005 so that’s why Jim (at MAP but in Myanmar as a private individual, like me) got the call, and he asked me to support him. Ironically there was an airstrip (and golf course!) about a five iron away from the hall but this was for government staff only.

The next day was spent talking with the two local FAO staff, U (Mr) San and Miss Khin (who had an MSc from Bangor Uni of all places + Dresden). We had previously explained the training we were going to do, but they hadn’t seen the .ppt nor how were going to keep 50 people from falling off their chairs from boredom and heat exhaustion for four days. An added difficulty was the mix of the crowd. Some Myanmar forestry dept staff, NGOs, UNDP staff and local villagers from mangrove areas.

The first evening we came across a group of 9 Indians, bored out of theirs skulls in the hotel. They were part of a gas pipeline dredging team, waiting for their dredger to arrive from India - ten days to wait and weren’t allowed to leave the hotel, drink, party or cause any trouble at all. No internet as internet penetration in Myanmar is like Rolls Royce Phantom ownership in Yangon. No mobiles as ownership is restricted and CDMA rather than GSM. Four of them were newly married. They were so bored that the cricket on TV and 1970s Indian films being shown, all wobbling heads and needless dancing, failed to enliven them. Even their Indian curry multi-compartment plates looked like prison canteen trays. They were desperate.

The Mangrove training was fun. For once there was complete .ppt freedom from corporate ID and colour use, so we went mad. Loads of pictures. Very few words. Loads of build. Dancing arrows and indicators of where to do what. You can take the suit off the ad-man…

More on the training in the next installment.

Lessons Learned from the Final Report - Non Scientific Reporting

Site Survey, March 2009. No natural regeneration

This site was chosen as it was a typical aquaculture pond, carved out of former mangroves. The pond had been abandoned for 5-7 years and the mud walls round the blocked sluice gate had eroded, thus allowing tidal flushing for 2-3 years before the project started. However, despite the availability of propagules and seeds, the pond floor was not regenerating. A site survey supported the hypothesis that the pond was not regenerating due to the substrate being too low, relative to sea level – almost Watsonian (1928) mudflat. Mangroves surrounding the pond were growing at levels higher than the pond floor. Therefore the restoration part of the project attempted to correct this by raising the height of some of the substrate and improve the drainage.

Hills Stable, Channels Less So

Feb 2010. 

Most of the effort has been focused on repairing the topographical damage - widening and lowering the channels across the pond to improve drainage and with the spoil creating a series of hills, of drier and firmer substrate. Approximately 32 hills have been dug and 60m of channel improved or dug. Each of the hills is about 1m high by 3m across, weighing about a tonne. This has provided more substrate at the appropriate height for mangrove growth and better drained soil. Many of these hills have quickly been colonised by crabs.

Despite misgivings by local people, once settled, and water squeezed out of the clay by its own weight, the hills remained relatively stable losing between 10-20cms height over 18 months. For example, Hill A, the first hill produced, has settled and lost only 16cms in height, between March 2009 and Jan 2011. Though the sample is small, vegetated hills seemed to be more resistant to erosion, possibly from the protection the leaves offer from the rain.

Digging the channels and producing the hills was hard work, and required the sides of the hills to slope only gently, otherwise the sides would buckle out. Thus producing much higher hills required disproportionately larger amounts of digging. However this is a viable method for amending topography changed by pond conversion, and could be a livelihood opportunity[1], or done mechanically.

The channels, on the other hand, were less stable. Testing revealed that channel sides needed to be sloped at very shallow angles, and nearby surface ‘sloppy’ mud skimmed off and piled onto the hill. The pond contained so much fine clay material, and the process of working and walking in the channels churned up the mud so much, that the channels tended to fill in more quickly than the hills subsided and eroded.

Plant Growth from Dibbled Propagules

A random sample of hills was dibbled with various mangrove propagules. The first hill to be dibbled[2] was Hill C. This received Rhizophora apiculata, dibbled on 22^nd March 2009. The chart below shows Hill C’s encouraging and continued growth. It also shows that though propagules were dibbled around the base of the hill, mid-way up and on top of the hill, the heights attained by the surviving plants suggest that lower plants were slightly taller than the higher and mid-level plants.  

 Plant growth on Hill C (Rhizophora apiculata)

This pattern of good growth on the hills is repeated for Ceriops tagal and Bruguiera cylindrica. Nypa fruticans has been slower to establish itself, and some of the Nypa hills have failed (eg X, R), but is still growing on Hill H and D, average height 90cms.

Growth Comparisons

To compare dibbling on hills to dibbling into unaltered pond floor, four ‘Test Planting’ plots were established. TP1&2 received R. apiculata propagules. Much to everyone’s surprise both these plots thrived, despite very little other natural regeneration on the pond floor of any species.

Initially, the TP plants struggled up quickly to gain more height, at the expense of far fewer leaves, and leaves that were 50% of the size of those on Hill C. However, almost two years after the event, the leaf size difference has largely gone. Similarly, TP1 average height is 100cm and TP2 110cm to Hill C’s 95cm average, so now all about similar height.

Dibbling Avicennia marina on Hill P initially produced limited growth of approximate 10 plants from 50 propagules around the base of the hill. In the adjacent Test Planting plot 4 where 50 A. marina propagules were dibbled into the soil, only one plant survived. Eventually, all the A. marina died on hill and plot. Predation by crabs is suspected.

B. cylindrica was dibbled into Hills F and L. Ceriops tagal was installed in Hill E (below). Both were dibbled into Test Plot 3. Sadly all the B. cylindrical on Hill L died, but both E (av. height 34cm) and F (av. height 60cm) survived. Compared to the Test Plot 3 dibbled directly into the pond floor, growth seems to be marginally easier on the hills.

Debris. A Possible Cause of Plant Death

Of constant concern was debris that floated into the pond from the outside. Hills E (above) and L appeared to have sustained impact damage, and the tops of both hills had been cleared of dibbled plants, but the plants lower down the slopes surviving. There was a lot of debris in the corner of the pond, and occasionally with a high tide and change of wind direction, this would shift to the other end (see below). It is suggested that this movement, and debris in general, killed off some of the plans, and also reduced the amount of successful natural regeneration within the pond. 

  

Control Plots Remained Empty

Seven 3x3m Control Plots were installed over the pond to monitor natural regeneration on the pond floor. Though the rods demarking the plots were eventually stolen, the plots remained empty.
And Almost No Natural Reneg On the Hills So Far

It was anticipated that with hill substrate at a more appropriate height for mangroves, some propagules and seeds would volunteer onto a hill and start to grow. The site is not propagule-limited: towards the end of the rainy season many seeds of several species arrive in the pond. At the top end of the pond, which was on average 30 cm higher than the lower parts of the pond near the sluice gate, many propagules were seen to start growing in the pond floor, but would die off after a few months. The reason for this die-off is not clear as pH was never more acidic than 6, and salinity always between 22-35ppt. Leaves on the new arrivals did not seem to be suffering unduly from pest damage, though there was a considerable amount of water scum deposited on the leaves. Thus a suggestion is that the regeneration at the top of the pond was also damaged by debris floating over the pond.

Only one Xylocarpus moluccensis arrived on a hill (C) and set root.

It is suggested that once a hill is produced, rain and inundation erode the hills’ creviced surface, and in combination with a baking sun, produce smooth hard hills, which the seeds just cannot stick to. Sadly only one hill (E2, see below) was dibbled with Sesuvium, which might help to trap seeds as they float past, but as of Jan 2011 no species had taken hold within the Sesuvium.

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[1] MAP and WI-T have successfully used local labour to excavate another site in at Ban Talay Nok, Phang Nga province. The link goes to a short film of the project.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKL3KJE3Xsw

[2] ‘Dibbling’ is a process of inserting a seed or propagule directly into the mud, rather than either scattering them on the water, or growing the seeds up in a nursery. This was done to keep all costs to a minimum, and was a technique a village conservation team could easily repeat. 

Final Visit by APFED and TEI. Pictures and Report

At the end of January 2011 we had our final visit by TEI together with members of the APFED council. Jim from MAP managed to join, plus K Donnapat of WI and Bang Dol of the local village. Our site friend Prof Sanit from TEI, who was in fine form, led his NGOs team including Dr Qwan, a previous visitor.

For more pictures following the following link

https://picasaweb.google.com/111581195668547069776/APFEDTEIVisitBLD?feat=directlink

For the final report and lessons learned, please follow the link to download from 4shared. It's less than 2MB so not too bandwidth taxing.

http://www.4shared.com/document/edeu7HNx/APFED-BLD_Evaluation_Report_Ja.html

Thank you one and all.

The Mudlboster