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.

MAP's EMR Project at Ban Talay Nok. A successful conclusion to their mangrove work

Chums. Happy Christmas.

This is a 10 minute film that draws to a conclusion the work MAP has accomplished in Ban Talay Nok. Despite the land tenure and control difficulties, Jim and Ning have done incredibly well, and are held in great respect by the village. Please take time to watch it. The physical work is in a different style to BLD but uses the same thinking as my project.
Hope 2010 is muddy and successful
Very best
The Mud Lobster

A short film summarising the progress at Bang Lang Da

A short film of perhaps 6 minutes, showing the life and times of the project at Bang Lang Da: where, what we are trying to achieve, what's the problem, what's our solution, how far have we got and who's come to say hello. Enjoy.

Ecological Mangrove Rehabilitation - An Introduction

It’s not emergency medical rescue, though it feels a bit like it. Nor is it about atom-spinning electromagnetic radiation. Ecological mangrove rehabilitation is a process developed by Robin Lewis and Mangrove Action Project that, in partnership with the local people, tries to re-establish a functioning mangrove ecosystem. It is often described in six steps.

Summary of the Theory
1. Know the mangroves species around your site and the species you want, their ecology / reproduction / biology.
2. Understand what these species need in terms of water flow, salinity, sun/shade levels flooding, soil types etc
3. Site history. What’s changed on your site? What’s stopping natural regeneration from happening? Was it originally mangrove?
4. Thus, do you have an appropriate site to restore? Can you fix what’s been changed? Has land ownership become an issue? Ie can you fix point three to provide suitable conditions identified in point two.
5. Fix the hydrology to allow natural regeneration to occur.
6. Only plant if the natural regeneration is either too little or arriving and establishing too slowly for your goals. [And even if you have to plant, you still need to do stages 1-5.]


This post should be read in conjunction with the other examples and details on Mangrove Action Project’s EMR web page. The reason for this blog is to describe an actual muddy case history.

So What Has Happened At Band Lang Da?
The theory is all good and lovely. Of course it makes lots of sense. And the science supports it. But EMR happens in a social context. Therefore the process starts with the community, talking and listening. What do they need? It might not be mangrove help. What are their concerns? Shockingly they have other thoughts on their minds than wall-to-wall mangroves. Do they know about mangrove rehabilitation already? (Do not assume that just because a community uses mangroves, they know how to manage a mangrove resource, cf Easter Island.) In our case, if this pond was mangroves again, what species would they value and use? Is there some other problem that is indirectly affecting the mangroves or the conditions and resources around it, like poverty? Happily at BLD no great social problems have emerged. Krabi town is nearby, which offers alternative employment opportunities. And though they use Nypa, their concerns centre more on rubbish collection, refining their crab rearing skills and the quality of the expelled water from the nearby active shrimp ponds.
If at all possible make the community feel as though the whole rehabilitation process is theirs, not yours, including the analysis of the problem and the formulation of the solution. The more participation by the community and the earlier, the better. Development history is littered with failed projects, in all sorts of areas and disciplines, due to ignoring the wishes of the local people and not getting them genuinely involved at the outset. Clearly, this level of (full) participation is an ideal situation and something to strive for. But in reality a local community has its own constraints of time, interest levels and other commitments, as well as the issues the BLD folk have mentioned already. The poorer members in particular might be so busy trying to earn enough to feed their families that they cannot attend meetings to voice an opinion, despite being concerned, interested or indeed directly affected. And a lack of education makes people (again often the poorer members) hesitant to voice an opinion.

One way to involve them in the initial EMR process is to ask the local people a series of questions, rather than lecture to them, so as they arrive at the EMR solution themselves. As they develop answers, these will naturally be tailored to their situation and needs. Another way to involve the community, and particularly if they are not so knowledgeable about their mangroves, is to run an EMR training session at a more technical level, or at a more community/ fisherman level (what MAP calls In The Hands of the Fishers) and environmental education for the children. Again, this will be covered in another posting later on, but is also featured on MAP’s site. Please get in contact if you are thinking about running one of these sessions.

At Bang Lang Da we have spent time discussing the issues and problems with the site, and other topics mentioned above. We have not involved them as much as we might in this case as we ourselves want to do the work, for our own education. But we have spent time getting to know the people and letting them know us. There is a coffee shop in the middle of the community and we stop off there for a drink and chat whenever we go to the site. Needless to say, I struggle with this because of the language barrier, but the people of BLD have been very tolerant, considering how limited my Thai is.
On a more practical level there are a couple of things that we did early on that we hope will save a lot of grief later. The first was to sort out who owns the land. Often this is ill-defined, with questionable tenure, lack of documentary evidence, poor enforcement of the law, conflicting laws, land grabs, the unclear status of community lands and so on. Asking these questions might be stirring up some latent community conflict. But there is no point rehabilitating a site to see it turned into a 7-11 shop a year later. At BLD we had to work a bit to find the owner, but when we did it turned out that he was at school with the boss of Wetlands International (Thailand), - a lucky break. So even though land control appears on point four, do it as part of the initial discussions with the community. At this point a funder would probably want to see a written agreement between the owner and the NGO. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the owner so we all know what is expected.

You’ll notice that what we have not done yet is start to build a nursery. Do not do it.

The second issue to consider early on, despite the six steps and their order, is to have a rapid but honest assessment of whether the site being proposed is suitable. There is no point going through all the stages and ticking the boxes to get to stage five and find that tidal flush will just never get to your amended site, whatever you do. Or that grazing livestock cannot be controlled and fencing is out of the question. Be realistic. For that reason, early in the process and explaining to the community what we were doing, we surveyed the site topography in detail, as we feared the site was too low. Another blog post will cover what we did and how, later on.
In the next few weeks more blogs will be posted about how we are proceeding with the EMR process in BLD. Please get in contact if you have any questions you think we might be able to help with. Chok dee, na.