Burmese President Halts Myitsone Dam Project

Burmese President Thein Sein has called for a suspension of work on the controversial Myitsone dam project, in response to a mounting public outcry over the project, which critics say threatens the source of the Irrawaddy River.

Thein Sein said in a letter to Parliament on Friday that construction of the 6,000-megawatt hydropower dam in Kachin State should be suspended because the project is against the will of the people and lawmakers […]

China Speeds Ahead with Myitsone Dam Despite Civil War in Northern Burma

Seven hundred Chinese laborers are working day and night shearing off hilltops, laying tunnels, and building embankments at the Myitsone, the source of Burma’s Irrawaddy River, in a race to complete the country’s largest dam on schedule despite ongoing […]

Diverse Groups Raise Concerns About Development Projects on the Irrawaddy River

On 12 August, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with the regime’s minister of social welfare, relief, and resettlement, Aung Kyi, in Rangoon for the second time in less than a month. After the meeting the two issued a joint statement noting that they had agreed to cooperate and “to work in reciprocal basis by avoiding the contradicting attitudes.” However, it is clear that Daw Suu intends to continue to operate independently on behalf of the people of Burma, even where doing so contradicts the position of the regime. Just two days after the 12 August meeting Daw Suu defied the regime, traveling outside of Rangoon to meet supporters in Pegu and neighbouring Thanatpin despite the regime’s warning that such a trip could trigger “riots.”

Additionally, the day before her meeting with Aung Kyi, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi issued a letter expressing her opinion on one of the most contentious issues currently facing Burma, the issue of development projects, in particular dams along the Irrawaddy River […]

မိခင္ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီး ထာဝရ ရွင္သန္ေစေရး ျမန္မာတမ်ဳိးသားလံုးအေရး

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ပိုင္း ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္တြင္ ျမစ္ဖ်ားခံျပီး အိႏၵိယသမုဒၵရာထဲသို႕ စီးဝင္ေနေသာ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္ၾကီးသည္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္သာမက အာရွတိုက္ၾကီး တခုလံုးအတြက္ပါ အေရးပါေသာ […]

Statement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Personal Appeal to Save the Irrawaddy River

Today, the lrrawaddy is under threat. tack of sound planning, the failure to enforce necessary conservation laws, and a poor ecological awareness have created diverse problems. The plains forests on the banks of the river are in danger of disappearing as illegal logging and charcoal production proceed at an alarming pace […]

Ivanhoe Received US $103 Million from Burma’s Copper Mines

Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines has announced early today in its press release that it received US$103 million from Burma asset it held through Monywa Trust.

Ivanhoe owned a 50% operating interest in a joint venture with Burma’s state-owned company and transferred its asset to a third party Monywa Trust in 2007 […]

KESAN Report Endangered Elephant Need Protection

Today, the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) announces the results of their report, Endangered Elephants in Megatha Forest, Karen State, Burma. KESAN researchers found evidence that Megatha Forest is home to 15-18 elephants in 2-3 small groups of 3-7 individuals […]

Burmese Regime Neglecting Environmental Protection

New Report Highlights Need for Sound Environment and Development Policy Framework in Post-Election Burma

A new report highlights how Burma lacks any meaningful frameworks on environmental protection and sustainable development that would enable citizens to take part in decision-making about their country’s development, despite a recent transition to a military-dominated parliamentary political system […]

Local Communities Launch Campaign against Thai Coal Mine and Power Plant in Eastern Shan State

Impacted communities today launched a campaign to oppose plans by Thai investors to develop a coal mine and power plant in conflict-ridden eastern Shan State […]

China’s Assessment Calls for Burma’s Myitsone Dam to be Scrapped

China Power Investment Corporation is forging ahead with its controversial Myitsone dam in northern Burma despite its own assessment calling for the project to be cancelled […]