Speaking with a Burmese Environmental Leader, “Win Myo Thu: ‘Deforestation is Particularly Worrying’”

U Win Myo Thu, co-founder and director of the Economically Progressive Ecosystem Development group, is concerned with a variety of environmental issues in Myanmar, and he has a vision to share on how to fix them. His advocacy philosophy is heavily grassroots, and he describes a variety of situations in which he is directly advocating for the rights of local communities and their immediate environments. He lists deforestation as the major issue facing environmentalists in Myanmar today, due to the alarming rate at which the forest is disappearing, largely for huge timber operations. He offers some astute social analysis on how inequalities factor in to this dilemma: "As villagers have said, there are cases in which those who steal a [small] bunch of wood are imprisoned while those who steal logs in trucks act with impunity...Again, the government is only focusing on exports. We want the government to focus on local use. Poor people have to use wood for their houses as well as for agricultural implements. I would like wood to be available for the poor and for priority to be given to locals."