Zürcher Nachrichten - Tradition stokes pollution at Myanmar 'slash and burn' festival

EUR -
AED 4.321861
AFN 81.200765
ALL 97.616692
AMD 452.43926
ANG 2.106058
AOA 1079.140893
ARS 1449.265402
AUD 1.789699
AWG 2.121212
AZN 2.00124
BAM 1.951798
BBD 2.376427
BDT 144.383923
BGN 1.957717
BHD 0.443659
BIF 3459.841359
BMD 1.176817
BND 1.498627
BOB 8.133322
BRL 6.365518
BSD 1.176986
BTN 100.353213
BWP 15.548117
BYN 3.851801
BYR 23065.609063
BZD 2.364252
CAD 1.59757
CDF 3395.116416
CHF 0.934775
CLF 0.028452
CLP 1091.838782
CNY 8.43236
CNH 8.437176
COP 4695.498988
CRC 594.181556
CUC 1.176817
CUP 31.185645
CVE 110.473663
CZK 24.631924
DJF 209.143853
DKK 7.461118
DOP 70.432185
DZD 152.34005
EGP 58.082088
ERN 17.652252
ETB 159.399244
FJD 2.630423
FKP 0.863906
GBP 0.861295
GEL 3.200863
GGP 0.863906
GHS 12.179656
GIP 0.863906
GMD 84.144119
GNF 10186.525934
GTQ 9.049443
GYD 246.245044
HKD 9.236117
HNL 30.808946
HRK 7.534924
HTG 154.54309
HUF 398.787318
IDR 19097.382851
ILS 3.917156
IMP 0.863906
INR 100.505565
IQD 1541.629994
IRR 49573.407255
ISK 142.383193
JEP 0.863906
JMD 188.034412
JOD 0.834402
JPY 170.30184
KES 152.400959
KGS 102.91226
KHR 4731.980293
KMF 491.909358
KPW 1059.166398
KRW 1603.871873
KWD 0.359284
KYD 0.980889
KZT 611.565907
LAK 25366.285986
LBP 105442.784641
LKR 353.105912
LRD 235.952961
LSL 20.676409
LTL 3.474834
LVL 0.711845
LYD 6.330676
MAD 10.563401
MDL 19.820356
MGA 5219.182352
MKD 61.518559
MMK 2470.381248
MNT 4219.220358
MOP 9.516086
MRU 46.727589
MUR 52.803666
MVR 18.123811
MWK 2043.545394
MXN 21.949093
MYR 4.969106
MZN 75.269392
NAD 20.676656
NGN 1805.837446
NIO 43.247927
NOK 11.831439
NPR 160.564742
NZD 1.936239
OMR 0.452489
PAB 1.176986
PEN 4.184747
PGK 4.936724
PHP 66.426624
PKR 334.156977
PLN 4.2421
PYG 9383.757423
QAR 4.284319
RON 5.058313
RSD 117.150945
RUB 93.057992
RWF 1687.555275
SAR 4.413225
SBD 9.811033
SCR 16.585264
SDG 706.684128
SEK 11.264375
SGD 1.499447
SHP 0.924793
SLE 26.41966
SLL 24677.263968
SOS 672.554902
SRD 43.759929
STD 24357.731547
SVC 10.298881
SYP 15300.713136
SZL 20.676759
THB 38.168889
TJS 11.410901
TMT 4.130627
TND 3.398057
TOP 2.756221
TRY 46.863869
TTD 7.974647
TWD 34.047784
TZS 3096.839276
UAH 49.144922
UGX 4222.341557
USD 1.176817
UYU 47.153306
UZS 14833.775534
VES 128.830248
VND 30832.59987
VUV 139.981303
WST 3.061526
XAF 654.61463
XAG 0.032006
XAU 0.000354
XCD 3.180406
XDR 0.813634
XOF 654.900069
XPF 119.331742
YER 284.966467
ZAR 20.612676
ZMK 10592.766693
ZMW 28.394773
ZWL 378.934526
  • CMSC

    0.0900

    22.314

    +0.4%

  • CMSD

    0.0250

    22.285

    +0.11%

  • RBGPF

    0.0000

    69.04

    0%

  • SCS

    0.0400

    10.74

    +0.37%

  • RELX

    0.0300

    53

    +0.06%

  • RIO

    -0.1400

    59.33

    -0.24%

  • GSK

    0.1300

    41.45

    +0.31%

  • NGG

    0.2700

    71.48

    +0.38%

  • BP

    0.1750

    30.4

    +0.58%

  • BTI

    0.7150

    48.215

    +1.48%

  • BCC

    0.7900

    91.02

    +0.87%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.13

    +0.15%

  • VOD

    0.0100

    9.85

    +0.1%

  • BCE

    -0.0600

    22.445

    -0.27%

  • RYCEF

    0.1000

    12

    +0.83%

  • AZN

    -0.1200

    73.71

    -0.16%

Tradition stokes pollution at Myanmar 'slash and burn' festival
Tradition stokes pollution at Myanmar 'slash and burn' festival / Photo: STR - AFP

Tradition stokes pollution at Myanmar 'slash and burn' festival

A charred Myanmar hillside is wreathed by flames, spewing ochre smoke that smothers out sunlight in an apocalyptic scene.

Text size:

But the villagers who set it ablaze dance below in a ceremony celebrating the inferno as a moment of regeneration and hope.

"It's a tradition from our ancestors," said Joseph, a youth leader from Tha Yu village in Myanmar's eastern Shan state.

"It's the only way we survive," added Joseph, who goes by only one name.

Every year between January and April, Southeast Asia is plagued by smog from farmers lighting fires to clear land, emitting microscopic PM 2.5 pollution that lines the lungs and enters the bloodstream.

Myanmar residents lose 2.3 years of life expectancy as a result of pollution from farming fires and other sources, according to analysis of 2022 data by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

Since a 2021 coup, the country has been riven by a civil war between the military and a patchwork of anti-coup partisans and ethnic minority armed groups, leaving the toll from pollution largely ignored.

But in Tha Yu village there are additional tensions -- between the old ways of agriculture and new knowledge about environmental risks.

"We don't have any other work or opportunities in our region," said Joseph, 27, as haze swallowed the hills behind him, scorched to make way for paddy rice, chilli and corn.

"So we are forced into this tradition every year."

- 'Not getting rich' -

Most agricultural burn-off happens when farmers incinerate the stubble of old harvests in their fields to make room for the new, and to fertilise the soil.

But the smoke billowing around Tha Yu village is from "slash and burn" agriculture -- a method also called shifting cultivation, in which patches of wild vegetation are burnt for similar purposes, with crops planted for only a few growing cycles.

"If possible, we want to try other agricultural methods but we don't have any technology and no one has taught us," said Joseph.

Environmentalists generally say slash and burn farming can be twice as harmful because it lays waste to tracts of existing plant life which would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide emissions.

But a 2023 study in Belize suggested Indigenous "slash and burn" farming done in intermediate size patches of land could have a positive effect on forest diversity by opening up space for new growth.

In the Tha Yu ceremony, villagers in white headbands dance on stage before lighting a symbolic bundle of brush, swaying and clapping their hands in rhythmic celebration.

Dark tendrils of smoke creep into the sky.

"I can surely say we are not getting rich from shifting cultivation," said Khun Be Sai, a member of the local area's cultural committee.

"We do it just to get by day to day."

- Shifting mindset -

Air quality monitoring is neither practical nor a priority in war-torn Myanmar, where more than half the population lives in poverty and 3.5 million people are displaced.

But the toll from air pollution only adds to those woes.

"Clean air is very important for your health," said Thailand's Kasetsart University environmental economist Witsanu Attavanich. "It's kind of a basic thing."

"If you don't have it you have less healthy people, a lower quality of human capital. How can the country improve without good health?"

Tha Yu is in an area controlled by the Kayan New Land Party, an ethnic minority armed group.

Khun Be Sai says hundreds of villages in the region still practise slash and burn farming, but Tha Yu is the only place that marks it with a formal ceremony.

But he sees little to celebrate in the landscape altered by climate change around the village.

"We are experiencing more natural disasters. The forests are thinning and water retention is decreasing. We are experiencing soil erosion due to heavy rains," he said.

While the ceremony lauds the practice that sustains their community, Khun Be Sai also sees a dwindling of their way of life.

"People are leaving and living in different places," he said.

"Our identities, our origins, language and literature are disappearing and being swallowed by others."

G.Kuhn--NZN