Burma woman promotes ideals of ecotourism

The term "ecotourism" can be defined in any number of ways, but Chit Chit Myint is pretty sure it means at least this much: Ecotourism must not destroy, and should actually help protect the ecology of the wilderness tourists visit. And it must protect the communities of the indigenous people that live there.

By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/09/26/news/mtregional/news07.txt

In the United States, no native peoples subsist in our designated wilderness areas.

But in Burma, known as Myanmar, it is quite different, said Chit Chit. (Burmese do not go by a surname.)
Burma not only has the richest biodiversity in Asia after Indonesia, and some of the most remote regions, it is also home to 135 ethnic groups, many of which live in the remote mountain regions of the country where few Westerners have visited. The pine-forested mountains of the Burmese highlands, for example, are the highest of any mountains in southeast Asia.

This makes Burma a natural for ecologically minded trekkers from Europe and the United States. But for a number of reasons, including the country’s political isolation, it remains the least "discovered" tourist destination of any of the country in the Mekong River region of southeast Asia. The region includes Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and the Chinese province of Yunnan.

Remote areas of great natural beauty and ecological fragility are inhabited by native people whose traditional ways of life are equally fragile. If tourism is to penetrate these areas without drastically changing the inhabitants’ lives for the worse, it must occur gently, and with the cooperation and leadership of the indigenous people themselves, she said.

Chit Chit, 54, is managing director of Unique Tours and Unique Education and Counseling of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the capital and major urban center of Burma. She is also a graduate student in public administration at Yangon University. For the last several weeks she has been in the United States researching her masters’ thesis, "Community Based Sustainable Ecotourism and Environmental Development in Myanmar."

She was visiting Polson at the invitation of Polson’s Daniel Henning, a retired Eastern Montana University political science professor with whom she has collaborated in the past on this topic. Henning lives and works in Burma’s remote forested region during the winter months.

"Nobody knows what ecotourism means, but to me it is ecologically friendly tourism," Chit Chit said. "Ecotourism must be community-based, not ‘top-down’ tourism development."

How do you accomplish that when your country is ruled in ruthless "top-down" fashion by a repressive military junta?

Delicately, of course. Chit Chit would not be drawn into any political discussions involving the current government and politics of Burma, which is ruled by generals who have no taste for democracy and no patience with political dissent.

But she said a region’s people should not be judged by the ruling regime. Burma is, in fact, one of the last best places in Asia for out-of-the-way, ecologically friendly trekking by Westerners, she said.

(The U.S. State Department has issued warnings and guidelines about traveling in Burma.)

Burma has two national parks, one marine national park, 19 wildlife sanctuaries, six bird sanctuaries, one wildlife park, one mountain park and an elephant range. Two other wildlife sanctuaries have been proposed. In all, these protected areas cover about 2.1 percent of the country’s land base.

These and vast other areas of Burma’s old-growth forest and high mountain regions are inhabited by simple, and relatively primitive cultural and ethnic groups.

Slowly, Burma has been opening to Western tourism of the conventional kind – visits to majestic Buddhist temples, the delights of Yangon, sandy beaches and spectacular coral beds, and a variety of waterfront sights, sounds and cultures.

This kind of tourism is valuable to the government because it brings in foreign currency. (The U.S. government has imposed an embargo on Burmese products in an effort to punish Burmese military rulers.)

But the remote forest regions, their people and wildlife, are under seige by illegal logging and poaching. Chit Chit does not want insensitive, profit-motivated conventional tourism added to this list of countryside threats.

"The tourist companies come and go, and they can change these simple people’s lives forever. I would like to develop some alternatives so that people don’t damage our land," she said.

While in western Montana she visited Glacier National Park, the National Bison Range at Moiese and the Leopold Institute at the University of Montana. The institute is the only federal research group entirely focused on wilderness. She networked with officials during these visits, and exchanged ideas.

She said she intends to bring her ideas on sustainable ecotourism to the attention of her government. Doing so, she agreed, may carry some risk.

"I will need to give proper reasons to the government. It is a delicate and sensitive issue, and I might probably go to jail," she said.

Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at [email protected]