[sustran] South-east Asian Highway Hits Roadblock in Burma (Re: AsDB)

[Todd Edelman]

BANGKOK, Aug 31, 2010 (IPS) - With its thick forest cover and abundant 
wildlife, the Dawna mountain range in south-eastern Burma is coming in 
the way of a flagship highway project being pushed by one of Asia’s 
premier financiers of roads.

The still-to-be-built 40-kilometre stretch to go across the mountain in 
military-ruled Burma is key to making the Asian Development Bank’s 
(AsDB) East-West Corridor a reality. It is part of the Manila-based 
bank’s 1,450-km long highway, billed to facilitate easier transport of 
goods and services across mainland South-east Asia.

The planned road will link the already completed 18-km road and a 200-km 
highway on either side of the mountain in that corner of Burma, also 
known as Myanmar. The AsDB’s blueprint seeks to connect the Burmese port 
city of Moulmein, on the Andaman Sea, with the Vietnamese city of Da 
Nang, on the coast of the South China Sea.

But this short distance of asphalt will test the bank’s commitment to 
keeping environmental and social costs to a minimum in the projects that 
are part of the economic integration agenda of its Greater Mekong 
Subregion (GMS) Programme.

"The area they have chosen to build the road is a part of the mountain 
with forests and wildlife," said Naing Htoo, Burma project coordinator 
for Earthrights International, a U.S-based green lobby. "It will result 
in increasing logging of teak and killing wildlife."

In addition, the ethnic Karen who live in the area where the road will 
run through feat that it would make it easier for more Burmese troops to 
come in to combat the Karen National Union, a rebel force that has been 
waging a separatist war for six decades.

"The Dawna mountain area has a KNU presence and bringing in Burmese 
troops will result in more militarisation and abuse," Naing Htoo told 
IPS. "There are already signs of such violations, as land owned by 
locals close to the road’s route has been confiscated."

For now, concerns that road construction will also result in rights 
violations such as forced labour, which the Burmese regime has been 
accused of, appears unfounded. "Since February 2007 some 430 (forced 
labour) complaints have been received from all over the country, however 
no complaints have been received alleging forced labour in respect to 
the East-West corridor highway project," Steve Marshall, head of the 
International Labour Organisation’s Burma office, told IPS.

The AsDB is taking cover behind its non-involvement in providing direct 
funds to Burma to sidestep the questions that environmentalists and 
human rights activists are raising about the road across the Dawana 
range. The bank has stopped development funding in Burma for the past 
two decades due to the country’s financial and political troubles.

"ADB has not provided any direct assistance to Myanmar for over 20 
years, and ADB has no plans to provide any new direct assistance to 
Myanmar," said Pradeep Srivastava, a senior regional cooperation 
specialist at the bank, in an e- mail interview. "Since ADB does not 
operate in Mynamar, questions about the East-West Economic Corridor or 
other matters within the country can be best answered by officials in 
Myanmar."

Likewise, any hint of a policy change by the bank to fund an 
infrastructure project in Burma would be met by opposition from the 
United States and the European Union (EU), which enjoy sufficient clout 
in the AsDB’s operations.

"Infrastructure development in a conflict area like the highway project 
is certain to be met by strong opposition from the U.S. government and 
many EU countries," said Yuki Akimoto, co-director of the Tokyo-based 
Burma Information Network – Japan, which monitors the work of 
international financial institutions. "It may be difficult to abide by 
the ADB’s own environmental and social safeguard policies."

"The Burma stretch is key to the realisation of the East- West Economic 
Corridor," she said in an interview. "The ADB has been encouraging other 
entities to help build that stretch. As such, Thailand has been helping 
build part of the highway and Japan has been very keen on it, too."

The bank’s GMS programme began in 1992 to promote economic growth in the 
six countries that share the Mekong River, South-east Asia’s largest 
body of water. These are Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and 
Vietnam.

By 2005, over 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of investments had poured in 
to finance the building of roads, bridges, airports, seaports, power 
lines and hotels across this sub-region. Loans for the transport sector 
from the bank and other funders topped that amount, accounting for 
nearly half, or 4.8 billion U.S. dollars.

But projects such as the transport corridor will have "costs that go 
with the project," said Avilash Roul, executive director of the NGO 
Forum on the ADB, a Manila- based watchdog of the bank. "Based on its 
studies, the ADB admits that the road project will increase the threat 
of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, avian flu, human and wildlife 
trafficking, and degradation of environment and natural resources."

"From the ground, local communities claim that they were not consulted 
about the project," he explained in an interview, echoing a complaint 
that villagers in the Burma stretch of the transport corridor have made 
to activists.

"Local communities were never consulted when the first phase of the 
highway in Myamnar was being built and they have not been approached for 
the phase across the mountain," said Naing Htoo. "Workers in rubber 
plantations and fruit farmers have lost their livelihoods." (END)

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Todd Edelman
Green Idea Factory,
a member of the OPENbike team

Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081

edelman at greenidea.eu
www.greenidea.eu
todd at openbike.se
www.openbike.se

Skype: toddedelman

Urbanstr. 45
10967 Berlin
Germany

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