“Myanmar is more advanced than China?!” is the reaction of my friend when I tell her President Thein Sein suspended construction work on Myitsone Dam, financed by China, insisting that the government must “respect the will of the people”. She works as a consultant on environmental and social impact assessments in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and laments how they rarely prevent projects from being carried out. In the name of economic development, environmental and social concerns are often shuffled off. The Nu River Dam suspension, called by former Premier Wen Jiabao, is a rare exception.
The Myitsone Dam case was isolated, and by itself is not a fair indicator of Myanmar’s level of political advancement. In many ways, though, it did usher in a new era, signaling the new quasi-civilian government’s commitment to reform and opening to the West. This is said to undermine the relationship with China, which for decades extended political protection and economic support to Myanmar. Certainly China was caught by surprise when the decision was unilaterally announced, and some key actors, including the state-owned enterprise China Power Investment, are still trying to revive the project.
Another new beginning is Myanmar’s road to environmental governance. ESIA laws are not yet in place, but civil society actors’ awareness of their participation rights as stakeholders is high. Activists and NGOs are not content with CSR programs that are only “PR” or “for show”. Projects characterized by the building of schools and clinics have not worked well partly because many end up being empty buildings (companies say it is the Myanmar government’s responsibility to hire teachers and doctors). More fundamentally, they have not gone through proper, participatory design, monitoring and evaluation processes to generate real community benefit.
Even if some villagers do gain from such hardware, activists demand that people’s rights be respected right from the initial planning stage of projects, rather than losing their dignity along with their land and livelihoods. In Slavoj Zizek’s words, they are not satisfied with corporate charity efforts that “repair with the right hand what [they] ruined with the left hand”. What is required is genuine public participation – a channel for redistribution of power that enables the have-nots to be consciously included in making informed decisions.
CSR is at a nascent stage in China. What Wanbao did at Letpadaung, by providing for communities and issuing transparent reports, is ahead of the curve for Chinese SOEs. Yet it is still a far cry from the participatory approach originating from the West. In rhetoric and in law, the Chinese government has long embraced notions of “sustainable development” and “public participation”. Public engagement has been stipulated in ESIAs since 2006, yet the law remains ambiguous and enforcement has been lax. Government agencies preserve the discretion of exceptions to protect “state secrecy”. Public participation, if any, is at most tokenistic and cannot substantively direct the state and companies’ decision making.
In Myanmar, though, Chinese companies will not easily get away with it. Faced with a proposed Chinese-backed nickel mine in Mwe Taung, Chin State, civil society groups and political parties have already demanded full public disclosure of the scope and impact of the project. Relevant environmental laws are yet to be enacted but the people are engaging. In terms of their awareness of their rights to give or withhold free, prior, informed consent, they are indeed quite advanced.
Diane Tang Lee is a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester.