Raising Awareness: Livelihood and Sustainable Environment

Raising Awareness: Livelihood and Sustainable Environment 

Ms. Shwunn Lak Yadanar Soe

 

Main livelihood of people in Myanmar 

Agriculture plays in a major role for contributing the economic growth of the country, and fishery and livestock are considered as second most important sectors for Myanmar’s economy. People living in the country that is enrich in natural resources mostly work in the sectors which are related to the use of resources or rely on its resources. However, the deficit of education, knowledge and information create major threat for a developing country like Myanmar. Poor use of resources in sustainable manner plague the livelihoods of Myanmar people especially in rural area where farmers, fishers and inhabitants are less educated and less knowledgeable. 

Matters are getting worse by the points that farmers and fisher do not have effective modern farming or fishing method and lack of understanding on the importance of global demand and supply condition, weather forecast news and crop management systems, which finally affect local price and income rate. 

Concerning other livelihoods apart from agricultural and fishery, local people working in tourism industry that is becoming growing area of economy, benefit only small amount since the expenditures flow to airlines, hotels and other businesses. Vulnerable to internal and external impacts such as natural disaster, political unrest, terrorism and tension between the local people and private-owned tourism business are also leading to income reduction, conflicts over resources and competition over the use of resources. 

As a result, the environment may end up from unintended problems such as deteriorating the existing ecosystem. 

Therein, role of education is performing as a fundamental component and the government is responsible to upgrade the literacy rate and educate the people living in rural area with poor education condition. Improvement of infrastructure, providence of trainings for practice of sustainable livelihoods and law enforcement are required to set up to reach the country’s sustainable development goal. 

In order to achieve the sustainable development goal, the sense of responsibility in business is as important as education. Several factors such as poor living condition, increase of population, decrease of natural resources, weak in technology and knowledge of upgrading better system are decelerating the movement to sustainable goal. 

Education and its history 

Regarding the importance of education, which manoeuvre the sense of responsibility and morality, and back to its history, the education in Myanmar was started in the form of Buddhist monastic education system since the time of ancient king and the system was then transformed into classroom education when the country was fallen under the colonization of British Empire. During the British colony, the curriculums were based on the British education system and the education was not opened for poor families. 

After Myanmar achieved its independence, all the schools were nationalized in the 1960s and opened the education for all citizens. The government started to establish education plans such as Ah Thone Lone programme, which is the basic teaching of reading, write and calculate, to raise the education level and the literacy rate. In an attempt to level up the basic life skill and knowledge, moral, civic and life skill education were added as minor subjects in the curriculum in 1998-1999. 

Currently, the Ministry of Education is administering the education system of Myanmar and made the primary schools became access free in 2010-2011 and middle school followed in 2013-2014. Since the education play in crucial part to promote the country GDP, living standard, morality and figuring the sustainable livelihood of people in Myanmar, the government is allocating more budget for educational improvement. 

Despite the fact that government is trying to narrow gap between poverty and access to education problems, there are still requirements for the improvement of awareness and public participation. 

Developing a balanced and sustainable development achievement will require investment in basic infrastructure, institutions, regulations, and implementation capacity, as Myanmar is starting from a very low level in these areas. 

In addition, the insufficient of human resource and capacity in government operation sector, there is little capability for monitoring compliance, and public awareness is insufficient for high levels of accountability regarding implementation. 

Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) survey 

On 19 to 23 February 2020, during work-related study on tourism and fishery sector in coastal region, at Ayeyarwady division, Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) survey was conducted with a group of international social consultants and a national social & fishery consultant. The study focused on main local issues and socio-economic condition of the inhabitants living in coastal region and the interview questions for KAP were extracted from the socio-economic study and collected the findings on KAP despite there was limitations of time and situation. 

The interview questions for KAP were as follows; 

1. What is the main activity for living? 

2. What are the main challenges? 

3. Is there any changes within 5 years and what are those? 

4. What are the issues in your sector? 

5. How do you understand “Sustainability”? 

6. Is it difficult to practice “sustainability manner” in your business? 

Findings from survey 

Tensions on land issue, weak in law enforcement, corruption and lack of practice in sustainable use of resources were documented as the study was conducted over tourism and fishery sectors. 

There is a contradiction on the preference of tourism development of the region, between the people relating with tourism sector and people working in fisheries sector. The local resident especially the villages exist near beach area had to relocate their villages and lost their land after the hotels arrived and bought the land and constructed their buildings in those areas. Moreover, the employment opportunities is still difficult for the some local people to be employed at the tourism business since some hotels recruit their staffs from cities and employ the local people to work at non-management and low paid level. Local-owned small business such as souvenir shops, snorkelling tour and restaurants are also thriving against the large business. Lack of knowledge and techniques to promote their business against the large ones is also one of the main issues in tourism. 

Although there is development of infrastructure and income rate, there are still tensions between small scale business and large scale business and lack of environmental protection activities around the attractive islands which may later result in the decrease of tourist arrival. Even more, some local people claimed that the authority should arrange benefit sharing system or make development on community based tourism with sustainable approach. 

In regards of the fishery sector, the villages mainly focus in fisheries are mostly existing around the tourist attraction areas and partly relying on tourism sector. The fishermen’s villages which are far from tourism sites have poor transportation mode and road condition and for those villages which have difficult logistic circulation, expect for the improvement of tourism sector, with hopes to benefit the better infrastructure condition and road access. 

Since the export of fisheries products in Ayeyarwady lean on the demand from Yangon and main buyers from China, some fishermen from that areas use restricted fishing gears to increase their catch rate and earns, and which result in the use of fisheries resources beyond the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). 

Sustainable environment 

Environmental challenges are having increasingly significant impacts on availability of resources, climate, global health, human well-being, the economy, and technological development. Environmental management has come to be considered as one of the most important social concerns for communities because of its many direct and indirect impacts on today’s world. 

For most parts, nearly all of the business have failed to leave the Mother Nature for its natural recharge and regenerate system, and exploiting the natural resources over its limit. Maintaining environmental standards is becoming a challenging task under such circumstances, and it will require knowledge and an understanding of the impacts of unethical decisions. 

Climate change and some of the other major environmental challenges that have emerged over the past few decades represent major social responsibility concerns for developing communities. Abuses of power by key decision-makers have been and continue to be an endemic problem in many developing countries and beyond. 

Awareness raising 

During the study, it is noted that most people have knowledge about the sustainable use but it is still difficult for them to bring it into attitude and practice in reality. Poverty and self-oriented manners are the whitewashing reasons of unethical activities. 

And thus, public participation and environmental education are the predominant ways to raise the awareness of the ecological challenges that are facing in today. And the education also develops the ability to understand and minimize these challenges and prepare for and adapt to environmental challenges. 

In order to improve the sustainability development, it is important to increase public awareness and educate citizens about the impact of environmental challenges on their lives, build knowledge, experiences, and values, and provide additional skills that would help them to make better decisions and resiliency on those changes. 

The main points for achievement of sustainable development goal are; 

1. Improving better education on environmental concerns for business and community 

2. Consideration of environmental problems while implementing economic and development activities 

3. Budget or fund allocation to implement environmental standards and measures 

4. Balancing profitability and protecting the environment, and 

5. Enforcement on environmental management for all sectors. 

 

Conclusion 

Myanmar is particularly vulnerable to the risks of climate change and natural disasters such as coastal storms, floods and droughts. The country’s development strategy must be sensitive to these climatic vulnerabilities so that the environment, social, economic and cultural lives are needed to be resilient and safeguarded as possible from such problems and must be systematically toward for sustainable development goal.