Projecting Conservation: Environmental governance, authority and overlapping legacies of conflict in Southern Myanmar

The proposed research will examine the role of conservation in the constitution and contestation of authority within the context of Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar, a location that has been subject to over six decades of civil war and is held under a system of 'mixed administration'. While existing literature on the politics of conservation has largely focused on the dichotomous dynamic between state and society, where conservation acts as a tool for state formation, recurrently resulting in community land dispossession and loss of access to resources, I seek to understand how conservation is deployed by multiple actors to varying political ends. In addressing this gap, the proposed project will forge new ground in academic debate around the relationship between conservation, conflict, and authority.