Kachin Environmental Group to Celebrate World Environment Day
June 03, 2005

The Kachin Post

The Environment Project Team of the Pan Kachin Development Society, PKDS, plans to hold environmental protection activities on World Environment Day by planting trees and delivering pamphlets and T-shirts.

The team will plant 500 trees to celebrate World Environment Day on June 5th. The trees will be planted in Kachin States and northern Shan State in Burma. It will also handout 9,000 pamphlets to inform Kachins about environmental issues.

Through this project, everyone will understand how precious the natural resources are and will learn to love the environment, said the PKDS’s environmental project coordinator Lahtaw Bang Yung. “We’ll achieve goal when people love their environment,” she said.

“We have to protect our beautiful land before it’s too late,” said the pamphlets, “Our Environment is in our own hands.” The forests of the Kachin State, which are one of the world’s most bio-diverse, has been seriously devastated by over a decade of clear-cutting by Chinese companies, which were granted concession by local Burma Army and armed ethnic organizations. Timber exports from the Kachin State to China are estimated at 600,000 cubic meters per year and valued at US$150 million, according to a report by the UK-based environmental NGO Global Witness.

“Can Kachin culture and traditions survive without the forest,” is written on the hundreds of T-shirts to be distributed on June 5th. The team has also organized speakers to provide environmental knowledge to the public and hold public discussions. The team plans to hold four public briefing in four locations in Burma.

“It is very difficult to recover clear cut forest to green forest. Even though, we can do it, the forest is just a man made one, not a natural forest,” said Bang Yung.

The Environmental Project Team also plans to launch 10 more programs to provide environmental education.

The Pan Kachin Development Society’s Environment Project Team, was founded in 2002 and is currently based in Maija Yang, Kachin State.