Forest Governance Without a Central Government
A Subnational Monitoring and Response Model from the Ethnic Territories of Myanmar
By Forest Trends View PublicationMyanmar’s political crisis has dismantled central oversight of natural resources, but new evidence from a forest monitoring initiative shows that subnational authorities in the country’s ethnic territories can still monitor forests, enforce environmental rules, and adapt policy responses. The project, utilizing remote sensing, has uncovered a surprising reality: small-scale gold mining, not illegal logging, has emerged as a primary driver of deforestation. From September 2024 to April 2025, Forest Trends and the exiled National Unity Government’s (NUG) Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) monitored 1.06 million hectares of protected forests across five townships in the Sagaing and Magway regions and responded to the findings in areas tagged by 55,340 deforestation alerts and 209 ground-truthed hotspots.
The findings challenge conventional assumptions about deforestation and natural resource management in Myanmar.