The state-private hybrid forest policy in Myanmar: The impact of neoliberalism on the forestry sector after the 1990s

Abstract

Changes in political orders, institutional rearrangements, global geopolitics, and environmental discourses shape public policy. After the 1990s, Myanmar has shifted from a centralized state (socialism) to a more decentralized state (neoliberalism). This study investigates the influence of neoliberalism on Myanmar's political economy and forest policy after the1990s. To this end, we employ a political ecology approach integrating with Marxist's political economy theory. We divide transitional periods into the military period (1988–2010) and the democratic transition period (2011−2020) and discuss how political economy change generated by “neoliberalization” in Myanmar has affected the forest sector. Myanmar has focused on developing local timber markets, dominated by privately-owned sawmills and timber processing factories after the 1990s. During both periods, the country has made progress in promoting marketization, the role of the private sector, and deregulation and voluntarism, in contrast with the internal timber industry under the so-called “Burmese Way of Socialism.” A state-private hybrid forest policy has emerged from the integration of neoliberal market principles with the state's stronghold timber extraction based on the 19th-century German forest principles of the Myanmar Selection System (MSS). This phenomenon implies the necessity to review the MSS combined with the 1995 forest policy.