Helene Maria Kyed & Justine Chambers | ယခုဆောင်းပါးကို မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုရန် ဤနေရာတွင် နှိပ်ပါ

Cite as: 
Kyed, H. M., & Chambers, J. (2026). Introduction to the Special Issue on Climate Change and Conflict: Advancing Understandings of the Climate-Conflict Nexus in Times of Political Rupture and Chronic Crisis. Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 7. https://ijbs.online/?page_id=5641

Introduction

Myanmar is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change. This is not only because of the country’s location and exposure to global shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, but also because of its long history of failed governance, military rule, natural resource exploitation, poverty, and long-running conflict. The most recent 2021 military coup and widening civil war significantly deepened this vulnerability.

The dual crisis of climate change and conflict disproportionately affects the livelihoods of the rural poor, Indigenous communities, and stateless people.¹ Approximately half of Myanmar’s population rely on agriculture to meet their everyday needs,² with the majority of those being smallholder farmers. But rising temperatures and more intense and frequent floods and cyclones also affect the urban poor, with severe consequences for residents of informal settlements whose rights to land, property, infrastructure and basic services are tenuous.³ The displacement of individuals and communities continues across the country, and recent cyclones and floods show how climate and conflict displacement intersect with and reinforce each other.

The scientific data on weather pattern changes, such as temperatures and precipitation, have not been sufficiently updated in Myanmar since the coup.⁴ The data prior to 2021 indicated alarming forecasts, including an overall average temperature increase of 2.07°C by the year 2060.⁵ Major increases in precipitation variability and intensification of extreme weather events (droughts, cyclones, floods) are expected, disproportionately affecting populations in low-lying parts of the country.⁶ The few studies in the social sciences relating to climate change undertaken in Myanmar since the 2021 coup indicate that the effects of climatic change are worsening and being compounded by the ongoing political crisis and violent conflict. Ashley South’s interview-based study,⁷ for instance, documents how farmers across Karen, Mon, Kachin, and Rakhine states, and Magway and Mandalay regions, have recorded decreased agricultural yields due not only to erratic rainfall, flooding, and rising temperatures—but also due to insecurity and displacement caused by military air strikes, artillery, and attacks on civilians. South highlights how military attacks are driving forced displacement, undermining local coping capacities and depleting community resources needed to adapt to climate change.⁸ Increasing prices of agricultural inputs and decreases in financial loan services further undermine the coping capacities and food security of populations.⁹ Military attacks are also increasing the public’s vulnerability to extreme weather events such as Cyclone Mocha in 2023 and Typhoon Yagi in 2024.¹⁰

In addition to increasing vulnerability to climate change, the coup has unleashed a dramatic upsurge in unregulated natural resource exploitation, driven by war economies and the military’s rush to compensate for the declining national economy. Logging and mining are causing alarming environmental consequences, such as deforestation, pollution, landslides, and destruction of water resources.¹¹ These environmental consequences are expected to exacerbate the effects of climate change for local communities, while also further threatening the livelihoods of vulnerable populations, especially those living near mines and those who are dependent on forest products.¹² Simultaneously, population displacements caused by the conflict and livelihood insecurities are beginning to have some local environmental consequences, putting stress on already scarce natural resources, such as water, forests, and mangroves.¹³ Environmental activism and watchdog activities, which were significant prior to the coup, are now oppressed. Many environmental activists have been detained, gone underground, fled due to military atrocities, or joined resistance groups such as People’s Defense Forces (PDFs).¹⁴

Similarly, the conditions caused by the coup have severely constrained initiatives aimed at adapting to and mitigating climate change. Civil society organizations (CSOs) and local volunteer groups struggle to continue pre-coup activities ranging from plastic collection to community forestry, due to both the ongoing conflict and military repression, especially in areas administrated by the military’s State Administration Council (SAC)¹⁵ where the junta still operates administratively or where active fighting is ongoing.¹⁶ The coup also led to an extreme decrease in internationally funded and state-led climate change initiatives. The initiatives that continue fail or struggle to reach the most vulnerable and conflict-affected areas. Prior to the coup, most funding for climate change initiatives from international aid agencies and multilateral banks were channeled through the central state,¹⁷ but since the military junta is considered illegitimate by the United Nations (UN) and Western countries, this aid has largely been terminated. Some UN agencies and international non-governmental organizations are now directly funding local organizations for climate change initiatives in Myanmar, but this is limited by the stringent compliance and documentation requirements regarding financing in conflict-affected countries.¹⁸

While the SAC is depicted in the military-controlled media as acting on climate change and environmental issues, including providing natural disaster relief, this is more for show than a reflection of genuine actions on the ground.¹⁹ Even if the SAC was genuinely committed to supporting climate-vulnerable people and protecting the environment, it lacks administrative control of large parts of the country. In fact, since the coup, and especially after the initiation of widespread armed resistance by PDFs and ethnic resistance organizations (EROs) during the second half of 2021, the SAC’s territorial and administrative control has continually shrunk. Most border regions, around 70 to 80 towns, and a large proportion of the rural areas are at the time of writing governed by a mixture of EROs, pro-democracy groups coordinated by the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), and newly emergent state-level governance authorities.²⁰

Importantly, this new landscape of increased anti-junta governing bodies has opened new opportunities for climate change and environmental actions on the ground. In the absence of a legitimate central state, we are seeing CSOs, EROs, Indigenous networks, and state-level anti-junta constitutional bodies attempt to develop climate policies and environmental protection programs. For some organizations, these climate mechanisms build off decades-old governance systems. The Karen National Union (KNU), Myanmar’s oldest ERO, has long been engaged in forest conservation and biodiversity protection, with its own land, forestry and environment policies and departments. Working closely with CSOs, the KNU also hosts the globally recognized Indigenous-led conservation zone, the Salween Peace Park.²¹ Since the coup, the KNU has in fact expanded its conservation activities, in tandem with its advancements against the military. This includes establishing the Thawthi Taw-Oo Indigenous Park in an area inhabited by 70,000 people: “an innovative nature and rights-based solution for tackling biodiversity loss and climate change” according to UNESCO.²² Other EROs and newly emerging state-level anti-junta bodies are not as advanced as the KNU in this field, but some of them are being inspired by the KNU.²³ The NUG’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (NUG-MoNREC), despite significant funding and capacity challenges, is also attempting to implement environmental initiatives and rewrite a national climate policy in line with its new federal charter.²⁴ Therefore, while the coup and ongoing conflict deepen climate change vulnerabilities overall, the evolving dynamics of the plural resistance movement in Myanmar are also creating new openings for alternative climate and environmental actions beyond the central state.

In this special issue we explore these dynamics of climate change and conflict in Myanmar drawing on the conceptual framing of rupture. Following anthropological understandings of rupture as a critical “switch-point” that encompasses a dual constitution of “discontinuity and renewal”,²⁵ we approach rupture as both destructive of existing conditions and as a potentially productive and dynamic impulse towards escape, redirection, and reconstitution.²⁶ Together, the seven qualitative research articles in this special issue contribute to deepening understandings of rupture in the context of the intersection of climate change and conflict in post-coup Myanmar. While substantial research exists on how climate change intensifies intra-state conflicts and human insecurity,²⁷ our focus is on reversing this question to ask: How do dynamics of violent conflict and political rupture influence the experiences, perceptions, and politics surrounding climate change?

Based on in situ fieldwork, remote community ethnographies, and digital ethnographic research, the articles in this issue delve into the experiences of conflict-affected communities and how they live with and understand climate and environmental changes. Additionally, we explore the discourses, policies, and actions related to climate change—which we refer to as the politics of climate change—undertaken by competing actors in the contested political landscape following the coup. This encompasses an examination of how the military junta seeks to ‘green’ its dictatorship and how members of the resistance and civil society groups develop alternative environmental protection and climate change strategies. Theoretically, we connect the debate on the climate-conflict nexus with contemporary discussions on rupture and “chronic crisis” by exploring the intertwining of the rupture caused by the 2021 coup with enduring legacies of crisis.²⁸

The articles in this special issue were written principally by Myanmar scholars and MA and PhD students involved in the “Myanmar: Climate Actions, Conflict and Peacebuilding” project (MyCClimate), a five-year research project funded by a Danish Development Research grant under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.²⁹ It is coordinated by the Danish Institute for International Studies in partnership with Nyan Corridor, Chiang Mai University, and the Highland Institute in northeast India. Due to persistent insecurity and repression, each of our Myanmar authors has opted to publish under pseudonyms to protect themselves and their families. We adopt an “embedded ethics approach”,³⁰ incorporating transparency, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, secure data storage, and collaboration with trusted local teams. Ethics and security considerations have been integral to every stage of the research process, especially to those who conducted fieldwork in contested areas with vulnerable populations. We have further invited researchers from the “Peacebuilding, Public Authority, and Forests in Myanmar” project with the University of Copenhagen, as well as a researcher from the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, who was a MyCClimate-affiliated PhD candidate.

This special issue is founded on the principle of deep co-production of knowledge on climate change, which aims to decolonize the way that we produce research.³¹ This refers not only to close and interactive co-production of research questions, data collection, and analysis among Myanmar and non-Myanmar researchers, but also in the ways that we approach local forms of knowledge about climate change. Rather than prioritizing scientific knowledge as the most valid and authoritative, we instead center local experiences, practices and interpretations, including epistemological and ontological perspectives of climate change. Simultaneously, we situate our analysis of local climate knowledge and experiences within broader political structures and deeper histories of marginalization and exploitation, which as we show, are crucial for comprehending the conflict-climate nexus and its impact on people in Myanmar. In the remainer of this introductory article, we explicate our approach to the climate-conflict nexus, our understanding of political rupture, and our usage of the politics of climate change, which frames the articles in this special issue in different ways. We then provide a brief outline of the contributions to the issue.

The Climate Change-Conflict Nexus

Much of the scholarly literature on the climate change-conflict nexus has been preoccupied with determining the causal linkages between climate change and conflict. One direction dominates this literature: to what extent climate change contributes to creating conditions for conflict. This is particularly evident in quantitative studies in political science and security studies investigating correlations between climate change and conflict indicators, which have tried to prove how climate change increases the likelihood of interpersonal and intergroup conflict. For instance, Hsiang & Burg’s study³² holds that rising temperatures increase the likelihood of intergroup conflict by 11.3 percent, and Witmer et al.’s modelling forecasts increases in intra-state violent conflicts in Africa due to rising temperatures and rainfall anomalies.³³ While much of this body of work concentrates on countries in Africa, particularly in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, country-specific studies in Southeast Asia have drawn a correlation between precipitation shocks (typhoons as well as dryer weather conditions) and increased conflict.³⁴ This preoccupation with causal relationships has been criticized as futile as it is impossible to find generalizable evidence that climate change leads to political instability and conflict.³⁵

By arguing climate-related factors are a cause of conflict, many of these studies underemphasize the political causes of conflict, and the longer histories of state-based colonial and post-colonial violence which have marginalized certain groups and prevented them from accessing land and natural resources.³⁶ In this regard, Siddiqi points out that the quantitative methods used within climate-conflict research tend to produce oversimplified correlations (e.g., correlating battle-related deaths with temperature rises) that risk depoliticizing conflicts by overlooking the structural and political root causes of conflict.³⁷ Based on this consideration, a substantial number of scholars and policy makers instead now describe climate change as a “threat multiplier” that in combination with other conflict-inducing factors can aggravate existing local disputes and intra-state violent conflicts as well as pose risks to international security.³⁸

Some scholars further point out that the causal link between climate change and conflict is not unidirectional (i.e., climate change causing conflict) and is better understood as bidirectional³⁹ or as a vicious circle.⁴⁰ Vulnerabilities to climate change impacts are shaped by many of the same conditions that also increase the likelihood of climate-conflict interactions, and these conditions are aggravated by the impacts of violent conflicts. In that way violent conflicts should be seen as a driver of vulnerabilities, which may be further detrimentally affected by climate hazards. However, there are few empirical studies of how conflict exacerbates climate risks to date, with most focused on the environmental impact of internally displaced persons or those in refugee camps.⁴¹

Another gap, as Siddiqi highlights,⁴² is that most climate-conflict research has a tendency to focus on local and intra-state conflict, for instance between herders and farmers in Sahel and East Africa, or conflicts associated with non-state armed groups, rebels or terrorists.⁴³ This not only ignores violence and tensions induced by states and international actors, but also fuels Eurocentric stereotypes of people in the Global South being prone to violence, while ignoring local people’s experiences and perspectives.⁴⁴ In fact, local people often associate climate-related conflict not with local tensions, but with oppressive or exploitative state practices and policies, at times in collaboration with militaries, private companies and international organizations. In this respect, Siddiqi also argues that we need to acknowledge how actions and policies done in the name of climate change by states and international actors such as mitigation, adaptation and resilience, can create conflicts with subaltern subjects.⁴⁵ Examples include forest conservation, dam projects, windmill or solar power parks implemented by states and companies in ways that dispossess local people from land and resources, resulting in tensions and the deepening of historical forms of marginalization.⁴⁶ In addition, local experiences of climatic change impacts, such as droughts and flooding, are at times associated with state-induced conflict dynamics and war economies leading to overexploitation of natural resources.⁴⁷ This last point is relevant for Myanmar, where climate change is not the cause of the ongoing armed conflict, but experiences of it are deepened by the widespread conflict driven by the military’s abuse of power and onslaught on the pro-democracy resistance since the 2021 coup. This conflict, in turn, is layered on top of many decades of violence against ethnic minority communities and natural resource exploitation.

The many complex interlinkages between climate change, conflict and violence are seldom captured in large-scale, quantitative, modelling research. Rather, they are mainly revealed through in-depth, context-specific qualitative studies that take seriously the experiences, views and agency of local people, embedded within different histories,⁴⁸ such as the articles in this special issue. These articles do not analyze causal relationships between climate risks and armed conflict or develop a model that traces pathways from climate change to conflict or from conflict to aggravated climate change. Instead, they collectively investigate the human and political dimensions of the climate-conflict nexus through anthropologically informed methodologies and theories that foreground local experiences and perceptions, as well as the politics and power relations that shape climate change and conflict dynamics. Together the articles in this special issue address two main concerns. How do local people experience, perceive, and cope with the dual impacts of climate change and conflict after the coup, against the backdrop of longer histories of crisis? And how is climate change as a discourse and a set of policies appropriated by various actors in times of conflict? In the context of ongoing violent conflict in post-coup Myanmar, we situate our analysis of the climate-conflict nexus in relation to the concepts of rupture and chronic crisis.

Rupture and Chronic Crisis

Rupture in anthropological scholarship and political theory has been defined as a “radical and often forceful form of discontinuity”⁴⁹—politically, socially, culturally or ecologically. It can take the form of a human-manufactured political event, like a military coup, a revolution, and colonialism, but a rupture can also be what Mahanty et al. describe as an intense,⁵⁰ interactive and adverse form of nature-society disruption such as a dam construction that ripples across time, producing heightened insecurity as well as diverse forms of agency. What unites these is the notion of rupture as a critical switch-point and significant break with existing conditions instigated through a destructive force.⁵¹ The 2021 military coup and its effects can be described as a rupture, we suggest, in the ways that it has been experienced as a pervasive disruption of people’s everyday lives, including by the authors of the articles in this issue. There is no equivalent Burmese language word for the term ‘rupture’. The closest, titsitcho apyaungaleh, means an abrupt or forceful turning point or change.⁵² This term is mostly used to refer to a time or moment that is experienced as a significant, unexpected change in a person’s life (both positive and negative). Another term which helps to convey the cognitive and descriptive meaning of rupture as an eruption of transformation of existing conditions is pwintkweh-pauntwekchin.⁵³ Regardless of the Burmese term one uses for rupture, it is important to remember that how a given rupture is experienced is not homogenous but subjective.⁵⁴

We thus need to “pluralize singular moments of rupture” and understand how people can experience a rupture in different ways—and that one instance of rupture commonly leads to multiple ruptures, at personal, national and even global scales.⁵⁵ For instance, at a personal level, a military coup may be experienced at its moment of occurrence as a political switch-point, while also leading to varied experiences of everyday ruptures like rising food prices, electricity cuts, loss of jobs, displacement, arrests etc., which create feelings of heightened insecurity. While the Myanmar coup did not occur in a political vacuum, for many people the event on 1 February 2021 set in motion a protracted revolutionary situation which irrevocably changed people’s lives.⁵⁶ Following from this, the outcomes of ruptures are not pre-given, neither at a personal nor at a nationwide level, but do have “unforeseeable consequences” depending on how various actors perceive, react to, and negotiate these cataclysmic events.⁵⁷

The notion of rupture is intimately tied to political thinking about radical change afforded by a revolutionary moment or situation.⁵⁸ In this regard, anthropologists have also drawn attention to the simultaneous destructive and generative attributes of rupture. While a rupture operates as an inherently negative, at times very violent, disruption of existing conditions, it can by the same token lead to “a positive or dynamic impulse towards escape, redirection, reconstitution and sometimes renewal”.⁵⁹ Holbraad et al. call for anthropologists to attend to the “mutual constitution of discontinuity and renewal.”⁶⁰

If destruction is a vital dimension of rupture, such destruction has immanent within it a creative and regenerative potential that is never the reproduction of the same but always of difference.⁶¹

In Myanmar, the violent rupture caused by the coup, experienced by most as negative and destructive, has simultaneously given birth to the declaration of a revolution by anti-junta, pro-democracy groups with profound aspirations for radical societal and political changes.⁶² These aspirations extend beyond destruction of the military junta and a return to the status quo before 1 February 2021, implying transformative calls for a new political order, including in the management of land, natural resources, the environment and climate change policies.⁶³ Therefore, rupture also holds the potential for creative forms of renewal, new relations and societal institutions that are both opposed to the military, and different from the previous status quo.⁶⁴ Christian Lund’s work on rupture speaks directly to these kinds of renewal by focusing on institutional reconfigurations.⁶⁵ He defines rupture as an open moment when authority is at stake, particularly pluralized, often very competitive and under construction, which can give rise to profound reconfigurations of politics, institutions, norms and the social contract.⁶⁶ But how then does climate change fit into all this?

As described by several authors in this issue, climate change policies, environmental protection and disaster response have become a field for competition between different actors and institutions during the current rupture.⁶⁷ In addition, many people connect the political rupture of the coup and its effects to a deepening of the climate change and environmental crisis.⁶⁸ Indeed, the shrinking civic space, violent conflict and rampant natural resource extraction in the wake of the coup has only deepened people’s vulnerability as well as challenged community-level efforts to safeguard Myanmar’s vast tracts of forest and fragile ecosystems.⁶⁹

Simultaneously, we cannot understand people’s experiences of rupture without taking into consideration what preceded the rupture. Taking from Rhoads & Wittekind’s conceptualization of rupture, it is vital not to ignore context and history, but to look at how the “moment” of the coup, as a rupture in time, is also embedded in “previous claims, authorities, and ruptures”.⁷⁰ Thus in this special issue we approach the political rupture of the coup—an eventful, explosive and visible moment—as layered upon Myanmar’s longer-term climate change and environmental crisis as well as its history of conflict, natural resource exploitation and authoritarian governance.⁷¹ Much of the literature on Myanmar’s conflicts focuses on ethno-national identity politics and the predominant patterns of natural resource exploitation, including for control over important natural resources in the ethnic border regions.⁷² However, it is also important to highlight that despite increasing investment in climate-related and conservation initiatives during the political opening (2012-2020), there was also a rapid expansion in agribusiness, mining, mega extractive projects, and infrastructure development, which dispossessed local communities from access to their land. In addition, some of the climate-related initiatives introduced by international aid agencies between 2015-2020 also contributed to ethnic and Indigenous communities’ vulnerability as they consolidated bureaucratic state power at the expense of locally led climate and conservation initiatives.⁷³ Consequently, these initiatives inadvertently reinforced the sociopolitical marginalization which lie at the root of Myanmar’s protracted conflicts and authoritarian governance structures.

In Myanmar and for many places in the world, rupture is often preceded by pervasive, protracted and continuous crisis for which ordinary life is defined by the underlying presence of violence. In order to take this into account, this special issue combines the concept of rupture with Henrik Vigh’s concept of “chronic crisis”.⁷⁴ Chronic crisis is the compounding dynamics not only of armed conflict, but also of slow violence through climate change, environmental collapse,⁷⁵ growing class-based poverty, inequality and the after effects of capitalism on the land and the environment, for instance.⁷⁶ In contrast to a coup or something acute like an airstrike on a community, slow violence moves in invisible and insidious ways.⁷⁷ As Mahanty et al. relate,⁷⁸ it is important to consider the role that the accumulation of slow violence and previous power conditions play in shaping people’s responses to rupture.

In Myanmar, we suggest, people’s experiences with climate change and conflict during the current rupture need to be understood against the background of a long duration of continued crisis and slow violence.⁷⁹ At the same time, we acknowledge that people in Myanmar have been exposed to crisis in different ways across time and space, which also affects the ways that they differentially experience rupture. For instance, ethnic communities in border areas of Myanmar that have endured decades of conflict, displacement, and dispossession, do not experience the rupture of the 2021 coup the same way as middle-class people living in Yangon.⁸⁰ Similarly, for informal migrants displaced by natural disasters, land grabs, joblessness or conflict in the past, the 2021 political rupture builds off deep and enduring processes of structural and slow violence.⁸¹ People’s responses to the current rupture are therefore shaped by the interplay between slow and punctuated change, including gradual changes to the weather and environment.

Politics of Climate Change in Times of Rupture

Climate change and its effects are not simply natural phenomena nor inevitable events but are mediated by politics and deeper sociopolitical contextual factors and histories.⁸² Therefore, in this special issue we do not approach climate change and how it is experienced solely as a physical or atmospheric matter, isolated from the political developments and conflict dynamics in Myanmar. As Sturridge argues, “Climate-centric approaches only tell part of the story, and should be embedded in the power relations, inequalities and historical injustices of everyday lives and livelihoods”.⁸³ We further suggest that it is important to explore how climate change issues become politicized and show how this unfolds during times of political rupture. In doing so, we use the concept of the politics of climate change, which we define as the appropriation of climate change policies, discourses and actions by different competing actors vying for authority during the open moments created by the rupture of the coup.⁸⁴

Anthony Giddens defines the politics of climate change as the political processes and policies employed to address the causes and consequences of climate change, which are mediated by different economic interests, political ideologies, and social behavior.⁸⁵ However, Giddens developed this definition to focus on the need for stable democracies to integrate the goal of mitigating climate change into their national policies at a time when doing so confronted scientific and political opposition (the sceptics, the radicals etc.)—he was not concerned with violent conflict and political ruptures.

Today the situation is different: climate change and associated “green politics” have not only become mainstreamed in global and national forums,⁸⁶ but also become policy fields that yield international funding and recognition. In this context, the appropriation of climate change and ‘greening’ by politically interested actors can be an asset in not only gaining international recognition, but also in promoting power positions and gaining domestic legitimacy. Combining the politics of climate change with Christian Lund’s conceptualization of political ruptures as moments when authority is particularly pluralized, competitive, and in formation,⁸⁷ we show in this special issue how competing political actors green themselves in various ways and try to demonstrate that they care about and are responsive to climate change and environmental problems. While these actors may have very real concerns for climatic and environmental challenges, their greening activities also become part of a wider field of efforts to consolidate authority, gain legitimacy, and perform ‘stateness’ during political rupture and violent conflict.⁸⁸ In the context of Myanmar, this includes the military’s SAC, the NUG, and EROs, at times in collaboration with CSO, Indigenous people’s networks and military actors.

Of course, greening is not the only way that these actors vie for authority and international recognition, but we do show that to understand the significance of climate change during times of political rupture, we also need to view it as a significant field of politics. In this field climate change and environmental issues are appropriated in diverse ways, such as being part of competitive state making efforts, concealing the military’s repressive and exploitative practices, expanding international donor policies, and in activist ways of critiquing state-centric and capitalist exploitations, including by foregrounding Indigenous voices and perceptions.⁸⁹ Greening can be seen as potentially serving emancipatory as well as repressive agendas, but always to some degree embedded in power relations—thus it is political.

Methodological Reflections

In this special issue, we foreground local experiences and perceptions of climate change in ways that do not privilege scientific knowledge or ignore deeper political dynamics. In doing so, we follow Goldman et al. in their critique of apolitical framings of climate change that ignore the uneven and different ways of knowing, experiencing and enacting climate change.⁹⁰ This is often done by privileging Western science as the most valid and factual, while marginalizing local knowledge and perspectives. One consequence of such “politics of knowing climate change” is that local experiences of and practices related to climate change are either ignored or given a secondary place when developing solutions to climate change. This is seen in often very technical, top-down, and state-driven mitigation and adaptation initiatives, which apart from excluding the knowledge systems of local communities, also tend to depoliticize the underlying structural factors, which cause vulnerability to climate change, such as political inequality, marginalization, lack of rights to natural resources, etc.

In line with Goldman et al.,⁹¹ several anthropological and human geography studies on climate change now acknowledge local knowledge systems and the wider political contexts within which people’s experiences and responses to climate change are embedded.⁹² However, very few of these examine how conflict-affected people experience and attribute meaning to the dual impacts of armed conflict and climate risks.⁹³ One obvious reason for this neglect is the difficulties of doing field research in conflict-affected areas.⁹⁴ This is a very real challenge that the contributors to this special issue have faced in multiple ways.

Besides the physical insecurities associated with violent conflict, research in Myanmar is also challenged by the dangers associated with face-to-face interviews and in situcollection of data. This applies to both researchers and research participants. Being involved in any form of critical research carries the risk of being targeted by the military and its repressive policies and practices. Research data sharing and storage also pose potential security risks, as does publishing. For this reason, the contributions to this issue have had to rely on adjusted data collection methodologies, careful data protection and the use of stringent protocols for anonymization. The Myanmar scholars in this special issue are publishing under pseudonyms for the same reason.

Also because of this, while much of the research published in these pages could be considered anthropological in nature, it is not based on classic anthropological fieldwork methodologies involving long-term participant observation in specific localities—the most ideal way of arriving at in-depth and context-specific understandings of how people experience, understand and cope with climate change amidst armed conflict. Instead, the researchers in this special issue had to rely on either shorter-term, repeat visits to field sites in areas outside the control of the SAC, digital ethnographic research, or remotely co-producing knowledge with community ethnographers residing in active combat and military-controlled areas. These adjustments pose significant limitations when compared to in situ, embedded and long-term ethnographic fieldwork. However, the researchers have throughout the research process aimed to maintain a high degree of “ethnographic sensibility”.⁹⁵ That is, rather than seeking to convey generalized and objective accounts of the climate-conflict nexus, they foreground the significance of particular discourses and local knowledge, carefully paying attention to how conflict-affected people ascribe meaning to their lived experiences and the political processes in which they are enmeshed. This also includes attention to how religious affiliations, beliefs and cultural norms shape local understandings of climate change based on different epistemologies and ontologies.⁹⁶ In the next section we outline the articles in this special issue and their contribution to our understanding of climate change and conflict in Myanmar in the midst of rupture.

Contributions to the Special Issue

The article “Local Experiences and Perceptions of Climate Change During Myanmar’s Violent Rupture” by Helene Maria Kyed, Ah Lynn, & Nyan Pyi Thit explores local experiences and perceptions of climate change in the midst of violent rupture. Based on two years of community ethnographer studies in eight different localities across the country, the authors unpack how people understand and interpret changes to rainfall patterns and increased heat and its relationship with the wider conflict dynamics and political crisis since the 2021 coup. Adding to literature on the conflict-climate nexus, they make a case for the importance of situating local perceptions of climate change in relationship to wider political dynamics and conflict. They show how people’s perception of climate change in different areas of Myanmar are very much influenced by localized experiences of violent rupture, but also longer-term histories of environmental degradation and state violence. Specifically, many people interpret abnormal weather and environmental destruction in relationship with the military’s overexploitation of nature and resources at the expense of local communities. Foregrounding the importance of understanding diverse ontologies and epistemologies, the authors further explore how perceptions of material changes to the weather are also influenced by local belief systems and religious understandings of crisis. Within Buddhist and Christian communities, for example, the current rupture and changes to the weather and the environment are framed as part of a wider existential and moral collapse. Building off these perspectives, they argue that it is important not to view the current rupture as a transient temporal disruption, but as embedded in long-term systems of cyclical violence, which are also impacting people’s vulnerability to climate change.

In the second article, “Shifting Tides: Political Ruptures and Environmental Activism in Tanintharyi Region”, Naw Htee Ku and Kasper Hoffman take a similar long-term perspective, looking at how current and previous political ruptures have impacted environmental activists and activism in Tanintharyi Region. Since the coup, climate and environmental activism has been forced underground, with many people forced to flee, join the resistance or go into hiding. However, as the authors show, the coup is not the first political rupture that environmental activists have experienced. Looking at the pre-bilateral ceasefire period (1996-2012), the period following the ceasefire (2012-2021), and the post-coup period (2021-present), they explore the opportunities and constraints produced by different ruptures and how they have conditioned the activities of activists. Naw Htee Ku & Hoffman show that while these ruptures have created new forms of public authority that have harmful effects on both local communities and the environment, they have also created new forms of contentious action that, despite significant constraints, continue to mobilize people in different ways.

Diving into the politics of climate change and natural resource governance during times of political rupture, in this special issue’s third article author Nway Kant Kaw explores how the Myanmar military has used the language of climate change action and environmentalism, to try and legitimize its rule and present its administration as a functioning state. In “Greening Dictatorship: The Military’s Appropriation of Climate Change” Nway Kant Kaw draws on a growing body of political ecology research which highlights the rhetorical strategies of corporate and state actors to ‘green’ their image. Nway Kant Kaw highlights the various ways the military seeks to divert attention away from political instability and its engagement in human rights abuses and environmentally destructive activities. Analyzing SAC-controlled newspapers and policy announcements, she introduces the concept of “greening dictatorship” to describe the military’s actions. Some examples of this include yearly tree planting activities, forest and biodiversity conservation announcements, plastic reduction campaigns and commitments to renewable energy, which all seek to portray Min Aung Hlaing and other SAC leaders as committed to global climate and environmental agendas. Nway Kant Kaw ends the article by contrasting the military’s actions with the everyday struggles of ordinary people dealing with both conflict and a worsening climate crisis and the reports of independent media documenting the ongoing destruction of the environment.

Continuing with the theme of the politics of climate change during times of political rupture, Saint Sann Aye examines in “Climate Change Politics and the National Unity Government: Performing the State and Resisting the Military” how climate change and the protection of the environment are also important for revolutionary forces in their resistance against authoritarian rule. Through digital ethnographic research she shows how within this moment of rupture and associated competition for authority,⁹⁷ the NUG uses climate and environmental initiatives as part of their efforts to perform as a state and contest the authority of the military SAC.⁹⁸ Saint Sann Aye adds to a growing body of literature looking at the role played by Indigenous-led and environmental social movements opposing states all over the world by showing how oppositional interim governments too appropriate environmental and climate issues as resistance politics. Focusing on the NUG’s Ministry of Natural Resource and Environmental Conservation (NUG-MoNREC), she argues that since established in April 2021 the NUG has sought to project itself as a functioning parallel government which prioritizes environmental protection and climate resilience, alongside the rights of all people, including Indigenous communities. A part of this performance, she argues, depends on the NUG-MoNREC defining itself in opposition to the SAC, which the NUG blames for a long history of environmentally destructive activities and for deepening people’s vulnerability to the climate crisis.

The next article by Saw Ner Dhu Da highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between people’s vulnerability to climate change and longer-term histories of cyclical violence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Karen communities of east Bago Region, “Episodic Rupture in Klerlweehtu: Chronic Crisis, Conflict, and Climate Change in Everyday Life” provides a vivid portrayal of the immense struggles facing communities that are now experiencing active conflict in what have long been frontier areas between the Myanmar state and the KNU. In what he refers to as “episodic rupture”, Saw Ner Dhu Da shows how people’s inability to cope with climate change and conflict during the current rupture is deeply embedded in longer-term experiences of violence from the Myanmar military. Taking two villages as case studies, he looks at how the devastating impacts of a dam construction and the destruction of pastoral lands in decades past continue to reverberate today. Drawing primarily on the narratives of farmers, Saw Ner Dhu Da argues that these previous experiences of state violence against Karen people and their lands means that many people are now unable to rely on traditional farming methods and have been forced to turn to other livelihoods, often outside the village, which have deep implications for community and social life.

In the next article, Justine Chambers, Saint Sann Aye, Helene Maria Kyed, Ah Lynn, & Nway Kant Kaw examine the competitive appropriation of a ‘natural disaster’ as a manifestation of pluralized state making during a time of profound rupture,⁹⁹ by exploring the performance of competing state-like authorities reacting to Cyclone Mocha in May 2023. Building off literature from the anthropology of statecraft and state formation,¹⁰⁰ they analyze the different rituals and spectacles of state power that the SAC, the Arakan Army and the NUG used to demonstrate their legitimacy and governance capabilities in response to the devastating cyclone. In their analysis they show how these competing responses to Cyclone Mocha turned into a “theatre of power”, drawing attention to how SAC military leaders, in particular, used highly publicized responses to the disaster to make themselves look like effective and legitimate state actors capable of preparing for and responding to a ‘natural’ disaster. In contrast to the state-media’s celebration of military generosity and state effectiveness in delivering aid to cyclone victims, the authors also discuss the reality facing Rohingya victims, who were mostly abandoned by all state-like actors.

In the final paper, “Depoliticizing Vulnerability & Climate Action in Conflict Contexts: Reflections from Southeast Myanmar”, Marianne Mosberg shows that despite the clear relationship between people’s vulnerability to climate change and previous experiences of violence or protracted armed conflict, these dynamics are often silenced in national climate policies and adaptation strategies. Critically assessing the climate policies and projects developed under Myanmar’s semi-civilian government during the 2010s, she shows how they were disconnected from the peace negotiations and conflicts still ongoing in large parts of the country. Examining how these dynamics played out through the controversial Ridge to Reef project in Tanintharyi Region, Mosberg shows how internationally backed environmental conservation initiatives with climate-related objectives not only ignored local and historical conflict dynamics but also perpetuated social injustices and deepened communities’ long-standing grievances vis-à-vis the state. Mosberg argues that in contexts like Myanmar, framing adaptation and mitigation projects as purely technical and apolitical endeavors runs the risk of deepening existing drivers of conflict, as well as local people’s vulnerability to climate change.

Individually and collectively the articles in this special issue show the profound and multifaceted relationship between climate change, political rupture, and the lived experiences of communities facing conflict in Myanmar. Drawing from diverse perspectives, the contributors explore how ongoing and historical conflict dynamics intersect with environmental degradation to shape local perceptions of climate change and their capacity to respond to it. The articles underscore the importance of understanding these local experiences not as isolated environmental issues, but as deeply embedded within long histories of violence, state exploitation, and social injustice. From the impact of military control and wartime economies to the resilience of local communities and environmental activism, the contributors highlight the diverse ways in which Myanmar’s political ruptures have shaped the capacity of people to respond to and cope with climate change. By exploring these interconnected struggles, the articles call for a more nuanced understanding of climate vulnerability that takes into account the complex interplay between conflict, governance, and environmental change.

Endnotes

¹ Kyed & Chambers, 2023; Simpson & South 2021; South, 2024, p. 8.
² Kim, 2024; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2024, p. 2.
³ Rhoads, 2023; UN-HABITAT, 2024.
⁴ South, 2024, p. 9.
⁵ Horton et al., 2017.
⁶ South, 2024; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2024.
⁷ South, 2024, pp. 9-10.
⁸ South, 2024, p. 10.
⁹ Helene Maria Kyed et al. 2026 [this issue]; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2024, p. 2.
¹⁰ Nayt Thit, 2024.
¹¹ Cowan, 2021; Erickson-Davis, 2021; Global Witness, 2024; Hein Thar, 2023; Luu, 2022; Simpson, 2024.
¹² Dawei Watch, 2023.
¹³ Min Khant, 2024.
¹⁴ All Burma Indigenous Peoples Alliance, 2023; Kyed & Chambers, 2023; Naw Htee Ku & Hoffmann, 2026 [this issue]; Simpson, 2024, pp. 150-151.
¹⁵ The military’s SAC was dissolved and then replaced with its State Security and Peace Commission in 2025. The military administrations differ little in practice.
¹⁶ See Kyed et al. (2026) [this issue].
¹⁷ See Mosberg (2026) [this issue].
¹⁸ Chambers & Kyed, 2024.
¹⁹ See Nway Kant Kaw (2026) [this issue] and Chambers et al. (2026) [this issue].
²⁰ Jolliffe, 2023; Michaels, 2024. It is important to remember that the lines of territorial control are constantly shifting and many maps do not accurately convey the complex conflict dynamics on the ground. For more details see Han Ya (2024).
²¹ Chambers & Kyed, 2024; Cowan, 2023; South, 2023.
²² UNESCO, 2024.
²³ South, 2024.
²⁴ Saint Sann Aye, 2026 [this issue].
²⁵ Holbraad et al., 2019, p. 2.
²⁶ Holbraad et al., 2019, p. 1.
²⁷ Ide & Scheffran, 2014; Koubi, 2019; von Uexkull & Buhaug, 2021.
²⁸ Vigh, 2008.
²⁹ Danish Institute for International Studies, 2024.
³⁰ Meskell & Pels, 2005.
³¹ Goldman at al., 2018.
³² Hsiang & Burg, 2013.
³³ Witmer et al., 2017.
³⁴ Eastin, 2018.
³⁵ Siddiqi, 2022, p. 2.
³⁶ Borras et al., 2020; Buhaug & von Uexkull, 2021; Wischnath & Buhaug, 2014.
³⁷ Siddiqi, 2022.
³⁸ Abel et al., 2019; Causevic, 2017; Huntjens & Nachbar, 2015; Ide & Scheffran, 2014; Mach, 2019.
³⁹ Abrahams & Carr, 2017; Branch, 2018; Neef et al., 2023; Peters, 2021; Su & Gagné, 2019, p. 19.
⁴⁰ Buhaug & von Uexkull, 2021.
⁴¹ See for instance, Barbieri et al. (2017).
⁴² Siddiqi, 2022, pp. 3-4.
⁴³ See also Su & Gagné’s literature review (2019) provided for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
⁴⁴ Siddiqi, 2022, p. 4.
⁴⁵ Mikulewicz, 2020; Nightingale, 2017; Sovacool, 2018.
⁴⁶ Borras et al., 2020; Dunlap et al., 2024; Fairhead et al., 2015; Nightingale, 2017
⁴⁷ Branch, 2018. Also see Kyed et al., 2026 [this issue].
⁴⁸ Abrahams & Carr, 2017; Goldman et al., 2018; Peluso & Watts, 2001; Siddiqi, 2022, pp. 3-6.
⁴⁹ Holbraad et al., 2019, p. 1.
⁵⁰ Mahanty et al., 2023.
⁵¹ Holbraad et al., 2019, pp. 1, 22.
⁵² တစ်ဆစ်ချိုးအပြောင်းအလဲ။
⁵³ ပွင့်ကွဲပေါက်ထွက်ခြင်း။ We thank Nyan Pyi Thit and the rest of the MyCClimate research team for their input on these terms.
⁵⁴ Holbraad et al., 2019.
⁵⁵ Holbraad et al., 2019, p. 14.
⁵⁶ Chambers & Cheesman, 2024. A recent special issue on Myanmar’s “revolutionary situation” includes work on how the coup altered the lives of youth (Chambers & Ner Dhu Da, 2024), women (Khin Khin Mra & Hedström, 2024), former soldiers (Kyed & Ah Lynn, 2024), unofficial minorities (see Aung Ko Ko et al., 2024) and other groups.
⁵⁷ Holbraad, 2019, p. 21.
⁵⁸ Cherstitch et al., 2020; El-Ghobashy, 2021.
⁵⁹ Holbraad et al. 2019, p. 1.
⁶⁰ Holbraad et al. 2019, pp. 1-2.
⁶¹ Holbraad, 2019, p. 22. Emphasis in original.
⁶² Chambers & Cheesman, 2024.
⁶³ All Burma Indigenous Peoples Alliance, 2022; Sonam Lama Hyolmo, 2024.
⁶⁴ See Jolliffe (2023) for example.
⁶⁵ Lund, 2016.
⁶⁶ Lund, 2016, p. 1202.
⁶⁷ Nway Kant Kaw, 2026 [this issue]; Naw Htee Ku & Hoffmann, 2026 [this issue]; Saint Sann Aye, 2026 [this issue].
⁶⁸ Kyed et al., 2026, [this issue].
⁶⁹ Esther Wah, 2022; Kim, 2024; Thin Lei Win, 2022.
⁷⁰ Rhoads & Wittekind, 2018, p. 172.
⁷¹ Also see Sarma et al. (2022) and Saw Ner Dhu Da (2026) [this issue].
⁷² Jones, 2018; Sadan, 2016; Woods, 2011; 2021.
⁷³ Faxon, 2021; Franco & Borras, 2019; Park, 2021; Woods, 2019; 2021; Woods & Naimark, 2020. Also see Mosberg (2026) [this issue].
⁷⁴ Vigh, 2022.
⁷⁵ Nixon, 2011.
⁷⁶ Ahmann, 2018.
⁷⁷ Gonda et al., 2023; Matthan, 2023; Paprocki, 2021; Shattuck et al., 2023; Sultana, 2022.
⁷⁸ Mahanty et al., 2023.
⁷⁹ Also see Sturridge, 2023, pp. 13-14.
⁸⁰ See Chambers (2026).
⁸¹ Nixon, 2011.
⁸² Also see Sturridge (2023).
⁸³ Sturridge, 2023.
⁸⁴ Lund, 2016.
⁸⁵ Gidden, 2009.
⁸⁶ Dunlap et al., 2024.
⁸⁷ Lund, 2016.
⁸⁸ Hansen & Stepputat, 2001. Also see Nway Kant Kaw (2026) [this issue] and Saint Sann Aye (2026) [this issue].
⁸⁹ Esther Wah, 2021; 2023.
⁹⁰ Goldman et al., 2018, pp. 2-3.
⁹¹ Goldman et al., 2018.
⁹² See for example, Porcuna-Ferrer et al. (2023), Reyes-Garcías et al. (2024), Rosengren (2018), and Salick et al. (2012).
⁹³ Exceptions include Augsten et al. (2022), Branch (2018), and Sturridge (2023).
⁹⁴ Augsten et al., 2022.
⁹⁵ Pader, 2015.
⁹⁶ Schnegg, 2021; Scoville-Simonds, 2018.
⁹⁷ Lund, 2016.
⁹⁸ Hansen & Stepputat, 2001.
⁹⁹ Lund, 2016.
¹⁰⁰ Geertz, 1980; Hansen & Stepputat, 2001.

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