The notion of prefigurative politics captures how people and movements enact more just and sustainable futures in the present. Geographers have shown how radical urban movements and autonomous food and housing networks challenge and provide alternatives to capitalism, often in urban Global North contexts. We examine how prefigurative politics unfold and persist under conditions of protracted conflict in Karen State, Myanmar. Our case is the Salween Peace Park (SPP), an Indigenous Karen community-led peace and conservation initiative located along the Thai-Myanmar border in the Salween River Basin. The SPP prefigures Karen communities’ ongoing demands for self-determination over livelihoods, resources, and territory. In this case, prefigurative politics are not only about enacting desired futures now but sustaining livelihoods and practices that have been passed down across generations. Yet ongoing state violence, particularly following Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, is limiting the transformative potential and spatial expansion of the SPP. Proposals for destructive hydropower dams within the Park are creating ongoing controversies. Overall, the SPP both challenges and provides an alternative to military violence and top-down development, and embodies a conservation model that embraces, rather than excludes, people and resource-based livelihoods.