Traditional Wisdom and Community Forest Management in Myanmar

The community centric natural resources management strategies emerged as important policy choices in the last four decades. This perspective is relevant on account of the fact that several Asian, African and Latin American countries possess diversified forms of community based natural resource use patterns rooted in socio-cultural value systems. Undoubtedly, tribal, indigenous and ethnic communities here traditionally safeguarded the fragile ecological resources such as forests. Focusing on Myanmar, this paper attempts to capture the organic interaction between the local communities and forest resources in the past and present. For demonstrating this trend, a particular attention has been devoted to the relationship between the Karan community and agro forestry in Myanmar. The paper argues that the relationship between forests and the Karans did not alter much by the colonial and post-colonial state system in Myanmar. Eventually, the traditional wisdom of community in management of forest resources became an integral part of the community centric forest management introduced after 2000 and still continues.