Belt and road – silk road tourism opportunity for Myanmar

A visiting UN official said Myanmar has an "enormous opportunity" to pursue an environmentally sustainable path and can benefit from the new Belt and Road initiative.

Head of UN Environment and UN Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim, on a visit to Myanmar said "We are looking to have UN environmental support for Myanmar utilising the enormous opportunity for going green and develop the land at the same time, promoting renewable energies rather than going into coal, to make jobs and promote prosperity," he said.

 "Ecotourism or green tourism will bring thousands or hundreds of thousands of visitors and will protect the land and the beauty of the forest and the coast, prevent plastic pollution, and in cities encourage them to go green, so that there will be less pollution and less health risk and a better life all at the same time," he said.

The UN environment chief stressed that the "green" path to development for a country is just coming out of decades of "political turmoil" providing a win-win situation.

 "We discussed that yesterday with Aung San Suu Kyi and also a number of other leaders," Mr Solheim said. "We can provide the best examples of what has gone well in India or Germany or Africa and provide that example for Myanmar. We are creating global platforms where this can be discussed, bring expertise, practical things, where there is a lot of interest."

China has set up a Belt and Road Initiative, which is a huge investment programme in Asia, and this "can work with China and Myanmar so that they can go green, so investments in solar and wind, to make it very environmentally friendly."

 "Myanmar surprisingly is one of the really vulnerable countries in the world prone to climate change because Myanmar is so big, so varied in nature, but you have a very, very long coastline, which is vulnerable to cyclones," the UN official said. "We all remember (cyclone) Nargis which killed more than 100,000 people."

He pointed out at the mangrove forest project site, the prospects for growing and renewing mangrove plantations were exciting, in part due to new technology and a growing awareness of how to protect the environment and people against the negative effects of storms and cyclones.

He said drones are now being used to plant mangrove forests, a drastically improved situation when compared to using manpower.

Tree planting can be carried out on a much larger scale because humans can only plant a few mangroves saplings a day, whereas a drone can plant more or less endlessly, and they can "replant" and make large areas green over time.

Mr Solheim is promoting the value of sustainability in helping social equity, economic development and peace.

Valere Tjolle