Extractivism unleashed : environmental justice and resistance in Myanmar
Thiri, May Aye (University of Tokyo)
Martínez Alier, Joan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals

Fecha:	2026
Resumen:	This paper examines extractivist impacts and local resistance in Myanmar from an epistemic and emotional perspective. It explores how these projects erode communities' capacities to know, perceive, and feel their environments, producing not only material destruction but also affective and epistemic dispossession. Focusing on Myanmar, the research situates these dynamics within a broader history of colonial and militarised resource exploitation, where protracted conflict has both overshadowed and intensified local socio-environmental grievances. The analysis draws on protest narratives, songs, testimonies, community media, and a systematic mapping of 53 socio-ecological conflict cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). Findings reveal that land and water grabbing, displacement, livelihood loss, and ecological violence inflict enduring ecological and psychosocial wounds. Extractivism erases relational ways of living with nature, rupturing place-based identities and deepening experiences of ecological grief. Multiple cases demonstrate collective ritual praying as a form of resistance that embeds relational worldviews and enables collective healing, transforming grief into solidarity and refusal. Our study also finds cosmologies, sacred values, and Indigenous identities are used to mobilise alternative worldviews in which land, mountains and rivers are understood as living kin. By centring relational ties to ecosystems within resistance, the study reframes Myanmar's struggles as part of broader global movements for environmental justice and contributes to decolonial understandings of extractive frontiers.
Nota:	Altres ajuts: "La Caixa" Foundation (ID 100010434); Maria de Maeztu Unit of Excellence ICTA UAB (CEX2019-0940-M); EnvJustice ERC project (GA 695446)
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Materia:	Environmental justice ; Extractivism ; Agrarian question ; Indigenous rights ; Socio-ecological question ; Resistance ; Militarisation
Publicado en:	The extractive industries and society, Vol. 27 (2026) , art. 101927, ISSN 2214-790X

DOI: 10.1016/j.exis.2026.101927

14 p, 11.0 MB

El registro aparece en las colecciones:
Documentos de investigación > Documentos de los grupos de investigación de la UAB > Centros y grupos de investigación (producción científica) > Ciencias > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA)
Artículos > Artículos de investigación
Artículos > Artículos publicados