Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region is home to more than a million acres of mangrove and upland forests. This verdant jewel serves as a biodiversity hotspot, a vast carbon sink helping to mitigate climate change, and a source of livelihood for hundreds of forest-dwelling communities. Illegal logging, mining and other extractive activities have threatened the health of these vital forests and compromised the forest rights of thousands of Myanmar’s rural women and men.

Landesa is working to preserve this ecological treasure for the people who need it most. Through our Myanmar program, Landesa is working alongside the Myanmar Forest Department to certify the forest rights for Tanintharyi’s forest-dwelling communities – like the people of Tawn Shey village, whose Community Forest is the sole source of water for 5,000 people living in neighboring villages. With secure forest rights, the people of Tawn Shey are now positioned as stewards of this important watershed.

Landesa is also working alongside thousands of families in Yangon Region to reforest tens of thousands of acres of degraded mangrove forests. Mangroves act as a buffer to protect coastal farmland from soil erosion, and sequester four times as much carbon as rainforests.

A farmer plants mangrove seedlings as part of a Community Forest.
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A farmer plants mangrove seedlings as part of a Community Forest.

Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region is home to more than a million acres of mangrove and upland forests. This verdant jewel serves as a biodiversity hotspot, a vast carbon sink helping to mitigate climate change, and a source of livelihood for hundreds of forest-dwelling communities. Illegal logging, mining and other extractive activities have threatened the health of these vital forests and compromised the forest rights of thousands of Myanmar’s rural women and men.

Landesa is working to preserve this ecological treasure for the people who need it most. Through our Myanmar program, Landesa is working alongside the Myanmar Forest Department to certify the forest rights for Tanintharyi’s forest-dwelling communities – like the people of Tawn Shey village, whose Community Forest is the sole source of water for 5,000 people living in neighboring villages. With secure forest rights, the people of Tawn Shey are now positioned as stewards of this important watershed.

Landesa is also working alongside thousands of families in Yangon Region to reforest tens of thousands of acres of degraded mangrove forests. Mangroves act as a buffer to protect coastal farmland from soil erosion, and sequester four times as much carbon as rainforests.