Safeguarding Myanmar's Environment

Since emerging from decades of economic and political isolation, Myanmar’s reconnection with the global community has seen its economy grow more than 6% every year. ADB forecasts that the country will achieve nearly 8% growth during both 2017 and 2018. Myanmar’s surging economy is largely based on the harnessing of its extensive natural resources. Foreign direct investment is playing a major role by funding large oil and gas, hydropower, agriculture, and mining projects.

The scale and pace of economic development hold great promise for poverty reduction, but also bring sustainability challenges that need to be addressed. These include finding ways to minimize the potential negative impacts that large-scale investments can have on ecosystems and local communities. The Government of Myanmar, with support from ADB and other development partners, has been putting in place the regulatory architecture for a national environmental impact assessment (EIA) system since 2012. Myanmar has made impressive progress in 5 years, but much remains to be done, particularly in building technical and institutional capacity.

This brief provides an overview of Myanmar’s emerging EIA system and how ADB’s technical assistance is contributing.