TY - JOUR
T1 - The making of land use decisions, war, and state
AU - Lundsgaard-Hansen, Lara
AU - Metz, Florence Alessa
AU - Fischer, Manuel
AU - Schneider, Flurina
AU - Myint, Win
AU - Messerli, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
The research for this paper was carried out as part of the project titled “Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviation” (Project No. 152167). We thank the regional and local authorities in Tanintharyi Region for their support throughout the fieldwork. We further thank the villagers and all other interview partners for their valuable contributions. Special thanks go to the research team in Myanmar for the wonderful collaboration and great support, to Glenn Hunt and Henri Rueff for contextual feedback and discussions, to Simone Kummer for producing most figures, to Florian von Fischer for mapping the case study area, and to Anu Lannen for editing the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - During a civil war and its aftermath, rival powerholders frequently engage in decision-making over land use, for example, via land acquisitions or legal reforms. This paper explores how powerholders influence land use decision-making and what their engagement implies for territorial control. We analyse three cases of land use changes in Myanmar’s south between 1990 and 2015, where the Myanmar state and an ethnic minority organization fought over territorial control. We gathered qualitative data with a mix of methods and visualised actor networks and institutions. Our analysis reveals that the state managed to increasingly control decisionmaking over local land use from a distance by employing actor alliances and institutions such as laws and incentives, whereas the ethnic organization lost influence. We conclude that engaging in land use decisionmaking plays a crucial role in influencing the outcomes of a civil war and that it represents a form of war- and state-making.
AB - During a civil war and its aftermath, rival powerholders frequently engage in decision-making over land use, for example, via land acquisitions or legal reforms. This paper explores how powerholders influence land use decision-making and what their engagement implies for territorial control. We analyse three cases of land use changes in Myanmar’s south between 1990 and 2015, where the Myanmar state and an ethnic minority organization fought over territorial control. We gathered qualitative data with a mix of methods and visualised actor networks and institutions. Our analysis reveals that the state managed to increasingly control decisionmaking over local land use from a distance by employing actor alliances and institutions such as laws and incentives, whereas the ethnic organization lost influence. We conclude that engaging in land use decisionmaking plays a crucial role in influencing the outcomes of a civil war and that it represents a form of war- and state-making.
KW - 2023 OA procedure
U2 - 10.1080/1747423X.2021.1961897
DO - 10.1080/1747423X.2021.1961897
M3 - Article
SN - 1747-423X
VL - 16
SP - 359
EP - 381
JO - Journal of land use science
JF - Journal of land use science
IS - 4
ER -
