Tradition stokes pollution at ‘slash and burn' festival
Published on: Sun, Apr 27, 2025
By: AFP Text Size: Smoke rising from burning paddy stubble during a 'slash and burn' farming festival at Hseebu in Pekon township, Myanmar. MYANMAR: A charred hillside is wreathed by flames, spewing ochre smoke that smothers out sunlight in an apocalyptic scene. But the villagers who set it ablaze dance below in a ceremony celebrating the inferno as a moment of regeneration and hope. 'It's a tradition from our ancestors,' said Joseph, a youth leader from Tha Yu village in Myanmar's eastern Shan state. 'It's the only way we survive,' added Joseph, who goes by only one name. Every year between January and April, South-East Asia is plagued by smog from farmers lighting fires to clear land, emitting microscopic PM 2.5 pollution that lines the lungs and enters the bloodstream. Myanmar residents lose 2.3 years of life expectancy as a result of pollution from farming fires and other sources, according to analysis of 2022 data by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Since a 2021 coup, the country has been riven by a civil war between the military and a patchwork of anti-coup partisans and ethnic minority armed groups, leaving the toll from pollution largely ignored. But in Tha Yu village, there are additional tensions – between the old ways of agriculture and new knowledge about environmental risks. 'We don't have any other work or opportunities in our region,' said Joseph, 27, as haze swallowed the hills behind him, scorched to make way for paddy rice, chilli and corn. 'So, we are forced into this tradition every year.' Most agricultural burn-off happens when farmers incinerate the stubble of old harvests in their fields to make room for the new, and to fertilise the soil. But the smoke billowing around Tha Yu village is from 'slash and burn' agriculture – a method also called shifting cultivation, in which patches of wild vegetation are burnt for similar purposes, with crops planted for only a few growing cycles. 'If possible, we want to try other agricultural methods but we don't have any technology and no one has taught us,' said Joseph. Environmentalists generally say slash and burn farming can be twice as harmful because it lays waste to tracts of existing plant life which would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide emissions. * Follow us on Instagram and join our Telegram and/or WhatsApp channel(s) for the latest news you don't want to miss. * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available.
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