Preparing for the first field mission in Southern Myanmar

After having enjoyed some quiet days during public holiday, we finally started our projects.

As most of you might know, Lara does her PhD here in Myanmar. She is part of a 6-year project called “Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviation” of CDE and partners. This project is being carried out in three countries: Myanmar, Laos and Madagascar, and is coordinated through Switzerland. In total, 10 PhDs are working in this project, who are supervised and guided by several postdocs, senior researchers and professors.

(For the moment, Flo also assists this project, as the Myanmar project team is very “young” and can use any kind of assistance for the first field mission.)

Links to the project:

Project website: www.telecoupling.unibe.ch

On facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Managing-Telecoupled-Landscapes-CDE-Switzerland-455043984675058/?pnref=story.unseen-section

On Monday morning (25^th), Flurina (postdoc and supervisor of Lara) from CDE Bern arrived in Yangon. Soon after, we met the entire Myanmar project team for the very first time. The two selected PhD students from Myanmar, which we have never seen before, were already waiting for us when we arrived at the office of our local partner EERi (Environmental and Economic Research Institute). The two ladies seemed rather nervous, but incredibly lovely with very warm but rather shy smiles. Dr. Win Myint and Nwe Nwe, who we had met before, also joined us most of the time. 

We started the herewith beginning collaboration with some kind of meet & greet as well as a project presentation. For the two PhD ladies it was the first time they really got in touch with the project and their PhD topics. Hence, everything was new to them. Additionally, they weren’t so much used to speaking and listening to English. For a few moments, we were rather unsure, whether 4 days of field mission preparation would be enough for all of us. But what might have seemed as a rather big challenge at the beginning, turned out to be surprisingly easy. The two ladies proved to be very intelligent and hard working. Within a few days only, they apprehended everything easily and even rapidly improved their English skills. Even besides being charming at all times. Lara is very much looking forward to working with them for the next three years! :-)

Apart from getting to know the project as well as the PhD tasks, translating all interview questions into Myanmar language, preparing for transect walks, discussing administrative issues, we also tested the planned workshops in the villages. We will work with one focus group per village, discussing the most important land use changes in the last approx. 10 years. This will give us an idea of what is going on in these rural areas of this highly dynamic country.

It’s going to be very exciting!

The schedule of our first field mission is:

1 May: Travel with the car to the South, with an overnight stop

2 May: Spend the day in Dawei, meeting with the local University in Dawei and authorities

3 May: Drive around in the region in search for suitable villages (we might detect just by driving past, which villages are prone to changes in their agricultural land use)

4 May: Visit the Tanintharyi Nature Reserve

5-7 May: Stay in village 1, doing interviews, transect walk and workshop about land use changes

8-10 May: Stay in village 2

11-13 May: Stay in village 3

14 May: Day off for recreation

15 May: Wrap-up within the team

16-18 May: Visit villages again for collecting missing data

19 May: Travel back to Yangon (14 hours drive)