A wake-up call was sounded for the Karen people when we experienced the negative implications of State-backed large-scale commercial logging by Thai companies in our Karen State homeland from 1989 -1994 following the 1988 coup d’etat. From that time the government initiated the selling off of the country's rich natural resources to foreign investors coupled with militarization in the border region to make way for further natural resource extraction. We have since disproportionately suffered environmental injustices while the revenue earned from the plunder of the resources has been fuelling the oppressive regime’s wars against us. In 1995, after receiving an eye-opening environmental training from Images Asia Environment Desk, we started to form a small refugee camp-based youth group called the Karen Nature Conservation Group in April 1997. On November 18, 2001 it was expanded and renamed the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN).
KESAN is the first local non-profit organization to raise the issues of control of and access to resources, holistic local knowledge-based natural resource management and environmental awareness amongst the Karen people. It works for the Karen to express their concerns to policy and decision makers at different levels. KESAN has an operational centre in Chiang Mai with 11 staff (4 women and 7 men), 2 women and 2 men volunteers, and a training centre in Mae Lama Luang refugee camp, Thailand.
From its inception to 2004 the organization focused on deforestation research and environmental awareness raising. Awarded partner status by Oxfam Netherlands in 2005, KESAN could implement a more holistic approach to addressing environmental and social problems. In the first phase, 2005-2007, our program emphasized empowering communities through capacity building, enhancing local initiatives and raising people’s concerns to policy makers. The legal registration of Wisdom of Ethnic Foundation (WISE) in 2006 provided KESAN greater legal status to implement projects in Karen and Kachin states whilst based in Thailand.
The strategies employed in the second phase 2008-2010 were based on the first phase with additional emphasis on gender integration, environment, land and forest policy development, and rural development priorities consultation. In 2008 all of our project partners came together to develop a gender policy which has since then been integrated in our project management and development.
From 2005-2010, KESAN has also been monitoring the woman-led Kachin Environment Team (a.k.a Pan-Kachin Development Society) which has, as a result, built a stronger working team competent in project cycle management and gained more trust from conservative Kachin leaders to implement community-based livelihood and environment projects. PKDS has just evolved into a newly independent organization.
KESAN’s third phase - 2011-13 - strategies will be focused on building on the capacities of communities to be prepared for and cope with impacts of both natural and human-caused disasters, including accelerating climate change and the volatile political situation in Burma. Support to community-based livelihood initiatives will include women’s empowerment, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and improving food security. Gender analysis tools and training modules will be developed using Oxfam’s DRR and CCA resources.
