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Design for Conservation

Design for Conservation


1:50,000 Maps of Forest Loss and Land Cover for Tanintharyi

For Myanmar civil society engaged in conservation and sustainable development, it is often difficult to make connections between government-published information and current remote-sensing data on landscape change, if such data can easily be accessed at all. This post contains a new series of 125 maps for Tanintharyi Region at 1:50,000 scale matching the extent of the commonly used map series published in 2007 by the Myanmar Survey Department, Ministry of Agriculture & Irrigation (First edition 2007). This new series is freely downloadable.

Primary layers are from public sources, including forest loss year (2000-2021), land cover, villages, roads and streams. Additional features include protected areas (gazetted and planned), industrial zones, and linear infrastructure. Layers in these new maps were chosen and styled to emphasize landscape change over the past 20 years. For that reason, if forest loss occurred at any time since the year 2000, that loss is shown instead of current land or tree cover, regardless of any tree cover gain since the initial loss.

Development and Conservation Awareness Map (DCAM). By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2022.
Development and Conservation Awareness Map (DCAM). By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2022.

Format: All sheets are A1-size (594x841mm) at 150 DPI resolution, RGB color. Each sheet has a location diagram in the lower-right corner with the sheet numbers for all maps in the series. Each file is named with the MoA sheet number. For instance, for sheet 1198_16 the filename is: Dcam22v1_Sheet_1198-16.tif

Download map sheets:

Individual map tiles (low-quality JPG) can be downloaded by clicking a tile on this key map:

DCAM Map Sample, 2022.
DCAM Map Sample, 2022.
DCAM Map Sample, 2022.
DCAM Map Sample, 2022.
DCAM Map Sample, 2022.
DCAM Map Sample, 2022.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Studio Laos 2022 Final Review

HKU Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies BA(LS) students capped their senior year with the Final Review for Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong. The studio focused on northern Laos's rapidly transforming landscapes along its border with southwest China. Co-taught by professors Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, this studio teaches students not merely how planners or architects or landscape architects might be involved in large-scale planning projects but also how a cultural anthropologist or political scientist describes and assesses development across Southeast Asia.

Following the recently published pedagogy in Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (Kelly and Lu, 2021), students read from diverse literature critical of how development happens, covering histories and issues such as alternative value systems, context-specific responses to reductive policies and plans, and overlapping or patchworked development. Using that knowledge and their landscape studies education, students then individually analyzed the frictions between two development projects prior iterations of the studio had visited before the pandemic. Projects included botanic gardens, forest study plots, wildlife sanctuaries, community forests, hydropower and irrigation dams, water user groups, villages undergoing resettlement, highway upgrading, special economic zones or other enclaves, protected forests, permaculture farms, and rubber and other cash-crop plantations. Frictions between these projects include ideological frictions (such as between Western alternative and Chinese-backed approaches, or between northern science and ethnobotany), as well as practical frictions in these projects' capacities for sustainable development.

For the second half of the term, students individually developed landscape planning strategies, especially considering the persistent obstacles to sustainable development and ongoing shocks to socioeconomic and socioecological systems, such as transitions from small-scale ecotourism to mass nature tourism, large-scale infrastructure and enclosure, and rural-urban migration. At their final review, students defended their proposals to members from a range of Laos civil society, including: an NGO operating several wildlife sanctuaries across Southeast Asia; an NGO trialing coffee in northern Laos; a 30-year-old network of field biologists studying the eastern Himalayas; and Laos's oldest domestic development NGO. Other members of the students' jury included: landscape architects and geographers from the National University of Singapore and University of Technology Sydney; a landscape ecologist, an archeologist, and an impact assessment expert from HKU's Schools of Biology and Humanities and Centre for Civil Society and Governance; as well as architects and landscape architects from HKU's Faculty of Architecture.

The students, Ashley, and Xiaoxuan give their greatest appreciation to our jury members and our school's continued support for the important conversations had year-on-year concerning the development of landscapes across sectors and across geographies in the region. Congratulations students!

Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Development detours: Landscape genealogies for post-pandemic ecotourism in northern Laos. By Wong Hon Ting Bryan, 2022.
Bear cartography: Coordinating slowness in ecological and social science for a Luang Prabang sanctuary. By Liu Jiani Vicki, 2022.
Bear cartography: Coordinating slowness in ecological and social science for a Luang Prabang sanctuary. By Liu Jiani Vicki, 2022.
Bear cartography: Coordinating slowness in ecological and social science for a Luang Prabang sanctuary. By Liu Jiani Vicki, 2022.
Bear cartography: Coordinating slowness in ecological and social science for a Luang Prabang sanctuary. By Liu Jiani Vicki, 2022.
Linguistic landscapes: Promoting plural identities and nonformal learning in Luang Prabang province. By Zhao Ruoning Nina, 2022.
Linguistic landscapes: Promoting plural identities and nonformal learning in Luang Prabang province. By Zhao Ruoning Nina, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Negotiating habitat: Strategic appropriation of the infrastructures of ecotourism in a Laos protected forest. By Chung Won Seok John, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.
Ethnobotanical endangerment: Productive friction between ex-situ and in-situ cultural conservation for Laos's first botanical garden. By Lee Kai Chi Adam, 2022.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Landscape Architecture for COP26

COP26 just concluded after two weeks of intense debates, negotiations and compromises. New 2030 pledges, while steps in the right direction, now set a course for a catastrophic 2.4 degrees of global heating by 2100 (Climate Action Tracker.org). Much more needs to be done.

As landscape designers and planners help public and private sectors mobilize, implement and strengthen these pledges through projects such as sustainable land use planning, we must build guarantees into our projects at all scales that ensure diverse conceptions of sustainability.

As we mitigate coastal erosion, wildfires, floods, drought, and invasive species, we must not forestall democratic participation in the planning process. We must guarantee that technical decision-making is not further distanced from the human and non-human nature these mitigation strategies impact. Increased ecological efficiency and alternative technologies must preserve natural and cultural diversity.

As we decarbonize our modes of construction, we must scrutinize the lifecycle of construction technologies, including materials origins, and ensure the monitoring of our projects’ carbon budgets are robust. We must take a precautionary approach that is rigorously based on scientific uncertainty.

As we reduce and reverse deforestation and biodiversity collapse, we must avoid (not offset) habitat loss and fragmentation, acknowledge diverse land rights and livelihoods, and recognize and empower both formal and informal community conservation initiatives.

Landscape architecture at HKU focuses on understanding and engaging the overlapping technical, cultural and political dimensions of environmental change across scales and development sectors.

Policy and plans are necessary but are never enough. Sustainability is only possible through sustained engagement.

Don’t do development as usual.

Study Landscape at HKU

COP26 (1 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (1 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (2 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (2 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (3 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (3 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (4 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (4 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (5 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (5 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (6 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (6 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (7 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (7 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (8 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (8 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (9 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (9 of 9), 2021.
By Ashley Scott Kelly, HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, 2021.
By Ashley Scott Kelly, HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, 2021.
COP26 (1 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (1 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (2 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (2 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (3 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (3 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (4 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (4 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (5 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (5 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (6 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (6 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (7 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (7 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (8 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (8 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (9 of 9), 2021.
COP26 (9 of 9), 2021.
By Ashley Scott Kelly, HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, 2021.
By Ashley Scott Kelly, HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, 2021.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Critical Landscape Planning to be released November 2021

A new book, Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative by Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, will be published by Springer Nature in November 2021.

Backcover text:

This open access book traces the development of landscapes along the 414-kilometer China–Laos Railway, one of the first infrastructure projects implemented under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and which is due for completion at the end of 2021. Written from the perspective of landscape architecture and intended for planners and related professionals engaged in the development and conservation of these landscapes, this book provides history, planning pedagogy and interdisciplinary framing for working alongside the often-opaque planning, design and implementation processes of large-scale infrastructure. It complicates simplistic notions of development and urbanization frequently reproduced in the Laos–China frontier region. Many of the projects and sites investigated in this book are recent "firsts" in Laos: Laos's first wildlife sanctuary for trafficked endangered species, its first botanical garden and its first planting plan for a community forest. Most often the agents and accomplices of neoliberal development, the planning and design professions, including landscape architecture, have little dialogue with either the mainstream natural sciences or critical social sciences that form the discourse of projects in Laos and comparable contexts. Covering diverse conceptions and issues of development, including cultural and scientific knowledge exchanges between Laos and China, nature tourism, connectivity and new town planning, this book also features nine planning proposals for Laos generated through this research initiative since the railway's groundbreaking in 2016. Each proposal promotes a wider "landscape approach" to development and deploys landscape architecture's spatial and ecological acumen to synthesize critical development studies with the planner's capacity, if not naive predilection, to intervene on the ground. Ultimately, this book advocates the cautious engagement of the professionally oriented built-environment disciplines, such as regional planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture, with the landscapes of development institutions and environmental NGOs.

Kelly, A. S., & Lu, X. (2021). Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4067-4

Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021). By Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, 2021.
Authors' photo for Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021), 2021.
Authors' photo for Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative (2021), 2021.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Studio Laos 2020 Final Review

Final-year HKU Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies BA(LS) students presented their strategic planning proposals for northern Laos to an international panel of ecologists, sociologists, geographers, activists, and philanthropists, in addition to designers and planners.

For their proposals, students each asked difficult questions of development and sustainability practices, including: Challenging impact assessment scope; qualifying the remediation potential of Chinese contract farming; bridging scientific study and community forestry; mitigating the industrialization and over-harvesting of species for traditional medicine; and exploring overlaps between mass ecotourism, protected areas and the illegal wildlife trade.

Having not visited Laos this term due to the pandemic, we took the opportunity to reinforce our critical approaches to planning, in which we understand our "sites" as inherently multi-sited constructs dominated by different stakeholders' perspectives. In place of their field trip, each student was assigned pairs of existing development projects that we visited in previous years, and they were instructed to imagine the frictions between those sites' ideologies, aims, expertise, and longer histories.

The students and their instructors, Lu and Ashley, thank our panelists for joining and recognizing the value of the studio's critical "landscape approach" and the importance of the students' proposals to Laos's future development. Panelists included:

Prof. Emily Yeh (Dept. of Geography, University of Colorado); Francois Guegan (Conservation Director, WWF Laos); Alice Hughes (Centre for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden); Andy Brown (Executive Director, Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden, Hong Kong); William Bleisch (Research Director, China Exploration and Research Society); Matthew Hunt (CEO, Free the Bears); Prof. David Palmer (HKU Dept. of Sociology); Winnie Law (HKU Centre for Civil Society and Governance); Enze Han (HKU Dept. of Politics and Public Administration); Danny Marks (CityU Dept. of Asian and International Studies); Joseba Estévez (HKU Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences); Inge Goudsmidt (Office for Metropolitan Architecture); Prof. Jeff Hou (Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington); and Elizabeth Leven, Cecilia Chu, Sony Devabhaktuni, and Merve Bedir from HKU Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Congratulations to all for an incredible term!

Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Negotiating with ethno-ecology: Landscape management strategies for northern Laos's ecotourism boom. By ZHANG Mengting Yani and WEI Gongqi William, 2020.
Immense nature: Constructing public awareness of the illegal wildlife trade through northern Laos. By CHAN Sze Wah Naomi, HE Jingsu Tinnix, and NGAN Yuk Ying Wendy, 2020.
Immense nature: Constructing public awareness of the illegal wildlife trade through northern Laos. By CHAN Sze Wah Naomi, HE Jingsu Tinnix, and NGAN Yuk Ying Wendy, 2020.
Scientific stewardship: Indigenous and ecosystem territories across the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor. By CHAN Syl Yeng Michelle and WONG Wae Ki Sammi, 2020.
Scientific stewardship: Indigenous and ecosystem territories across the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor. By CHAN Syl Yeng Michelle and WONG Wae Ki Sammi, 2020.
Scientific stewardship: Indigenous and ecosystem territories across the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor. By CHAN Syl Yeng Michelle and WONG Wae Ki Sammi, 2020.
Scientific stewardship: Indigenous and ecosystem territories across the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor. By CHAN Syl Yeng Michelle and WONG Wae Ki Sammi, 2020.
Empowering a labour transition during enclosure and securitisation of Luang Prabang's natural heritage. By MA On Ki Rachel and LEE Chi Hang Haven, 2020.
Empowering a labour transition during enclosure and securitisation of Luang Prabang's natural heritage. By MA On Ki Rachel and LEE Chi Hang Haven, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.
Water risk and responsibility: A political-chemical land genealogy for the Muang Sing Valley, Laos. By SONG Ziqi Sally and WONG Nok Yiu Vanessa, 2020.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Studio Laos Video 2019

"Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong" builds on six years of design-based experiential learning across mainland Southeast Asia by the Division of Landscape Architecture. This year, focusing on the regional impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative in northern Laos, students spend one term engaging issues of development vis-à-vis landscape architecture to define problems and produce innovative planning proposals. During this process, students develop and deliver a 150-page research report to civil society and international NGOs, conduct fieldwork, individually design future scenarios through large-format maps, diagrams and models, and have their work juried by a cross-disciplinary panel of experts.

Promotional video for HKU Studio Laos, 2020.
HKU Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong, 2020.
HKU Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong, 2020.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

Public Forum on Transborder Dawei Road Link

Thailand and Dawei Special Economic Zone: Road Link to Kilometer Zero. By Siamrath Thai News, 2019.
Thailand and Dawei Special Economic Zone: Road Link to Kilometer Zero. By Siamrath Thai News, 2019.

Thailand and Dawei Special Economic Zone: Road Link to Kilometer Zero

Date: 24 August 2019,
Time: 13:30,
Venue: Multi-function Room, 1st floor, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Agenda:

Ashley Scott Kelly, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong
Counter-assessment of impacts and history for the Dawei road link, 1995-2019.

Saw Frankie Abreu, Tenasserim River & Indigenous People Network (TRIP NET) and representatives from impacted communities
Voices from communities on the ground.

Teerachai Sancharoenkijthaworn, The Mekong Butterfly
Dawei Road Link: Hidden Cost of Impacts and Affected Community's Solving Mechanism/Measure.

Regan Pairojmahakij, World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Biodiversity along the Dawei Road and measures to protect it.

Naruemon Thabchumpon, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University
Transnational Politics, Local Communities and Human Security in Ethnic-controlled Area: A Case Study of the Dawei Road Link Project in Tanintharyi Region.

Luntharimar Longcharoen, independent researcher
Moderator

Hosted by SEM and Extra Territorial Obligations (ETOs) Watch

Abstract for Ashley's talk

Counter-assessment of impacts and history for the Dawei road link, 1995-2019
Ashley Scott Kelly, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong

Environmental impact assessments bear the responsibility of assessing, negotiating, and ensuring accountability and deterrence of socioeconomic risks and environmental degradation. Most international standards call for cumulative impact analysis, which goes beyond the immediate physical impacts of construction and operation. However, for projects with long histories, here namely "projects" for the Dawei road link beginning in 1997, 2010, 2015, and 2019, what are most impactful are the ways these projects have incrementally, substantially, and sometimes violently rewritten these histories, albeit through the often technical languages of planning, engineering, ecology, and social science. In this talk, based on analysis of thousands of pages of company reports, over 150 unique sources, and high-resolution commercial satellite imagery, I look inside the development process for clues of how to better assess the complex past and future impacts of infrastructure on our environment. I summarize a two-decade history of the Dawei road corridor and argue that more rigorous tools and frameworks are necessary to combat the amnesia of infrastructure development, both in terms of historical narratives and technical knowledge. Strategic analysis and sustainability require longer-term studies, larger landscape extents, and deeper awareness of the development process.

Slide: Expanding the scope of landscape assessment. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Expanding the scope of landscape assessment. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Expanding the scope of wildlife assessment. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Expanding the scope of wildlife assessment. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Background research for History of the Dawei road link. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Background research for History of the Dawei road link. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Alignments and ESIA consistency. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Alignments and ESIA consistency. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Construction activity and satellite image availability. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Construction activity and satellite image availability. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Construction activity and satellite image availability. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: Construction activity and satellite image availability. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: What is a "project"? Does the Dawei road link "exist"?. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.
Slide: What is a "project"? Does the Dawei road link "exist"?. By Ashley Scott Kelly, 2019.

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)

WWF releases Nature in Peril report

WWF releases new report, Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, which places imminent threats to the ecological connectivity of Dawna-Tenasserim Landscape within a longer two-decade struggle between infrastructure and sustainability.

Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.
Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.
Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.
Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.
Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.
Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, 2019.

This report is the fourth in a series of reports that have been published between 2015-2018.

The first report published in 2015, highlighted the need to consider information about ecosystem services, land-use change, and wildlife in the planning of the road and the broader land-use planning of the area (A Better road to Dawei—Protecting wildlife, sustaining nature, benefiting people). A design manual, published in 2016 as the second report, showcased design options for accommodating wildlife crossings and bio-engineering techniques for slope stabilization as well as alignment options to minimize deforestation and maximize social and environmental benefits (Design manual—Building a more sustainable road to Dawei).

Based on a request from the road developer in 2016 regarding the identification of wildlife movement patterns in the landscape, WWF worked with conservation organizations active in the area and regional mammal experts to identify critical crossing areas for mammals based on modelling (Wildlife crossing—Locating species’ movement corridors in Tanintharyi, published in 2016). This fourth report specifically brings together several years of work that has looked in-depth at what is at stake in this important ecological corridor system—a system that keeps key forested areas in Thailand and Myanmar connected and which the Dawei-Htee Khee road cuts across. This report outlines the history of the road and the newly approved 2018 Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) of the Dawei-Htee Khee two-lane road project.

Authors:
Hanna Helsingen (WWF-Myanmar), Ashley Scott Kelly (University of Hong Kong), Grant Connette (Smithsonian Institution), Paing Soe (WWF-Myanmar), Nirmal Bhagabati (WWF-US), Regan Pairojmahakij (WWF-Greater Mekong), and Nilanga Jayasinghe (WWF-US)

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)