Myanmar village digs deep in battle against power project 

The group of strangers first showed up in Andin three years ago, wandering through the paddy fields and betel nut trees that stretch down to the beach, where the villagers lay their catch in the sun to dry each day. 
 The visitors drew curious looks at first. Few people bother to visit this sleepy corner of coastal Mon state known as Pharlain, where a cluster of seven villages has lived self-sufficiently on farming and fishing since the community was founded over a century ago.
But the strangers were no ordinary visitors, and the news they brought would shatter the peace of the village. 
On April 25, 2014, they informed the Mon residents of Andin that their fertile land would be cleared to make way for a power plant.
Having identified themselves as state officials and representatives of a foreign company, the visitors told residents their villages and surrounding fields had been earmarked for the site of a 1.28-gigawatt coal-fired power plant project.
The villagers didn’t know that a memorandum of understanding between the company and Myanmar’s Electric Power Ministry had been signed a year earlier.
Shock at the news quickly turned to resistance. 
“All I’ve known all my life is prayer, and teaching and guiding people here to live a modest, self-sufficient way of life,” says Soi La, the abbot of Andin Monastery. 
“But after that encounter I began seriously studying environmental issues, the impacts of a coal-fired power plant, the values of our community of Andin, and of our neighbours in Pharlain. 
“The more I learned, the more strongly I felt about my Mon origins and identity.”
Since Myanmar opened up, demand for electricity has surged to feed the growing industry and tourism sectors. 
In May 2013, demonstrators took to the streets of Yangon holding candles to protest blackouts, while an electricity price hike in April reflected severe ongoing shortages. 
Power plant projects have been proposed for several areas, including Pharlain, where residents are struggling to gain a say in the fate of their community.
The first encounter with outsiders was followed by field surveys and negotiations to buy local land, while Pharlain residents began to look into the project, despite scant information available.
On May 5, 2015, they gathered for the first time in Andin to protest the plant. As opposition to the project peaked, people in Pharlain explored various ways to fight it. Eventually they settled on the principles of self-awareness and non-violent protest.
With abbot’s support, village volunteers began researching and documenting their community values. 
The product of their efforts was the “Abundance of Pharlain Natural Resources and Communities” report. The document not only solidified the residents’ knowledge to counter the company’s picture of their community, it also united them in an effort to dig into their history and discover the precious values in its roots. 
On April 25, three years after their first encounter with the strangers, Pharlain’s residents decided to release the report in the Mon language.
Thiri Oo, the 25-year-old in charge of its drafting, said villagers had learned about the plight of people in Map Ta Put in Thailand and seen the damage industrial development can do. 
“The Mon language report means a lot to the communities because it has added meaning to our efforts in protecting our identities and values while fighting against investors from outside,” Thiri Oo explains.  
“We have realised that we are dependent on the fields, not electricity.”
Fellow villager Zin Moe Htet, a 20-year-old now studying computer science at Yangon University, adds: “Through the report, we learned more about our communities and our past, which we had almost forgotten – our way of life, our culture.” 
Montree Chantawong, campaign director for the Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, who acted as an adviser on the report, says this is among the first cases in Myanmar where locals have stood up against a giant company by gathering local knowledge. 
In compiling the knowledge in their communities themselves, they boosted their awareness and ‘ownership’ of their own values, Montree explains.
“I just hope that news of the Pharlain and Andin villagers’ fight will reach other communities in Myanmar,” he adds “so that their morale is boosted to resist investors who cross borders to exploit their resources without listening to locals’ needs.”  
Chariya Senpong, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, says the Pharlain community’s study demonstrates an effective way of resisting the pace of development, especially via transborder investments in the energy industry. 
Such actions should help lay the foundation for a wider push for renewable energy as the public learns more about the plight and fight of local communities, she says.
The monk who led the villagers on their voyage of self-discovery sums up the spirit of resistance.
“Any projects launched in the name of development should not have negative impacts on our way of life, regardless of whether the investment comes our country or elsewhere,” Abbot Soi La says.
“They should instead respect communities and be supportive. If they come and our communities are ruined, we don’t want them to come.”