The Gulf of Mottama is a globally significant wetland area of riverine, estuarine, and coastal ecosystems that support local communities and species of conservation concern. With inputs from four major rivers, the Gulf is highly turbid, productive, and hosts the most extensive mudflats in Southeast Asia. Its ecosystem services include fisheries, rich agricultural land, and important habitat for migratory shorebirds and waterbirds, coastal cetaceans, and other marine megafauna. It was Myanmar’s fourth Ramsar site designated in 20171.

With high community dependence on fisheries and agriculture, as well as the presence of multiple endangered and threatened species, proper management of the Gulf’s resources is vital for resilient communities and for biodiversity conservation. This is particularly important considering the high rates of poverty among the Gulf’s communities. Threats to the Gulf’s resources include illegal fishing and overfishing, bycatch and illegal capture of threatened species, plastic pollution and possibly other chemical pollution, sand mining and other upstream effects (e.g., potential future damming projects). Local communities also face the risks inherent in migration for work when they cannot rely on local economy driven by natural resources and other enabling conditions for their livelihoods.

Furthermore, the highly dynamic nature of the Gulf’s hydrology includes an apparently natural cycle of substantial erosion along the banks of the Sittaung River, which resulted in the loss of farmlands and villages in Bago Region in the mid-2010s. Communities also are impacted by flooding during the rainy season and drought during the dry seasons. Increased temperatures and prolonged drought, more intense storms and flooding, and saltwater intrusion into agricultural fields and drinking water wells, have been reported by communities – all likely to be further exacerbated as climate change continues.

The management of the Gulf’s natural resources reflects recent changes to natural resource governance in Myanmar more broadly, which shifted toward decentralization in the mid-2010s (particularly for fisheries management) and which included the establishment of national and state/regional Coastal Resource Management Committees (CRMCs) starting in 2016. Since 2015, the Gulf of Mottama Project (GoMP) has worked with local stakeholders to establish the structures and capacity for co-management with state and regional CRMCs down to the village level until the political change in February 2021; since then, efforts have focused on community-based management by local institutions at village and township levels.

The COVID19 pandemic has had serious impacts on local communities, including through disruptions to markets and interruptions to management efforts due to limitations on public activities and gatherings. The political change in February 2021 has further impacted communities and management efforts, weakening markets, interrupting ongoing engagement with government institutions (including patrolling efforts for illegal fishing), and prompting increased migration (domestic and international, particularly to Thailand). There has been a noted increase in illegal fishing as well as hunting of shorebirds and waterbirds and a substantial decrease in local livelihoods. Efforts continue to build capacity and institutions for community management at the village up through the township level.