The Inle Lake sanctuary, one of the ASEAN region heritages and one of Myanmar's top tourist destinations, will be auctioned for fishing businesses in 2013-2014 despite environmental concerns.
The picturesque lake, situated in
Taunggyi District, Shan State, will go up for auction on June 11th at
the Fishery Department in a bid to boost commercial fish farming.
However, Inle residents have voiced
their disagreements with the tender of Inle Lake to the private sector
and maintain that the lake is an important national heritage and must be
conserved.
"The auction our heritage is not
acceptable,” said a volunteer for an environmental reservation the Inle
Lake. “Since the lake is an ASEAN region heritage, it is an important
place for our country. We should not sell all our natural resources as
we wish, we should preserve them. The authorities must understand that
this heritage is more important than the profits and taxes they get from
the lake.
Inle Lake, which was designated as as a
national sanctuary in 1985, has been suffering from deforestation, water
contamination, and decreasing water levels during the dry seasons.
Official figures measured the lake
levels at 104 square feet in 1934 and 87.54 square feet in 2005.
However, today the lake remains at only 63 square feet.
The environmentalists say that although
there were tenders for fishing businesses at Inle Lake in the past, the
lake is in urgent need of environmental conservation.
“These business persons just bid the
auction. Then, they ignore the rules and regulations of the lake later. I
wonder who’s going to make sure they obey rules and regulations of
preserving the lake,” an environmentalist working in the lake said.
Inle Lake’s water level urgently
decreased in the summer of 2010. Worst of all, since fishing boats
couldn’t approach to some areas within the lake, people's livelihoods
were affected. Droughts, deforestation and human settlement have all
reduced the amount of water entering into the lake.
Currently, the UN and the Government of Norway are trying to conservation efforts of the lake.
source: Eleven Myanmar
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