More than 20 environmental monitoring non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Myanmar are operating without a licence or registration, Yangon region’s Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry (MOECAF) said.
“When the regulations regarding the environmental organisations come out, these [NGOs] will have to register at the ministry where they will be scrutinised,” a senior official from the ministry told Myanmar Business Today.
He said registration of NGOs will help authorities better monitor their projects throughout the country.
NGOs assess the environmental and social impacts of a country’s development projects on the nation, according to the ministry. There are 20 local and seven such international organisations in operation in Myanmar.
Myanmar had been without a Ministry of Environment for a long time before MOECAF was founded in 2012. Two years later, MOECAF enacted the first new environmental regulations implemented in Myanmar for the first time in 16 years.
Another MOECAF senior official said their department needs top-ranking government member’s support to open 15 state and regional offices to monitor environmental organisations around the country.
“We want to open district level offices, and even township level offices, to efficiently monitor the work of NGOs throughout Myanmar,” the official told Myanmar Business Today.
MOECAF plans to found Environmental Conversation Committees (ECC) in Yangon, Mandalay, Sagaing, Ayeyrwaddy and Taninhari regions this year, while ECCs are planned for Bago, Rakhine, Mon, Shan, Kachin states by August next year and in Magway, Chin, Kayah and Nay Pyi Taw in 2016.
