Director, EcoDev Myanmar
Win Myo Thu is a Myanmar national and development practitioner for defending resource rights of the poor and most disadvantaged communities. He studied at Rangoon University, Yezin Agriculture Institute, Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), University of Wolverhampton (UK), Syracuse University (USA), and California State University (Chico, USA) and earned for B.Sc(Forestry), M.Sc (Rural and Regional Development Planning) and Post-Graduate Professional Certificate on Environmental Democracy and Governance. Mr.Win is a co-founder and managing director of ECODEV/ALARM, a leading non-governmental organization for advocating civil society development and environmental governance in Myanmar. During last three decades, Mr.Win has been helping several hundred local communities to be able to increase their access to forest, land and water for improving their sustainable livelihoods. On the intermittent basic, he engaged in consulting works for United Nations Development Program, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Environmental Program, Asian Development Bank and international development agencies contributing to environmental policy framework development and intervention in both Myanmar and Greater Mekong Sub-region such as Environmental Performance Assessment System, National Communication on Climate Change and National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan. He plays instrumental for environmental movement in Myanmar to express public concerns over construction of hydropower dam across Irrawaddy river, land grabbing by business companies and environmental pollution by coal-fired power plant. At present, Mr.Win has been attentively working on development of green leadership (to train 100 youth leaders by year 2020) for transformation of climate-adaptive society and creation of “Natural Resource Defense System (NRDS)” by which local communities are empowered to influence the public-policy reform and enforce the rule of law for monitoring environmental pollution and crime committed by irresponsible business investors (both international and national) and corrupted bureaucrats. For government of Myanmar, he has also drafted the national strategic framework on rural development in order to promote democratic governance through decentralization at local level while integrated rural development activities are being implemented to reduce poverty in the poorest regions of the country. Mr.Win is also representative of civil society organization to Multi Stakeholder Group that is formed to steer and oversight the implementation of “Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Myanmar. Similarly, Mr.Win is facilitating the process of developing volunteer partnership agreement between European Union and Government of Myanmar for Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT).
Mr.Win could be reached by winmyothu@gmail.com. Or for more information look at www.myanmaraffairs.com
