Communities demand regulation as jade mining destroys landscape
Ywel Jer remembers a time when Saijarbon, an ethnic Kachin village perched upon a hilltop in Hpakant Township, was surrounded by mountains. In the past 10 years, however, vast mountain areas around the village here in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State have been turned into rubble by large-scale jade mining operations using dynamite and heavy machinery. The changes in the landscape now threaten Saijarbon’s very existence.
