A MASSIVE boulder once towered over the foreshore near Thandwe airport, welcoming travellers as they arrived at the gateway to Myanmar’s popular Ngapali Beach.

Workers carry rocks at one of the many construction sites overlooking the beach

A farmer wends his way home by oxcart among boulders strewn along Ngapali Beach. Removing the boulders would leave the beach vulnerable to erosion, says a resident of the area.

U Aubrey Winbaw, a biotechnologist who owns a prawn hatchery near the airport, says the boulder has diminished in size during the last three years.

“It has been crushed and carried away to various construction sites,” he said, “and that’s very, very dangerous.”

U Aubrey Winbaw says the boulder, and rocks on Ngapali’s shores, are necessary for the protection of the beachfront.

“Rocks prevent erosion, especially during monsoon season. In ten years, the airport runway may be destroyed.”

U Aubrey Winbaw and hotel operators at Ngapali are concerned not only about the airport, but about the beach itself, which is gradually being stripped of its natural protection.

The burgeoning hotel industry has become increasingly concerned over the activities of construction companies, which are allegedly using rocks and sand from the beachfront as construction materials to fuel Ngapali’s development.

With nine new hotels planned for next year, operators fear the problem will worsen.

“Sand is a really big concern,” said Dr Aung Myat Kyaw, the managing director of Orchestra Travel, which owns Ngapali’s Sandoway Resort. He says construction companies are taking sand to make cement for various beachfront and other building projects.

“Now that we have so many construction projects underway, the volume of sand they are taking is going to grow.”

The disappearance of rocks and sand, while the most fundamental of Ngapali’s problems in the face of increased development, is not the most visible.

Mr Oliver E. Soe Thet, a former general manager of Ngapali’s Bayview Resort, said his main concern has been litter strewn along the beach.

“There was a big change around 1999, when foreign tourists really started coming to Myanmar. All of a sudden a bunch of small restaurants and tea shops opened near the big hotels. But they had no clue how to treat their garbage – they would just dump it on the beach or on the roadside,” he said.

Faced with a beachfront being stripped of its natural resources and littered with refuse, concerned hoteliers and government officials have started to act.

Dr Aung Myat Kyaw says the local authorities have issued an order to stop the removal of sand from the beach, and a law to that effect has been drafted by the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism.

“There will be a coastal law in the very near future,” he said, “now the important thing will be for people to follow the rules.”

Some Ngapali hoteliers say they have tried to lead by example and build their resorts in the most ecologically friendly way possible.

Dr Aung Myat Kyaw says Sandoway’s builders planted more palm trees than they removed.

Since leaving the Bayview Resort, Mr E. Soe Thet has opened the small, upscale but discreet Laguna Lodge, which has set a standard for environmentally friendly resort developments in Ngapali.

In the absence of an organised garbage collection system, Mr E. Soe Thet initiated several programs to deal with the problem during his time as general manager at Bayview.

Staff from Bayview and Sandoway now patrol the beach every ten days to collect garbage. Bayview has introduced a garbage separation program, in which most refuse is either recycled or given to small farms as animal feed. Mr E Soe Thet says that while these programs are effective, alleviating Ngapali’s growing pains will take a more concerted effort. He wants the hotel industry to spearhead a public education campaign and post billboards indicating the proper way to dispose of refuse. Even more important, he says, is basic education.

“We need to start in primary schools, with the youngest sector of society,” he said, “Children should get upset if their parents drop garbage on the beach.”

He said the local authorities have an interest in keeping their beaches clean, as untreated garbage is a public health problem. Additionally, many of the locals are fishermen and depend on clean waters for their livelihood.

While Mr E. Soe Thet says he is worried that new hotels will bring bigger problems to Ngapoli, such as sewage treatment issues and water shortages, he is hopeful that change is over the horizon.

“We’ve seen more movement by the authorities in the past three months than we have in the past five years,” he said. “It’s a good sign.”

Similarly hopeful that cooperation between hoteliers and authorities will lead to Ngapali’s protection, Dr Aung Myat Kyaw of Sandoway Resort emphasised Ngapali’s importance to Myanmar’s tourism industry.

“If we want to increase the number of tourists coming to Myanmar, we need to push beach tourism,” he said.

”Ngapali used to be an extension of Myanmar’s cultural tourism, but recently people have been visiting Myanmar just to come to Ngapali. We’re helping increase the total number of people coming in.”

Hoteliers say they are acting largely because they have seen environmental degredation hurt the tourism industry throughout Southeast Asia. Mr E. Soe Thet tells a cautionary tale of tourists come and gone.

“There are tourists who aren’t going to Vietnam anymore because the coasts are being so quickly polluted,” said Mr E. Soe Thet. “The hotels are doing these things in their own interest.”

Dr Aung Myat Kyaw said that while he, his colleagues and the local authorities are making steady progress toward restoring and protecting Ngapali, they must increase their efforts to defend the natural environment against inappropriate development or the tourism industry will feel the consequences.
“You have to respect nature, or nature will strike back.”