Editor's note

From touristic impressions to geopolitical analyses, ubiquitous are the tremendous and varied natural resources of Myanmar. Teak forests, oil and gas reserves, precious gemstones, biodiversity, and the list goes on. The very meaning of the concept of resource, however, suggests that the country contains things of tremendous potential human, economic use, and therefore value. With the resources, mapping, and study of them, there is the seemingly boundless potential for greater wealth to be accumulated. On the other hand, discourse regarding natural beauty and wonder can be a purposeful distraction from ongoing issues of war and exploitation. Discussing the country's abundance of resources, however, is never a neutral proposition: for outsiders looking in, there is frequently a value-laden assumption which guides the observation that the various regimes and economic interests are not responsibly conserving these resources for the greater good (however nebulous that may be). Life itself (before we even label it a natural resource) is already an active zone of economic production, engineering, banking, commodification, and exchange (Palsson 2016:4). The definition, mapping, laws, and social relationships which name and frame resources in Myanmar are of ongoing heuristic, cultural, economic, and inevitably political concern.