LocationsIn the forests north of Yangon, a generation's memory is becoming a data point.
As Yangon Expands, Its Forests are Disappearing
October 6, 2026
At sunrise, smoke lingers over a cleared forest area in rural Yangon. For communities living close to the land, the loss of trees is already being felt through rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and increasing pressure on livelihoods.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
Since 2021, forests along Yangon's northern outskirts have been disappearing at an accelerated rate. UNDP satellite analysis shows the average annual rate of forest loss is now three times faster than at any point in the previous two decades.
Across the townships of Hlegu, Taikkyi and Hmawbi, 87 per cent of forest cover has disappeared since 2000. The loss amounts to 464 square kilometres, an area roughly equivalent to 65,000 football pitches. Hlegu alone has lost more than 90 per cent of its forest.
The areas that have lost the most trees are now among the hottest parts of the region, with air temperatures rising by as much as 1.7°C. But long before those changes appeared in the satellite data, people noticed.
Ma Thandar, who is in her late twenties, grew up in one of the northern townships. She remembers a road leading up a nearby hill, shaded by bamboo and trees so dense that the air itself felt cooler.
“Nowadays, there are more houses and more monasteries,” she says. “The forest is pretty much gone.”
Older neighbours remember towering trees covering the landscape, bamboo shoots pushing through rain-soaked earth, and streams clear enough to drink from. They even recall elephants wandering through the Taw Ya forest.
Those memories offer something the satellite images cannot: a record of what the landscape was like before the changes.
Satellite view of a forested area near Koing Kwin Gyi Village in Taikkyi Township, rural Yangon.
Image: Google Earth
The forest floor reveals the impact of tree clearing in an area that has long supported native forest cover and wildlife, including wild elephants.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
What the Forest Once Provided
Daw Khin May, now in her seventies, has spent her life in a village bordering the Taw Ya forest. She remembers trees that were once lush and abundant, and the wild boars, wildcats, and elephants that lived among them.
Now, she says, what she notices most is the unbearable heat.
The forest, or what remains of it, is part of the household economy. Families still rely on it for food, fuel and income, collecting bamboo shoots, firewood, charcoal and broom grass.
Daw Khin May at her family home, where wood from the nearby forest areas is still used for household needs. As forests thin, communities face growing pressure on their livelihoods and daily resources.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
“Before, when the forest was good, we knew where every tree was and could move around easily,” says Ko Than Aung. “Now, when we try to go through, every path is blocked.”
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
Ma Yamin tends to a young tree on her land. As a community forest member, she protects native trees while cultivating seasonal fruit trees to support her family’s livelihood.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
Ko Than Aung, a farmer in his forties from a town in Taikkyi Township, knew the network of paths through the forest by heart. Before becoming a farmer, he spent years collecting broom grass, bamboo shoots, charcoal, and firewood.
Now, many of those paths have become overgrown and impassable as vines and undergrowth take over where trees once clearly marked the way.
The change is visible beyond the paths. As the canopy has thinned, more sunlight reaches the ground, reducing the shade and moisture the forest once provided. On nearby farmland, Ko Than Aung says the heat is affecting his crops: leaves curl and dry in fields that once stayed green longer.
For farmers, the loss is measured not only in trees but in uncertainty.
Ma Yamin, a farmer and community forest member, has seen heavy rain damage her pineapple crops and intense summer heat take a toll on her trees. The surviving fruit, she says, is less predictable in quality and quantity, making harvests and sales harder to plan.
The forest that once buffered daily life has become a landscape of extremes.
How a Forest Disappears
No single moment marked the end of these forests. Their disappearance reflects a mix of pressures, from household needs and expanding settlements to commercial use of forest resources and clearing the land for agriculture.
People needed firewood for cooking, charcoal and timber to sell, and land on which to build homes or grow crops. Some families arriving on Yangon's expanding outskirts had been displaced by conflict, hardship or shrinking economic opportunities elsewhere. As settlements grew, forests were cleared for housing and agriculture, while increasingly precarious livelihoods made the remaining natural resources more important.
People no longer cut only for personal use. They cut and sell the wood. Buyers purchase it and resell it again.—Ko Than Aung, farmer
The cycle can become harder to escape. A thinner forest means less shade and protection for the land, while hotter and more unpredictable conditions can make farming harder. When livelihoods come under pressure, there is greater reliance on what remains. The result is a landscape in which the costs of clearing do not stay where the trees were cut down.
The satellite record makes that cumulative loss visible. Year by year, patches of green shrink until the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
A Generation Growing Up in the Heat
While many young people have left to seek work or other opportunities, Ko Wai Yan, who is in his early twenties, works on his family's farm in one of the affected villages, growing pomelos and pineapples.
His village, he says, sometimes floods during the rainy season. In the summer, some water sources can dry up. He remembers roads used to be shaded by trees so dense they kept the heat away. Now, he points to places where that shade has disappeared.
Forests are important not only for income but also for the climate. Flooding and weather conditions are related to forests.—Ko Wai Yan
Smoke blankets a burning patch of forest in rural Yangon. Local communities report that destroying these canopies is already triggering hotter days, erratic heavy rains, and growing instability for local farming.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
Burning and land clearing have stripped this rural hillside in Yangon of its forest cover. Local communities warn this deforestation intensifies heat, reduces soil moisture, and threatens traditional livelihoods.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
A UNDP study found that 73.2 per cent of young people in Yangon expect climate conditions to worsen or remain as poor as they are now, making Yangon one of the most pessimistic regions in the country.
Nationwide, only 1.5 per cent of young people considering migration cited environmental and disaster risks as their main reason. Economic hardship, conflict, and lack of opportunity remain much stronger drivers. But these pressures rarely exist in isolation: climate hazards can compound agricultural losses, livelihood insecurity, and conflict, making the decision to leave more likely when several pressures converge.
In other words, a forest does not have to be the stated reason someone leaves for its disappearance to matter.
What Can Grow Back
A community's experience of environmental change can be difficult to see in isolation. A farmer may notice that a field is hotter. A family may notice that a stream no longer runs for as long. A path may disappear beneath vegetation. A village may flood more often or struggle with water during the dry season.
Satellite imagery can bring those individual observations together. It turns scattered memories into a pattern that can be measured, compared and monitored over time.
If local decisions have helped shape that pattern, local action can shape what comes next.
A remaining green landscape in rural Yangon. Although forest loss has reshaped many communities, protecting what remains and restoring tree cover can still impact the climate and livelihoods for the next decade.
Photo: UNDP Myanmar
Across Yangon and elsewhere in Myanmar, young people are already responding to these changes through reforestation, water management, drought adaptation and measures to reduce the effects of flooding. UNDP-supported hackathons have helped some of these ideas find support and wider reach.
For many, the desire to act begins with a memory of what these places they call home once looked and felt like, and a determination to protect what remains.
For Ma Thandar, that connection began with a road.
She remembers the road up the hill, shaded by bamboo and trees. She has since volunteered at a tree-planting site in Taikkyi, helping to restore some of what has disappeared.
Ma Yamin is taking a different approach on community forest land, tending native trees alongside her crops, which provide shade and help retain moisture.
"Protecting the forest is not a task for one person alone," she says. "Everyone needs to participate."
The forests north of Yangon were not lost in a single act. Their recovery will be gradual too: a tree planted, a patch of forest protected, a farmer choosing to keep native trees standing.
And perhaps, one day, a road shaded by trees again.
This story uses UNDP satellite analysis, interviews conducted with residents and farmers in Yangon's northern townships in early 2026, and broader UNDP evidence of youth perceptions. Names and other identifying details have been changed to protect identities.
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