The densest root · 2015 – 2019
Myanmar
Yangon
The biggest undertaking of my life - and, right beside it, a thesis to finish and a studio to build.
OneMap Myanmar. One country, one map.
Leading, in a country opening up and then sliding into turmoil, the effort to consolidate land data scattered across twenty ministries - so that land, the source of so much conflict, could become legible and negotiable. Country Director and Chief Technical Advisor, for four years.
The programme
OneMap Myanmar
A national land-governance programme led by the CDE of the University of Bern, funded by Swiss SDC. Born from the 2016 National Land Use Policy's call for a "One Map" system.
12M
CHF, 4 phases
20+
agencies aggregated
30
staff, 3 offices
13
partner ministries
A national geoportal
Aggregating and digitising scattered, often inaccessible datasets, to build the country's first unified land-data platform.
Capacity development
Training the staff of twelve ministries in spatial data, and building institutional sharing frameworks where silos reigned.
Knowledge production
Maps, reports and analyses that fed reform debates directly - from the Survey Law to the 2019 Forest Rules.
Multi-stakeholder dialogue
A dual posture: working with government in official arenas, and equipping civil society bilaterally so it could arrive informed at the table.
What the maps moved
Embedded research, on the ground
Tanintharyi
Oil palm & power
A multi-stakeholder review of oil-palm concessions reveals the gap between permits and actual plantations - when technical evidence unsettles established interests.
Naga Land
Customary tenure
At communities' request, participatory mapping of 36 villages and satellite analysis of shifting cultivation - and an award-winning documentary. "Multifunctionality from below."
EITI · Extractives
Mining transparency
A mapping platform for the extractive industries - whose data and relationships survived the 2021 coup by migrating to other hosts.
In parallel
Day and night - again
Research
The thesis, at last
It is between two missions, in Yangon, that I defend my doctorate in geography (University of Geneva) on aid effectiveness and donor logics.
Studio · Creation
Birth of BBZU
It is here that I turn a shipping container into a mobile recording studio - BBZU - which would then travel with the family to Kenya and Senegal.
The seed moves on
Towards Kenya
After four years in Yangon, the container and the family take to the road again - towards the rangelands of Northern Kenya and the Wyss Academy for Nature.