The jade industry at Hpakant in Kachin State is a multi-billion-dollar business in which risk flows downhill, from the company bosses to the mid-level traders and, at the bottom, the itinerant miners known as yemase who risk their lives each day in the hope of striking it rich.
This edition of Political Insider looks at the impact of rare earth mining in eastern Shan State and how the pollution caused by this unregulated industry is affecting communities in Myanmar, Thailand and the wider Mekong region.
BY Frontier
