In 2013, the Myanmar government decided to develop a special economic zone (DSEZ) on the west coast of Dawei province to boost international trade. In order to connect the DSEZ with Thailand, a highway across the whole country ("Dawei Road link") was proposed. Initially, they envision the road link as a 8-lane highway accompanied by a rail track, and several pipelines. Yet the imprudent, profit-chasing construction process not only cause harm to the environment, but also exacerbate social conflicts in the region. What is worse, the investment was not enough to finish the grand construction after their have cleared up a lot of forests, plantations and even villages for land preparation. The road link shrank into a 2-lane, and 90% of land within the right-of-way was be left empty.

It seems like a large-scale resource waste plus all the damages caused. However, what is proposed in the following pages is that these lands left vacant might, contrary as it seems, become the chance for a new, benign land use strategy to be implemented, allowing the construction company to de-escalate conflicts it has caused and compensate some economic lost. In a longer run, the new land use strategy could be applied to the whole region and push its economy into a more sustainable development route.