Sustainable travel: in Myanmar, eco-tourism pioneer helps Inle Lake recover, and benefit, from rise in visitors

When pollution from boats, receding water levels, and fertiliser run-off threatened once-pristine Inle Lake, a woman born on its shores decided to act

Yin Myo Su learned about low-cost waste water treatment, helped raise awareness of the lake’s endemic fish, and opened a hospitality school for the area’s youth

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Fishermen on Inle Lake, Myanmar. Its water quality has suffered and a native of the lake, Yin Myo Su, has launched a series of initiatives to give it a sustainable future, including an aquarium where the lake’s endemic fish species are bred. Photo: Alamy

Published: 6:10pm, 29 Jul 2019Updated: 7:58pm, 30 Jul 2019

Forty years ago when Yin Myo Su was a child, she would regularly wash in the waters of Inle Lake, in Myanmar’s Shan State. Not any more.

“Today, the lake is dying,” says Yin, better known as Misuu, the founder of Inle Heritage, a not-for-profit organisation that works to preserve it and the culture of the lakeside communities. “And if we want it to survive, we have to take action.”

Yin, who was born and raised in Nyaung Shwe, the main hub for visitors to the lake, has been involved in the hospitality industry for more than 20 years, and has spent the past decade at the forefront of the area’s steadily growing eco-tourism industry.

She has implemented waste water management systems, opened a vocational training school, opened a resort of traditional houses built on stilts over the water, and held environmental workshops. She is determined to conserve the place she calls home.

Fishermen “row” their boat using their legs on Inle Lake in Shan State, Myanmar, as they head towards a typical lakeside community of homes built on stilts. Photo: Alamy

“I know how tourism can do good but also a lot of harm,” Yin says. “I want to promote and preserve; the two have to go hand in hand.”