THE DESTRUCTION AND DEFOLIATION OF 25% OF RAINFORESTS BY AGENT ORANGE MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO AN ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE OF NATIVE AGARWOOD (AQUILARIA) IN VIETNAM. DEFOLIATION ALSO OPENED UP DENSE JUNGLES FOR ILLEGAL LOGGING OF TREES THAT HAD SURVIVED THE AFTERMATH OF WAR. 

This project seeks to slowly gather Kỳ Nam or Kyara Agarwood relics and remnants from Japan, China, the US, Europe and the Middle East to burn and offer comfort to people still fleeing war. This questions the ethics of burning rare and endangered rainforest products for the sake of cultural and spiritual practices.

Kỳ Nam and Kyara is the highest grade of Agarwood, reserved for religious veneration throughout Japan, India, China and other parts of the Sinosphere, this particular quality of wood resin only grows in the rainforests of central Vietnam. Equally valuable are the Agarwood or Oudh species found across the border in Cambodia. Cambodian Agarwood is most highly regarded by the Islamic world.

The lingering impacts of war continue to affect the sustainability and access that people living in mainland Southeast Asia have to their material and spiritual practices like incense burning. Despite this, local growers are currently working with scientists to find new ways of sustainably cultivating high quality Southeast Asian Agarwood to reclaim economic sovereignty and rebuild their ancestral relationship to this endangered rainforest species.