The environment is one of the defining issues of our times, and it is closely linked to questions and dilemmas surrounding economic development. Southeast Asia is one of the world's most economically and demographically dynamic regions, and it is also one in which a host of environmental issues raise themselves.
The Routledge Handbook of the Environment in Southeast Asia is a collection of 30 chapters dealing with the most significant scholarly debates in this rapidly growing field of study. Structured in four main parts, it gives a comprehensive regional overview of, and insight into, the environment in Southeast Asia.
Wide-ranging and balanced, Routledge Handbook of the Environment in Southeast Asia promotes scholarly understanding of how environmental issues are dealt with from diverse theoretical perspectives. It offers a detailed empirical understanding of the myriad environmental problems and challenges faced in Southeast Asia. This is the first publication of its kind in this field; a helpful companion for a global audience and for scholars of Southeast Asian studies from a variety of disciplines.
Part 1: Introduction
1. Introduction: The environment in Southeast Asia’s past, present and future Philip Hirsch
Part 2: Thematic approaches to environment
2. Understanding the physical environment of Southeast Asia: A prerequisite for better environmental management Avijit Gupta
3. Environmental histories of Southeast Asia Peter Boomgaard
4. Population growth and environmental degradation in Southeast Asia Rodolphe De Koninck and Pham Thanh Hai
5. Environmentalism Tim Forsyth
6. A Southeast Asian political ecology Peter Vandergeest and Robin Roth
7. Environmental neoliberalism in Southeast Asia Keith Barney
8. Environmental law in Southeast Asia Ben Boer
9. Environmental governance and decentralization Robert Fisher
10. Transboundary environmental politics in Southeast Asia: Issues, responses and challenges Antonio P. Contreras
Part 3: Sectoral issues in natural resources and environment
11. Forests and biodiversity Frances Seymour and Peter Kanowski
12. Shifting cultivation and human interaction with forests Rob Cramb
13. Water, rivers and dams Carl Middleton
14. Social and political ecology of fisheries and aquaculture in Southeast Asia Simon R. Bush and Melissa Marschke
15. Urban environmental transitions in Southeast Asia Peter J. Marcotullio
16. Peri-urbanization and environmental issues in mega-urban regions Edsel E. Sajor
17. Adaptation to climate change in Southeast Asia: Developing a relational approach Albert Salamanca and Jonathan Rigg
18. Migration and the environment Rebecca Elmhirst
Part 4: Regional and country studies in environment
19. The role of ASEAN in shaping regional environmental protection Koh Kheng-Lian and Md. Saiful Karim
20. The Mekong: Strategic environmental assessment of mainstream hydropower development in an international river basin Jeremy Carew-Reid
21. Cambodia: Territorialisation of natural resources and environmental management Mak Sithirith
22. Indonesia: A political-economic history of environment and resources Jeff Neilson
23. Laos: Abundance, scarcity and the shifting role of natural resources Yayoi Fujita Lagerqvist
24. Malaysia: Structure and agency of the environmental movement Fadzilah Majid Cooke and Adnan A. Hezri
25. Myanmar: Evolving environmental governance under a regime in transition Adam Simpson
26. The Philippines: Historical and geographical framing of ecological degradation and environmental governance Doracie Zoleta-Nantes
27. Singapore: Sustaining a global city-state and the challenges of environmental governance in the twenty-first century Carl Grundy-Warr and Victor R. Savage
28. Thailand: Whither gender in the environmental movement? Pinkaew Laungaramsri
29. Timor Leste: Embracing resource governance through ritual in a post-conflict society Lisa Palmer
30. Vietnam: Governmental and societal response to emergent environmental issues in the Mekong Delta Le Anh Tuan
Philip Hirsch is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests are in agrarian change, natural resource management and the politics of environment in Thailand and the wider Mekong region.
"Capable tied together by Hirsch, this edited volumes serves as a very useful intermediate to advanced primer for those who want to quickly grasp the diversity of issues surrounding the environment, and the dilemmas that relate environmnetal change to communities, politics and economic development in Southeast Asia."
– Lee Poh Onn, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 39 No. 2, August 2017
"In general, the consequences of mistaken policies which neglect the environment are not realized until much later. This volume offers: renewed perspectives that the environment is central to economic development; and a detailed look on an often overlooked relted component – the context which frames the environment."
– Seck Tan, Journal of Southeast Asian Economics, Vol. 34 No. 3, December 2017