The rapid poverty reduction and economic development experienced by the Southeast
Asia (SEA) region over the last decades has been remarkable, but it has come at the
cost of considerable environmental degradation. Once lauded for the regional richness
of cultures, landscapes and environments, many of the economies of SEA have been built
on natural resource extraction, such as timber, pulp, and paper; minerals, oil, coal
and sand; fish and wildlife; and agricultural commodities like rice and palm oil,
leading to deforestation, water and ocean pollution, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.
Rapid urbanization has created a number of sustainability problems, with SEA recording
the highest worldwide premature deaths from air pollution in recent years, and poor
city planning has allowed slums to develop, floods to threaten residents, and congestion
to mark life in many Southeast Asian cities. Climate change puts future economic progress
at risk, given long coastlines and vulnerability to sea level rise and natural disasters
among many SEA countries, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is likely to put a serious
financial strain on many countries’ abilities to address these pressing challenges.
This talk will take stock of recent sustainability trends in SEA and assess what future
trajectories are likely to look like, with an emphasis on how to better incorporate
participatory processes in sustainable development futures.
Pamela McElwee is an Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. She
is trained as an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, with a joint Ph.D. in
anthropology and forestry, and her work focuses on vulnerability of households and
communities to global environmental change, including biodiversity loss, deforestation,
and climate change. Her first book, Forests are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental
Rule in Vietnam won the EUROSEAS prize for best social science book on Southeast Asia.
She has recently completed a book titled Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia
for Cambridge Elements, forthcoming later in 2021, and her next project is a book
on the environmental legacies of the Vietnam War.
This is a partnership with Global Change and Sustainability Center, Asia Center, and University of Utah.