The Environment in Southeast Asia: Injustice, Conflict and Activism

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

As demonstrated throughout this volume, the types and severity of dilemmas facing states within Southeast Asia can vary enormously depending on their history, culture, politics and level of social and economic development. This is partially true of environmental issues, but many environmental concerns fail to respect the otherwise tangible privileges of economic development, just as they often ignore state boundaries. This situation was amply demonstrated by the choking haze - the worst ever - from primarily Indonesian forest fires engulfing Singapore and other countries in late 2015, and severely interrupting the otherwise largely First World daily existence of its citizens. Transboundary environmental issues are often focused on mainland Southeast Asia, with the sharing of water resources from transboundary rivers a key example (Boer et al. 2016), but the haze covering most of the region clearly demonstrated that oceans are also no barrier to the transit of environmental problems. Similarly, climate change is likely to be the dominant overarching environmental issue for the foreseeable future and in this case regional, and even global, transboundary environmental pollution affects both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia equally. Southeast Asia is particularly at risk to weather extremes exacerbated by climate change; it includes four out of the ten countries globally most affected by extreme weather events between 1993 and 2012 (Kreft and Eckstein 2013).