Understanding the effects of cash crop expansion on natural forest is of fundamental importance. However, for most crops there are no remotely sensed global maps1, and global deforestation impacts are estimated using models and extrapolations. Natural rubber is an example of a principal commodity for which deforestation impacts have been highly uncertain, with estimates differing more than fivefold1–4. Here we harnessed Earth observation satellite data and cloud computing5 to produce high-resolution maps of rubber (10 m pixel size) and associated deforestation (30 m pixel size) for Southeast Asia. Our maps indicate that rubber-related forest loss has been substantially underestimated in policy, by the public and in recent reports6–8. Our direct remotely sensed observations show that deforestation for rubber is at least twofold to threefold higher than suggested by figures now widely used for setting policy4. With more than 4 million hectares of forest loss for rubber since 1993 (at least 2 million hectares since 2000) and more than 1 million hectares of rubber plantations established in Key Biodiversity Areas, the effects of rubber on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia could be extensive. Thus, rubber deserves more attention in domestic policy, within trade agreements and in incoming due-diligence legislation.

Objectives: This paper explores the potential reduction in the number of deaths and the corresponding economic benefits in Vietnam that could have arisen from the decreased in concentrations of particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5μm or less (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Methods: Using Global Exposure Mortality Models, we estimated the potential health and economic benefits on people aged 25 and above across Vietnam's 63 provinces. The counterfactual scenario assumed reducing PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations to levels observed during the two COVID-19 epidemic waves in 2021 with national lockdowns and activity restrictions. Results: In 2019, PM2.5 concentrations ranged from 12.8 to 40.8μg/m3 while NO2 concentrations ranged between 2.9 and 36.98μg/m3. The reduced levels of PM2.5 and NO2 resulted in 3,807 (95% CI: 2,845-4,730) and 2,451 (95% CI: 2,845-4,730) avoided deaths of adults aged 25 and above due to non-injury-related causes, respectively. Considering that every prevented death represents potential tangible and intangible cost savings, reduced levels of PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations during COVID-19 restrictions would have resulted in economic benefits of $793.0 million (95% CI: 592.7-985.4) and $510.6 million (95% CI: 381.3-634.9), respectively. Conclusion: The COVID-19 lockdown led to decreased PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations, benefiting health and economy in Vietnam. Our findings highlight the potential advantages of implementing air quality control policies in the country.

Regional governments are increasingly developing conservation policy initiatives that are framed alongside the empowerment of Indigenous Peoples. This paper examines the case of Tambrauw, West Papua, that set out to establish one of the first ever Conservation Regencies in Indonesia. To understand the implications of conservation policy developments, we explored from an environmental justice perspective the ways that one of the most important forest-based activities of local communities – hunting – has changed in recent years. Data was collected using qualitative methods of participatory observation and interviews between 2015-2018 across three Tambrauw districts. The study shows how policy changes are increasing clashes between local hunters and conservation officials. This has implications for broader issues of conservation policy and local livelihoods, and sheds light on the more recent trend of foregrounding Indigenous identity in forest management. Although on the face of it the emergence of conservation regencies represents a trend in downscaling authority to empower local communities, findings shows that place-based and more locally responsive policies need to be established to address emerging conflicts that can also meet broader conservation outcomes.

Agricultural research and development organizations are under pressure to shift from increasing productivity of crops to increasing the profitability and competitiveness of smallholders and linking small-scale farmers to profitable markets. This paper discusses the efforts to assist small-scale farmers to become more sustainable and market oriented. Data were taken from a 5-year participatory action project in a village in Northeast Thailand during 2014–2018. We found that a market-led extension approach can enable farmers to optimize their returns from farming by selecting farm enterprises based on market opportunities for both existing and new products. Farmers need to apply post-harvesting management, including processing, grading, standardization of produce, value adding, packaging, branding, and certification in the process. Collaboration and long-term commitments on the part of scientists, local stakeholders, policymakers, and funding organizations need to be furthered strengthened.

AbstractProcesses of rapid and truncated agrarian change—driven through expanding urbanisation, infrastructure development, extractive industries, and commodity crops—are shaping the livelihood opportunities and aspirations of Indonesia’s rural youth. This study describes the everyday experiences of youth as they navigate the changing character of agriculture, aquaculture, and fishing livelihoods across gender, class, and generation. Drawing on qualitative field research conducted in the Maros District of South Sulawesi, we examine young people’s experiences of agrarian change in a landscape of entangled rural, coastal and increasingly urbanised spaces. We find that young people aspire to secure, modern, and salary-based work, while continuing to seek and sustain intergenerational farming or aquaculture-based livelihoods. Youth take advantage of increased connectivity to diversify their incomes, yet their dependence on mobility also introduces new forms of gendered and class based precarity such as insecure working arrangements, disruption to education and violence (especially for young unskilled women and youth from financially insecure households). Our study highlights the persistent conditions of precarity that many young people encounter in both rural and urban settings, while challenging assumptions that youth are uninterested in rural futures.

Studies on interactions between national parks and Indigenous Peoples in Indonesia have gained much attention in recent years, which mainly examine eviction, boundary disputes, and remediation. This research focuses on changing institutions since the establishment of Kelimutu National Park, foregrounding socio-cultural and livelihood impacts over time. This study involves in-depth interviews, FGDs, and observations from April to May 2019 and revisiting in November 2021. Findings highlight changing traditional institutions (Mosalaki) uprooted by the formal National Park governing authority. Such transitions also shift governing authority over natural resources access and control in ways that negatively affect the livelihoods of the Lio people of Kelimutu.

This paper contributes to new understandings of agrarian transition for smallholder rice farming in Southeast Asia through quantitative data analysis from Thailand’s two main rice growing regions. Despite economic modernization models predicting a farm-size transition of smallholder agriculture to large-scale commercial farms with the onset of industrialization and urban employment opportunities, we find rice farmers continue to persist and defy anticipated trends, but not uniformly. We conducted a comprehensive survey in 2019 with rice farming households in twelve provinces in Thailand’s Central Plains and the Northeast on how a host of dynamic farming variables have changed from 2000 to 2019. Rather than the concentration of smallholder rice farms into large commercial farms, we find that the size of smallholder rice farms has remained remarkably consistent across study sites. Our comparative data analysis advances an interrelated set of key explanatory variables that go beyond land size to explicate the variegated nature of agrarian transition: access to resources, household farm labor, farm inputs, agrarian finance, and government support. Our study demonstrates the need for taking into consideration (sub-)regional specificity of material conditions and multi-scaled forces, as well as geographical proximity to advantageous factors, in shaping variegated trajectories of agrarian transition. Smallholder rice farmers and rice production is not about to significantly decline in either region of Thailand nor the rest of Southeast Asia, at least for the next several decades, but will increasingly be defined by changing demographics, growing environmental and climatic challenges, and consolidating global rice production supply chains.