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This paper investigates the adaptation processes with reference to the narrative analysis of human–environment interactions in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. From the political ecology perspective, it focuses on the discourses of the power relationships embedded within the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus over the course of its 'opening‐up and closing‐off' processes (e.g. excavating large‐scale canals for human settlements and agricultural expansion (opening‐up) and human interventions into natural systems through water control structures (closing‐off)). Drawing on empirical data gathered from 33 interviews and nine focus group discussions in three study areas and relevant literature, the paper argues that human interactions with the flood environments are intertwined with adjustments of adaptation patterns as evidenced through three periods: free adaptation (pre‐1975), transitional adaptation (1976–2010) and forced adaptation (after 2010). These processes have witnessed a gradual power shift in the 'state‐society' relations in manipulating floods, which moves from the top‐down towards a more collaborative fashion. By unravelling the political ecology of the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus, this paper exhibits the skewed development in the delta, which is largely bound to short‐term development planning to prioritise local socio‐economic and political objectives. The paper contributes important policy implications for achieving socially just and environmentally sustainable development in the delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political intricacies inherent in the management of Southeast Asia's transboundary haze pollution. It argues for a scalar perspective in understanding the complexities of the haze problem. The so‐called 'inconvenient truth' is unravelled by teasing out some issues in the national and regional political ecologies, and the challenges of synchronising co‐operation at the national, regional and global scales. Discussion shows that the 'environment' takes on different meanings at each scale, and both Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) need to recognise this in order to engage more effectively with the transboundary environmental issue. Specifically, inadequate management of forest resources in Indonesia, ASEAN's principle of 'non‐interference' and a lack of a holistic ecosystem perspective are amongst some of the interconnected issues addressed. The paper calls for a greater awareness of structural weaknesses in the management of forest resources and a change in ASEAN's environmental paradigm to a more holistic ecosystem perspective that prioritises not just environmental and human health, but also a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With large tracts of forested land planned for, or already converted to, industrial palm oil concessions, there is a need to better understand the gendered implications for, and responses by, communities affected by such landscape change. This paper examines the differentiated gendered responses and livelihood strategies of Dayak Modang women and men in a hamlet in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, surrounded by industrial palm oil plantations. Informed by feminist political ecology, we investigate how the compounding impact of industrial oil palm – the basis and outcome of enclavement – curtails livelihood options and reinforces gender differentiation in terms of access to and use of customary resources. Gendered inequalities and food insecurity dynamics emerge as a result. We show how, however, that despite gendered exclusions, Dayak Modang women use their own knowledge and practices to diversify livelihoods to negotiate emerging constraints over resource access and use. Our paper demonstrates that ways in which Dayak women 'sustain livelihoods' reflects forms of everyday negotiations and resistance to intensifying constraints over life and livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this special issue are the product of a comparative interdisciplinary workshop on ‘Natural Resources and Violent Ethnic Conflicts in the Asia Pacific Region’ held in Honolulu, Hawaii, 18–20 March 2005. The workshop brought together scholars who study conflicts between ethnic groups and those who study conflicts over natural resource claims in order to examine the interplay of resources and ethnicity and to seek answers to the question of why violence occurs in some cases and not in others. Both sets of scholars agreed on some points but disagreed on others. They agreed that ethnic and resource grievances occur not so much out of objective deprivation but out of ‘relative deprivation’ when groups compare their situation with others, to the past, or to future expectations. They both stressed the role of democratic processes in alleviating resource competition and ethnic conflicts – but they did this in different ways. The perspectives and solutions offered by these papers sum to a deeper and more contextualised understanding of the cause of conflict and to mutually reinforcing solutions for resolving them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a political ecology perspective to examine relationships between violence and territory in West Kalimantan, focusing on the violent incidents of 1996–1997 and 1967–1968. Besides a regional account, the paper examines some of the ways residents of one village were drawn into and chose to participate in violence. The author concludes that while regional analyses can identify broad patterns, local analyses enable a greater understanding of both variation and the processes by which ethnic categories are constructed through violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although India's Jharkhand movement resists classification as either an ethnic or an environmental movement, it has, at different times, mobilised clear elements of both with frequently violent outcomes. This paper examines the movement from a political ecology perspective and focuses on violence arising from natural resource-related grievances, notably land alienation, forest policy and employment from Jharkhand's mines. Drawing from political ecology's emphasis on the need to examine conflict from a range of different spatial scales, the paper emphasises the importance of a micro-political ecology approach for understanding how locally based conflicts over natural resources can harden into more established grievances that can be mobilised politically as part of a wider and potentially violent protest movement. It is also suggested that micro-political ecology approaches can assist participatory resource management initiatives in ameliorating local conflicts over access to resources, thus helping to prevent them from escalating into more widespread violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation ( REDD+) is an ambitious global programme oriented towards improving forest carbon management. It aims to attract new sources of 'green' capital to fund emissions reductions from avoided deforestation and sustainable forest management. REDD+ is transforming forest conservation, as a diverse array of new stakeholders become involved. Not surprisingly, REDD+ has proved divisive, as critics concern themselves with issues of power, justice, and commodification, while practice-oriented researchers tackle similar issues from different perspectives, focusing on benefit sharing, safeguards, additionality, measuring and verification. In this paper we explore the different roles of critical and practical research, and argue that there is a need for greater sharing of knowledge across current divides. We draw on our own experiences of conducting a research project on REDD+ in Indonesia that involved critical and practice-oriented researchers. We argue that critical research disconnected from practical matters can have perverse outcomes for practitioners who are ultimately working towards similar goals; while uncritical practice-oriented research has the potential to lead to a dilution of core values of environmental justice and conservation. In contrast, forms of practical critique provide ways of researching REDD+ that have practical value while maintaining critical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks through what processes and for which interests the emerging Vietnamese climate change strategy is being designed, and if, ultimately, it is likely or not to be effective in the face of the looming threat. Through a review of an emerging body of literature and field observations, the paper finds the strategy partial and problematic in several ways. Its technocratic process prevents a pluralist representation of interests, obfuscating and perpetuating sectorial ones, at the expense of a more transparent and democratic resource allocation. The strategy therefore reflects and reinforces existing power relations in both politics and production. It feeds into a business-as-usual complacency, protecting national and international interests vested in unchallenged continuity, even when considering post-carbon technological fixes, which largely serve to expand capital accumulation opportunities. The article concludes that the national climate change strategy provides an illusion of intervention and security, but largely fails to identify and mitigate the underlying causes of climate change, or to lay the ground for a robust mid- and long-term adaptation strategy that can cope with yet unknown levels of climatic and other structural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific understanding of agricultural change has grown considerably since Boserup's seminal 1965 work, but her model's simplicity has provided a foundation for building more complex understandings of farming societies. Much of the development of these more sophisticated understandings has been led by Harold Brookfield. The first section of this paper summarises our current understanding of the salient points of commonality in intensive smallholder systems. The second section looks at findings from studies that relax Boserupian constraints, revealing new kinds of variability in agricultural systems. Both sections stress the need for continued research on the political-economic context of agricultural intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of climate change in the Pacific Islands, in terms of its geopolitical implications, and through the lens of mitigation and adaptation policies and strategies. Comparatively little focus has been given to the domestic politics of climate change in the region: How a changing climate is affecting internal political dynamics. This article traces the boundaries of a new research agenda on the impacts of climate change within Pacific states as an animating political dynamic. It considers climate change as a possible source of political change and contestation; as a critical domestic policy issue; and as a driver of political participation and organisation. Climate change is an existential threat to the Pacific Islands, yet it has unique power as a mass mobilising factor in the largely localised and fragmented politics of the region. We conclude with some reflections on the potential of climate change as a key political driver in the region, and fruitful avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peatlands play a crucial role in Indonesia's economic development, and in its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Improved peatland management - including a national moratorium on the granting of any new conversion licenses - forms a cornerstone of Indonesia's climate change mitigation commitment. At the same time, rapid expansion of the plantation sector is driving wide-scale drainage and conversion of peat swamp ecosystems. The province of Riau, in central Sumatra, finds itself at the crossroads of these conflicting agendas. This essay presents a case study of three islands on Riau's east coast affected by industrial timber plantation concessions. It examines the divergent experiences, perceptions and responses of communities on the islands. A mix of dramatic protests, localised everyday actions and constructive dialogue has succeeded in delaying or perhaps halting one of the concessions, while negotiations and contestation with the other two continue. With the support of regional and national non-governmental organisations and local government, communities are pursuing alternative development strategies, including the cultivation of sago, which requires no peat drainage. While a powerful political economy of state and corporate actors shapes the contours of socio-environmental change, local social movements can alter trajectories of change, promoting incremental improvements and alternative pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including indigeneity and natural resources in Cambodia, political ecology and environmental justice.

West Kalimantan (West Borneo) has a history of violent communal conflict.1 It also has extensive forests that have been looted for decades. The argument will be that these two are linked, but not by the grievances of the forest dwellers. Except in its first few days, the two main episodes of 1997 and 1999 were not driven mainly by grievances among marginal groups. Rather, explanations based on the ‘resource curse’ carry more weight. These focus attention on the contested nature of the state, rather than on rebellious activities of marginal groups. When state institutions were thrown into disarray by the sudden resignation of President Suharto in 1998, Dayak militants already close to state power rewrote the rules of local politics by demonstratively ‘cleansing’ certain areas of an unpopular immigrant minority. This theatrical manoeuvre impressed political rivals sufficiently to allow Dayaks to gain control over several timber-rich districts, which had a thriving black economy. Malays later imitated these techniques to stem the tide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fishing constitutes a key source of income and food for rural communities worldwide. This is the case in predominantly rural Myanmar (World Fish, 2019), particularly in the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River Delta. Fishing has long been a central livelihood strategy and valuable source of food security in the Delta, and now also generates a substantial contribution to the gross domestic product. However, the livelihood practices of the fishers, particularly small‐scale fishers, are largely 'invisible' in the literature and policy. In this article, we advance understanding of the significant but understudied livelihoods of small‐scale fishers through interviews with fishers and a range of other actors in 2018. Taking a careful examination of the challenges, practices and responses of fishers in the Delta, our research underlines that fishers are important actors in the 'making' of the Delta as a geographical scale and concept, yet they are being pushed out of the very landscape they have helped co‐create and have lived in for generations. At this crucial point in Myanmar's development and change, we contend that a better understanding of the livelihoods of fishing households, as some of the nation's most vulnerable, is important for inclusive policy development, economic reforms and research strategy going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the fall of long-time strongman Suharto and his authoritarian ' New Order' government in 1998, Indonesia has embarked upon a series of decentralisation and democratisation reforms. This new era of decentralised politics has come to be known as Reformasi and has significantly altered the political landscape of the archipelago as national and subnational levels of administration continue to contest the balance of power. Indonesia's national parks, which remain under the authority of the national government, have become arenas for negotiated encounters between local resource users, aspiring district elites and the national government. This essay explores three legacies of incomplete and unfinished decentralisation as they related to national-park-based conservation, using Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource conflicts often intensify ethnic violence and vice versa. However, in specific cases situations can be more complex than they appear. To understand this phenomenon, this chapter takes incidents of violence in Northern Thailand as a point of departure to explain how the historical construction of ethnic identification is tied to the spatial division of highlands and lowlands. I argue that these incidents of violence are not just about resource scarcity but also about notions of forests and highlands as places of wildness and lowlands as the source of civilisation. The current adoption of a nature conservation discourse among Thais puts forests and hills into a battlefield of perceived resource degradation. Some situations have been aggravated to the point that violence has been perpetuated against ethnic highlanders by lowlanders who have adopted orthodox science and nationalist sentiments drawn from a history and geography of ethnic identification. Taking a political ecology approach, this article highlights the interplay among resources, access rights, identity, history, polity, and space to unveil the complexity and specificity of ethnic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]