Political Ecology in Asia Dialogue Series: "Disastrous Flooding and Haze in Bangkok"

Earlier this month, we had a discussion with Dr. Danny Marks, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Politics and Policy in the School of Law and Government of Dublin City University. Dr. Marks research overall has focused on environmental governance in Southeast Asia, in particular with regard to political ecology, environmental justice, climate governance, and disaster risk reduction.

This discussion is the first on the Political Ecology in Asia Dialogue Series. This series is a new initiative of CSDS, and we hold the objective of encouraging rigorous debate through the lens of political ecology on development issues and trends in the region, including social, economic and environmental changes taking place.

Below are the timestamps of the video, in case you want to jump to specific section/question.

• 03:15 Could you outline your analysis of a political ecology of disastrous flooding in Bangkok? What are the underlying reasons why Bangkok is vulnerable to disastrous flooding? What are the key impacts? How does it help explain who is vulnerable to flooding?

• 09:45 To expand a little bit, the flooding takes place not only on the Bangkok city itself but also within the context of the wider Chao Phraya basin. Can you please comment on the wider changes within the basin?

• 12:03 When we talk about the flooding in Bangkok and the wider Chao Phraya basin, are there particular groups of people that are vulnerable and why?

• 15:18 In the context of flooding and the uneven impacts between different groups, what does that mean to your idea of disaster justice?

• 18:15 Having discussed disaster justice, how does your explanation differ from the Thai government explanations?

• 20:54 Could disastrous flooding happen again? Have lessons been learned? Have things changed? What will the future look like if another disaster happens?

• 24:15 What could be the consequences of climate change to a city like Bangkok, especially through the political ecology and disaster justice lens?

• 27:15 What should be the policy recommendations and priority actions taken, with the viewpoint of achieving disaster justice/climate justice?

• 29:20 Every year it seems now, Bangkok suffers severe air pollution in the cool season. Could you explain why haze happens in Bangkok? How can political ecology help us analyze it

• 33:37 Is the issue of injustice and inequality in haze being recognised, let alone being addressed in policy or even public discussion?

• 36:11 Is haze here to stay in Bangkok, or do you see any condition under which there could be cleaner air in the city and what would it take for it to happen?

• 39:46 Beyond the topics that we have focused on today, your work has extended to several other topics including plastic pollution, electricity planning, etc. Are there any connections between your works? Are there shared traits in terms of their political ecologies that you could draw out?

• 42:34 Regarding a political ecology research agenda in Thailand and Southeast Asia, what would be your suggestions for key priorities?

EVENT [RESOURCES]: Haze and Social (In)Justice in Southeast Asia: Past Experience and What Next? [Online, 29 July 2020]

On Wednesday, 29 July 2020, Center for Social Development Studies at the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University organized a panel discussion focusing on the issue of social justice and air pollution. It was a Public Session organized for the International Conference on New research in international development, human rights, and international relations at a time of disruption.

The discussion examined how various economic, social and political inequalities intersect in relation to air pollution in terms of its creation and exposure, and the consequences for individuals, families and society as-a-whole.

Presentation Files:

• “COVID-19 and Haze: Implications on Health, Fires, and Social Justice” by Dr. Helena Varkkey, Department of Strategic and International Studies, University of Malaya

• “From Maize to Haze” by Daniel Hayward, Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University

• “Right to Clean Air in Thailand's Time of Pandemic” by Tara Buakamsri, Greenpeace Southeast Asia

• “PMHAZE a People's Movement to Stop Haze” by Benjamin Tay, PM Haze

The panel was chaired by Asst. Prof. Dr. Carl Middleton from the Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

If you missed the discussion, or if you want to revisit, you can watch the discussion below.

Haze and Social (In)Justice in Southeast Asia: Past Experience and What Next? Public Session organized for the "International Conference on New research in i...

EVENT REPORT: Political Ecology in Asia: Plural Knowledge and Contested Development in a More-Than-Human World [Bangkok, 10-11 October 2019]

Keynote Speech 10 October 2019: “Reflection on Vijñana of Religion: New Animism in the Age of the Anthropocene” by Thanes Wongyannava, Retired Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University.

On 10 and 11 October 2019, Center for Social Development Studies together with Chula Global Network (CGN); French Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC); French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD); French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP); IRN-SustainAsia; Patrimoines Locaux, Environnement et Mondialisation (PALOC); POLLEN Political Ecology Network organized a Conference on Political Ecology in Asia: Plural Knowledge and Contested Development in a More-Than-Human World. The conference, with the support of Chula Global Network (CGN); The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); French Embassy in Bangkok; Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, was successfully held in the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. The origin of this conference is a discussion hosted by the French Institute of Pondicherry in October 2018, following the creation by the French CNRS of the IRN-SustainAsia network a few months earlier in Paris bringing together French and Asian research centers.

The conference intended to further and critically engage with the existing strong body of knowledge studying political ecologies of Asia, in both academic and transdisciplinary forms, and in particular encouraging a reflection on how political ecology is understood and applied by researchers and activists throughout Asia whose work addresses the themes of the politics of plural knowledge, contested development, and human-more-than-human relationships. In doing so, the conference also actively sought alternatives beyond the anthropocene/ capitalocene.

Keynote Speech 11 October 2019: “The Political Ecology of Climate Change, Uncertainty and Transformation in Marginal Environments” by Lyla Mehta, Professor from Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex.

There were two keynotes delivered, one on each day of the conference. On 10 October 2019, Thanes Wongyannava, Retired Professor from the Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University, delivered a keynote asking whether the diverse field of political ecology has the potential to – and could or should - accommodate vijñana ecology, which roughly translates to spirit ecology. On 11 October 2019, Lyla Mehta, Professor from Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, delivered a keynote exploring the diverse and contested framings of climate change and uncertainty in three sites in South Asia and looking at how uncertainty is understood and experienced from 'below' by the lived experiences of local people, how it is conceptualised and represented from 'above' by climate scientists and experts and how the 'middle' - civil society, NGOs, academics - can potentially function as brokers between the 'below' and 'above'

There were several panels on the need to unpack the consensus on environmentalism, including several papers on western perception of nature protection and their implementation in non-western societies. Many of the presentations also focus on rural landscapes, coastal areas, borders, and special zones affected by capitalist construction, introduction of new crops, land tenure, land security, and disaster managements, with the common thread of all these area-based analysis being the reproduction of inequalities and discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, age, and class.

There were also panels on urban landscapes, urban vulnerabilities and attempts to modernize or redesign the urban environment in the face of climate change, flooding, and various kinds of environmental degradation. There were also papers on infrastructure from a multi-dimensional and interwoven perspective, as well as their specific political implications, and papers on pollution which were questioning the drivers of the current governance on addressing these problems.

Session 1A Particulate Matters: The Emergence of A Political Ecology of Haze in Asia

The first session of the conference in the first venue, chaired by Karine Léger from AirParif discussed the emergence of a political ecology of haze in Asia. Rohit Negi from Urban Studies, Ambedkar University, India, traced the evolution of an ‘Indian’ air pollution technoscience in response to the state's position via its two trajectories on the presentation. Sarah Guttikunda from urbanemission.info discussed on how to break the political barrier to act on air pollution control with open information. Rini Yuni Astuti from, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS), focused her presentation on the air pollution crisis that periodically affects Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and which is largely blamed in the public debate on palm oil plantations. Olivier Evrard from French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) offered a critical analysis of recent events and debates over the measurement of particulate matter over time, as well as the range of blame narratives that inform the judgment of the haze as a crisis.

Session 1B Feminist political ecology in Asia

The first Session of the conference in the second venue discussed the feminist political ecology in Asia. Sara Vigil from Stockholm Environment (SEI) Institute showed in her presentation how she used ‘variegated geopolitical ecology’ framework to examine the material and discursive interactions between environmental change, land grabbing, and migration. Kanokwan Manorom from Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center argued that that a special economic zone project acting as an agent of “Frontier Capitalism” has come to affect women’s everyday lives, created day-to-day suffering, and excluded women from the benefits from development and access to land resources that sustain their livelihoods. Siti Maimunah from WEGO-ITN, University of Passau explained the persistence of a colonial perspective reflected by the Indonesian state in managing the land and forest ecosystem as commodities. Bernadette P. Resurrección, also from SEI, took a relational approach to explore tensions (and their potential for promising and alternative pathways) between the position of the gender planning expert and the tasks that demand simplifications and quick fixes, and between professional practice and the worlds that experts of various stripes wish to transform.

Session 2A Resource politics and the public sphere

Second session in the first venue, chaired by Naruemon Thabchumpon from the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, discussed the resource politics and the public sphere. Phillip Hirsch from the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, set out a framework for taking a critical look at the context-determined demarcation between the public and private spheres in the realm of land, natural resources and environmental governance in the Mekong Region. Tay Zar Myo Win from Center for Social Development Studies (CSDS) analyzed the emergence of a ‘hybrid public sphere’ in Myanmar since 2010 that maintained some elements of the previous authoritarian control of production and circulation of critical discourse which combined with more liberal elements that reflect recently gained civil, political and media freedoms and a greater role for civil society, journalists, and interaction through social media. M. Rajshekhar, an independent journalist from Delhi, talked about the environmental reporting in India and the challenges faced by civil society while trying to uncover the process involving the alliance between government and businesses on environmental projects.

Session 2B Asia’s urban political ecologies

Second session in the second venue, chaired by Olivier Chrétien, Head of Environmental Impacts Prevention, Paris Municipality, discussed on Asia’s urban political ecologies. Christine Cabasset from French Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia explored the main environmental challenges faced by seaside tourist resorts areas in Southeast Asia, as well as analyzing the main factors at game in better governed and managed places, and the main trends on climate policies. Irvan Pulungan who is a Coastal Committee Member, from Governor's Delivery Unit, Jakarta Capital City Government explains how the Jakarta’s government is strengthening all aspects of city planning and policy making process to manage land groundwater extraction and climate change that have made the city sink in the past few decades. Niramon Serisakul from Urban Design and Development Centre criticized the water management of the Thai government and Bangkok, and how the institutional traps that have hampered the state’s governance are its fragmentation, inflexibility, incomplete decentralization, elite capture, and flawed crisis management plans. Rémi de Bercegol from French National Center for Scientific Research who joined the presentation remotely questioned the marginalization effects of the current reforms on the waste informal sector in Delhi by looking at the life at the margins of the waste workers and to analyze the potentialities of re-integrating marginalized industries to complement the overall system in an adapted way.

Session 3A Political ecologies of land in Southeast Asia: Beyond the technical-regulatory gaze

Third session in the first venue explored the political ecologies of land in Southeast Asia beyond the technical-regulatory gaze. Robert Cole from the Department of Geography, NUS, focused his presentation on Laos and highlighted the offloading of ecological and social risks from large agri-food corporations to contract farmers in marginal uplands of Southeast Asia. Miles Kenney-Lazar, also from the Department of Geography, NUS, showed in his presentation how extra-economic forces of expropriation are governed relationally in regards to contested plantation concessions in Laos. Soimart Rungmanee from Puey Ungphakorn School, Thammasat University, investigated the extent to which secure access to land shapes and is shaped by different women and men’s migration, including from a generational perspective in the Mekong Sub-region. Supatsak Pobsuk from Focus on the Global South presented the struggle for land of the Southern Peasants’ Federation of Thailand (SPFT) in Surat Thani province, and how by securing land as a fundamental right of peasants, SPFT is able to use it as fully as a means of production for subsistence livelihood, and to serve as a safety net and social capital of local communities.

Session 3B People and the biodiversity crisis: reshaping governance and justice in conservation

Third session in the second venue discussed on reshaping governance and justice in conversation in regards to people and the biodiversity crisis. Robert Farnan from Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development explored the intersection of indigenous resurgence, relational ontologies, ecological knowledge and conservation in the context of the Salween Peace Park (SPP), Myanmar. Sarah Benabou from French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) focused on the Khasi Hills Redd+ project, located in Meghalaya, North-East India, which was presented as “one of the first Redd+ initiatives in Asia to be developed and managed by indigenous governments on communal lands” and how it can be used as a way to think more broadly about the cultural politics of resource control and its intersections with neoliberal environmentalism. Nitin Rai from Ashoka Trust in Ecology and the Environment explained the biopolitics of tiger conservation in India and how the commodification of the tiger, the biopolitics of tiger population estimation and the economic valuation of forests have enormous implications for the rights of people living inside tiger reserves.

Session 4A Industrialization and ecological justice

Moving on to the second day, the fourth session in the first venue, chaired by Shaun Lin from the Department of Geography, NUS, discussed the industrialization and ecological justice. Takeshi Ito from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University showed how the offshoring of economic production and environmental management from Japan to Thailand has become part and parcel of addressing the crises of capitalism and the environment in both Japan and Thailand. Danny Marks from Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong addressed the high level of plastic debris in beach locations around Thailand and the lack of examination on the political-economic drivers and governance of plastic pollution in the country. Senthil Babu from IFP focused on Coramandel Coast, South India, and narrated the techniques deployed for the alienation of the ecological resources through formal and informal means adopted by the private investors and agencies of the state which rendered their acts legitimate, when even legal violations would be justified as exemptions for the sake of development. Myint Zaw from Paung Ku explored conflict sensitivity and social justice issues of current and proposed plan of economic zones in Myanmar under the Belt and Road Initiatives.

Session 4B Ontologies of infrastructure

The fourth session in the second venue was on ontologies of infrastructure. Jakkrit Sangkhamanee from the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, explored the process behind the construction of the Chao Phraya Dam, the first World Bank-funded water infrastructure project in Thailand, and the series of entanglements on the project through different dances of agency, namely initiation, assessment, mobilisation, negotiation, adjustment, confrontation, and settlement. Eli Elinoff from Victoria University of Wellington sketched out some steps towards a concept of ecological aggregation to highlight the ways concrete intensifies material transformation by her varied and dispersed environmental changes extending those changes into new the making of new anthropogenic ecologies. Casper Bruun Jensen, and Independent Researcher, discussed the rapid change on Cambodia’s urban environments, and analyzed the urban transformations as an effect of interwoven materialities and perspectives. Chaya Vaddhanaphuti from the Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, discussed to what extent do the ‘western mindset’ framing of climate change matter or make sense to local northern Thai people whose weather knowledge show humble respect toward nonhuman nature and supernatural beings that effectively put them as part of earthly-spiritual beings.

Session 5A Hydrosocial rivers and their politics

The fifth session in the first venue, chaired by Kenji Otsuka from the Interdisciplinary Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies discussed the hydrosocial rivers and their politics. Carl Middleton from CSDS questioned an often-unchallenged assumption that we all talk about the same ‘thing’ when talking about water by taking the Salween River in Myanmar as a case study, and drew on a growing body of hydrosocial literature to analyze the multiple ontologies of water. Thanawat Bremard from G-EAU, Montpellier, shed light on the politics of decision-making regarding the development of the urban riverbanks, focusing on the contested Chao Praya river promenade project in Bangkok. Carl Grundy-Warr from the Department of Geography, NUS, investigated the political ecologies and geographies of biophysical processes and properties, particularly in relation to the hydrological flood-pulse, rocks, channels, deep pools and flowing material in the Lower Mekong Wetlands and Tonle sap. Siddharth Rao from Adavi Trust, and Timbaktu Collective, Andhra Pradesh, India, shared a practitioner’s views, perspectives and learnings from working alongside rural communities in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Session 5B Representations of nature and political engagements

The fifth session in the second venue, chaired by Frédéric Landy from IFP, discussed the representations of nature and political engagements. Frédéric Bourdier from University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne didn’t attend the panel but shared his presentation on the sociopolitical consequences (unwillingly) exhilarated by the aid agency apparatus which provoked a series of ruptures between society and nature, in comparison to the categories of thought envisioned by local people in regards with land-grabbing in Cambodia. Marie-Amélie Candau, Post-doc from University of Paris Nanterre/LAVUE, discussed the politics of flood management in the Koshi plain which runs between Nepal and North India, and how the technological concept of the river system, based on the idea of “modern water”, has transformed the relationship between the floods and people’s local usages. Christian Culas from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), tried to describe and understand what are today the conceptions and practices of nature in Sino-Vietnamese which showed the diverse ways of thinking and acting nature.

Session 6A Interspecies cohabitations in Asia: Non-human animals and political ecology

The last session in the first venue, chaired by Olivier Evrard from IRD, discussed the interspecies cohabitations in Asia. Annette Hornbacher from the Institute for Ethnology, Heidelberg University, discussed the paradox of destruction via protection by contrasting the ecological conservation program of the UNESCO with the totemistic local model of human-animal relationships, using the Indonesian island of Komodo as case study. Wasan Panyagaew from Sociology and Anthropology Faculty, Chiang Mai University, presented insights in a research survey conducted recently in tourism-based elephant camps located in 6 strategic touristic provinces of Chonburi, Phuket, Ayutthaya, Kanchanaburi, Surin and Chiang Mai and how these camps constitute important job prospects and source of income for mahouts who have a cultural background rooted in the village mahout tradition. Frédéric Landy from IFP tried to shed light on the complexity of the relationship between "nature" and "culture" in India, through social classes, caste and religious communities, but also through the different spaces. Stephane Rennesson from CNRS provided comparative insights of beetle wrestling, fish fighting and bird singing contests in Thailand and showed that it’s not only a question of how do non-human animals can have a say in terms of political ecology, that still include the study of the entanglement of economics, politics, biology, thus putting human groups interest as the center of the questioning.

Session 6B Post-development and systemic alternatives from Asia (round table)

Lastly, the last session in the second venue was a round-table on post-development and systemic alternatives from Asia. Chaired by Carl Middleton from CSDS and joined by Kyaw Thu from Paung Ku, K.J. Joy from Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, Suphakit Nuntavorakarn from Healthy Public Policy Foundation and Wora Suk from Earth Rights International, the session explored the “better ways” drawing on their experience and ongoing work. The session highlighted the role of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in directly working with the social movement on the ground and the importance of collaboration with academic research to support the movement. The session also highlighted some of the key challenges, which include the development supported by big industry and investment which has considerable impact on the climate and the public health as well. Alternative ways that needed to be considered, including the need to value the traditional and local knowledge when it came to political ecology, and how it is important for CSOs to work together to amplify the impact of their campaigns and movement. On the long term, it is important to create political agency, generate different social movements and putting more effort on doing collaborative projects and research.

The presentations from this conference can be accessed here. All of the sessions were broadcast on Facebook Live and can also be viewed on the above link.

*Report written by Anisa Widyasari, Communications Coordinator at CSDS

EVENT [RESOURCES]: Political Ecology in Asia: Plural Knowledge and Contested Development in a More-Than-Human World [Bangkok, 10-11 October 2019]

On 10 and 11 October 2019, Center for Social Development Studies together with French Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC), French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), IRN-SustainAsia; Patrimoines Locaux, Environnement et Mondialisation (PALOC), and POLLEN Political Ecology Network organized a Conference on Political Ecology in Asia: Plural Knowledge and Contested Development in a More-Than-Human World. The conference, with the support of Chula Global Network (CGN), The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), French Embassy in Bangkok, and Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, was succesfully held in the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

The conference intended to further the existing strong body of knowledge studying the political ecologies of Asia, in both academic and transdisciplinary forms, and in particular encouraging a reflection on how political ecology is understood and applied by researchers and activists throughout Asia whose work addresses the themes of the politics of plural knowledge, contested development, and human-more-than-human relationships. In doing so, the conference also actively seek alternatives beyond the anthropocene/ capitalocene.

Abstracts, Presentations, and Video feed:

Welcome Remarks and Keynote Speech on 10 October 2019

Welcome Remarks

• Prof. Dr. Pironrong Ramasoota, Vice President for Social Outreach and Global Engagement, Chulalongkorn University

• H.E. Jacques Lapouge, French Ambassador to Thailand

• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ake Tangsupvattana, Dean, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

Keynote Speech: “Reflection on Vijñana of Religion: New Animism in the Age of the Anthropocene” by Thanes Wongyannava, Retired Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University

• Chair: Jakkrit Sangkhamanee, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

• Stephane Rennesson, CNRS-LESC

Session 1A: Particulate matters: The emergence of a political ecology of haze in Asia

Chair: Karine Léger, AirParif.

• “Making an 'Indian' Air Pollution Technoscience” by Rohit Negi, Urban Studies, Ambedkar University (with Prerna Srigyan, University of California-Irvine)

• “Positioning Indonesia’s Oil Palm Smallholders in the Anthropocene Debates” by Rini Yuni Astuti, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (with Andrew Mc Gregor, Macquary University and David Taylor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore )

• “How to break the political barrier to act on air pollution control with open information?” by Sarath Guttikunda, urbanemission.info

  • Download presentation here.

• “Haze crisis and upland/lowland relationships in Chiang Mai” by Olivier Evrard, French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (with Mary Mostafanezhad, University of Hawai’i at Manoa).

Session 1B: Feminist political ecology in Asia

Chairs: Bernadette P. Resurrección and Kanokwan Manorom

• “Gender professionals in environment and development. Theory and praxis through feminist political ecology” by Bernadette P. Resurrección, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

• “Feminism Political Ecology and Land broker State in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Mekong: A case study of Thailand” by Kanokwan Manorom, Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center (MSSRC), Faculty of Liberal Arts, Ubon Ratchathani University

  • Download presentation here.

• “Beyond Recognition of Adat Forest: Feminist Political Ecology and Resource Frontier on Customary Forest in Indonesia.” by Siti Maimunah, Marie Sklodowska-Currie Fellow/ WEGO-ITN, University of Passau

• “Towards a Feminist Geopolitical Ecology of Environmental Change, Land Grabs, and Migration” by Sara Vigil, Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute

Session 2A: Resource politics and the public sphere

Chair: Naruemon Thabchumpon, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

• “Demarcating the public and private in land and environmental governance in the Mekong Region” by Philip Hirsch, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney

  • Download presentation here.

• “The hybrid public sphere in Myanmar and implications for civil society” by Tay Zar Myo Win, Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

  • Download presentation here.

• “A Rising Indifference To Law: environmental reporting in the age of Narendra Modi” by M. Rajshekhar, Independent journalist, Delhi.

Session 2B: Asia’s urban political ecologies

Chair: Olivier Chrétien, Head of Department Environmental Impacts Prevention, Paris Municipality

• “Water Management in Bangkok and Uneven Vulnerabilities” by Niramon Serisakul, Urban Design and Development Centre (UddC) / Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Chulalongkorn University

• “Managing the (sinking) City of Jakarta” by Irvan Pulungan, Coastal Committee Member, Governor's Delivery Unit, Jakarta Capital City Government

• “Marginalizing policies: rethinking the modernization of the waste sector in Delhi” by Rémi de Bercegol, Center for Social Sciences and Humanities / French National Center for Scientific Research – CNRS; and Shankare Gowda, Associate to Centre for Policy Research (CPR) New Delhi (by Skype)

• “Governance of seaside tourist resorts areas confronted with environmental challenges in Southeast Asia” by Christine Cabasset, French Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia – IRASEC

  • Download presentation here.

Session 3A: Political ecologies of land in Southeast Asia: Beyond the technical-regulatory gaze

Chair: Miles Kenney-Lazar

• “The maize boom in northern Laos: Impacts on land use and access” by Robert Cole, Global Production Networks Centre and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore;and Centre for Social Development Studies, Chulalongkorn University

  • Download presentation here.

• “The Relational Governance of Land: Contested Plantation Concessions in Laos” by Miles Kenney-Lazar, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

  • Download presentation here.

• “Migration and women’s land tenure rights and security in the Greater Mekong sub-region” by Soimart Rungmanee, Puey Ungphakorn School of Development Studies, Thammasat University

  • Download presentation here.

• “Alternative Land Management in Thailand: a Case study of the Southern Peasants’ Federation of Thailand (SPFT)” by Supatsak Pobsuk, Thailand Programme Officer, Focus on the Global South

Session 3B: People and the biodiversity crisis: reshaping governance and justice in conservation

Chair: Sarah Benabou

• "Indigenous Resurgence, Relational Ontologies, and the Salween Peace Park" by Robert A Farnan, The Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Chiang Mai University

• “Putting conservation in local hands? The Khasi Hills Redd+ project” by Sarah Benabou, French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD- Patrimoines locaux, Environnement et Globalisation) and French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)

  • Download presentation here.

• “How many tigers are enough? The biopolitics of tiger conservation in India” by Nitin Rai, Ashoka Trust in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore

Keynote Speech on 11 October 2019

Keynote Speech: “The Political ecology of climate change, uncertainty and transformation in marginal environments” by Lyla Mehta, Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex

• Chair: Bharat Dahiya, Research Center for Integrated Sustainable Development, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Thammasat University and Urban Youth Academy, Seoul

• Discussant: Prof. Surichai Wungaeo, Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Chulalongkorn University

Session 4A: Industrialization and ecological justice

Chair: Shaun Lin, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

• “How Japan’s Aid and Investment ‘Offshore’ Flood Management to Reduce Flood Risks in Thailand” by Takeshi Ito, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University

• ”Political Ecology of Thailand’s Marine Plastic Pollution Crisis” by Danny Marks, Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong

  • Download presentation here.

• “The failed promise of industrialization and of justice, Coromandel coast” by Senthil Babu, French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)

  • Download presentation here.

• “Flash points- Exploring conflict and justice issues in economic zone of Myanmar under BRI investment” by Myint Zaw, Paung Ku

Session 4B: Ontologies of infrastructure

Chair: Jakkrit Sangkhamanee

• “Infrastructure in the Making: The Chao Phraya Dam and the Dance of Agency” by Jakkrit Sangkhamanee, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

  • Download presentation here.

• “Aggregate Ecologies: On the environmental effects of city surfaces” by Eli Elinoff, Victoria University of Wellington

• “Urban Kaleidoscopes: Chinese Construction, Scale-Making, and the Re-Design of Cambodian Cities” by Casper Bruun Jensen, Independent Researcher

• “Re-defining, Re-imagining and Re-particularising Thailand's Climate Knowledge(s): The case of climate actors and their knowledge infrastructures” by Chaya Vaddhanaphuti, Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University

Session 5A: Hydrosocial rivers and their politics

Chair: Kenji Otsuka, Interdisciplinary Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies

• “Ontological politics of hydrosocial territories in the Salween River basin, Myanmar/Burma” by Carl Middleton (with Johanna Gotz), Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University

• “Politics of urban riverbank development: the contested Chao Phraya River Promenade project in Bangkok” by Thanawat Bremard, G-EAU (Water Management, Actors, Territories), Montpellier/ IRD (French Research Institute for Development), France

• “Flows, fragments and futures: Rethinking biophysical geopolitics in the Lower Mekong wetlands and Tonle Sap” by Carl Grundy-Warr, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

• “Rewilding the commons: Community Led Restoration in the Penna River Basin” by Siddharth Rao, Adavi Trust, and Timbaktu Collective, Andhra Pradesh, India.

  • Download presentation here.

Session 5B: Representations of nature and political engagements

Chair: Frédéric Landy, French Institute of Pondicherry, University of Paris-Nanterre/LAVUE

• “Nature reshaped: Diffracted political engagements for recovering grabbed land in Cambodia” by Frédéric Bourdier, CNRS, UMR DEVSOC, IRD/University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne

• “Politics of water management in the Koshi plain (Nepal and North India) : Modern economics versus extreme environmental factors” by Marie-Amélie Candau, Post-doc, University of Paris Nanterre/LAVUE

  • Download presentation here.

• “Nature and Human in Sino-Vietnamese conceptions and practices. Articulations between Asian vernacular ‘analogism’ and Western modern ‘naturalism’ modes of identification” by Christian Culas, CNRS, ART-DEV Institute

Session 6A: Interspecies cohabitations in Asia: Non-human animals and political ecology

Chair: Olivier Evrard

• “Lizards and other Ancestors: wildlife conservation and the moral ecology of Komodo” by Annette Hornbacher, Institute for Ethnology, Heidelberg University

• “Modern Nomadism among Thai Mahouts: a social consequence of human - elephant relations evolution in Thailand’s tourism industry” by Wasan Panyagaew, Sociology and Anthropology Faculty, Chiang Mai University

  • Download presentation here.

• “Are some managers of Indian national parks corrupted or analogist? Relationships to nature and wildlife in Hindu India” by Frédéric Landy, French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)/LAVUE

  • Download presentation here.

• “The coproduction of ecologies with more than human animals: playing with beetles, birds and fish in Thailand” by Stephane Rennesson, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)/French National Centre for Scientific Research, IRASEC Department

  • Download presentation here.

Session 6B: Post-development and systemic alternatives from Asia (round table)

Chair: Carl Middleton, Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

• Kyaw Thu, Paung Ku 

• K.J. Joy, Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) 

• Suphakit Nuntavorakarn, Healthy Public Policy Foundation (HPPF)

• Wora Sukraroek, EarthRights International and Member of Thailand Extraterritorial Obligations Watch Coalition

Closing Remarks