This book examines the history of human interaction with forest and marine ecosystems in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Rainforests falling to snarling chainsaws, and factory trawlers emptying the life out of tropical seas, are nowadays among the most familiar images of Southeast Asia. Yet the present excessive levels of logging and fishing have emerged only within the last generation. Until a few decades ago it was common for marine and forest-related economic activities in Southeast Asia to have limited, and in the long run rather stable, effects on the environment. Did this relative stability simply reflect lower population densities, less well developed markets, and less efficient extraction technologies? Or was it the result of successful resource management techniques and institutions? If so, why have these since failed or been abandoned? Seventeen contributions by an international selection of expert authors cover topics ranging from the collection of rattan, beeswax and forest resins in the seventeenth century to the management of modern marine nature reserves. Muddied waters is essential reading for anyone interested in the environmental history of Southeast Asia, whether in connection with other aspects of this particular region, or in relation to patterns of environmental change and resource management in other parts of the world.

More than 70% of the planet Earth is covered by oceans where property rights are poorly defined and enforced. Since ocean resources are fully exploited (because of new technologies and population growth), conventional regulatory methods (command and control) have failed to prevent pervasive overexploitation and conflicts. Some places are more or less considered as dumping sites and / or overexploited. The ancient and numerous regulations have generally failed to address growing pressures on fish and other ecological resources. Of course the idea of 'fencing the oceans' may appear improbable but for ages private, often comon property, institutions have succeeded in regulating fishing activities. Today 'individual transferrable quotas' may pave the way for rationalizing uses, conserving natural resources and reducing conflicts...or maybe not.

Demonstrates how effective coral reef management is achieved only with the participation, cooperation, sensitivity, and commitment of the community.

In Environment, Trade and Society in Southeast Asia: A Longue Durée Perspective, eleven historians bring their knowledge and insights to bear on the long Braudelian sweep of Southeast Asian history. In doing so they seek both to debunk simplistic assumptions about fragile traditions and transformational modernities, and to identify real repeating patterns in Southeast Asia's past: clientelistic political structures, periodic tectonic and climatic disasters, ethnic occupational specializations, long cycles of economic globalization and deglobalization. Their contributions range across many centuries: from the Austronesian expansion to the Aceh tsunami, and from the Sanskrit cosmopolis to the Asian financial crisis. The book is inspired by, and dedicated to, Peter Boomgaard, a scholar whose work has embodied the Braudelian spirit in Southeast Asian historiography. This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.

This report provides guidance on how Indonesia can consolidate gains in access to basic education and develop an education system that will support an economy in transition towards high-income status.

The natural resources of New Guinea and nearby islands have attracted outsiders for at least 5000 years: spices, aromatic woods and barks, resins, plumes, sea slugs, shells and pearls all brought traders from distant markets. Among the most sought-after was the bird of paradise. Their magnificent plumes bedecked the hats of fashion-conscious women in Europe and America, provided regalia for the Kings of Nepal, and decorated the headdresses of Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Plumes from Paradise tells the story of this interaction, and of the economic, political, social and cultural consequence for the island's inhabitants. It traces 400 years of economic and political history, culminating in the 'plume boom' of the early part of the 20th century, when an unprecedented number of outsiders flocked to the island's coasts and hinterlands. The story teems with the variety of people involved: New Guineans, Indonesians, Chinese, Europeans, hunters, traders, natural historians and their collectors, officials, missionaries, planters, miners, adventurers of every kind. In the wings were the conservationists, whose efforts brought the slaughter of the plume boom to an end and ushered in an era of comparative isolation for the island that lasted until World War II.

This book examines the afterlife of decolonization in the collective memory of the Netherlands. It offers a new perspective on the cultural history of representing the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies, and maps out how a contested collective memory was shaped. Taking a transdisciplinary approach and applying several theoretical frames from literary studies, sociology, cultural anthropology and film theory, the author reveals how mediated memories contributed to a process of what he calls "unremembering." He analyses in detail a broad variety of sources, including novels, films, documentaries, radio interviews, memoires and historical studies, to reveal how five decades of representing and remembering decolonization fed into an unremembering by which some key notions were silenced or ignored. The author concludes that historians, or the historical guild, bear much responsibility for the unremembering of decolonization in Dutch collective memory.

The Encyclopedia of Caves and Karst Science contains 350 alphabetically arranged entries. The topics include cave and karst geoscience, cave archaeology and human use of caves, art in caves, hydrology and groundwater, cave and karst history, and conservation and management. The Encyclopedia is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps, diagrams, and tables, and has thematic content lists and a comprehensive index to facilitate searching and browsing.