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The Asia-Pacific region has been experiencing rapid development in the past 30 years, and issues relating to sustainable development will become increasingly important in the coming decades. This comprehensive overview presents sustainable development from the perspectives of Asia and the Pacific, with contributions from more than 70 leading international experts. The first part focuses on the theories and practices of sustainable development, including national and regional perspectives, as well as international policies and law concerning climate change. The second part highlights the challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and poverty reduction amid the changing ecological, social, cultural, economic, and political environment in this region. These include issues such as the importance of science for sustainable development and related areas, including sustainable energy, stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, land-use change, biodiversity, and disaster risk reduction. The volume is an invaluable reference for all researchers and policy makers with an interest in sustainable development.

The flora and fauna of Southeast Asia are exceptionally diverse. The region includes several terrestrial biodiversity hotspots and is the principal global hotspot for marine diversity, but it also faces the most intense challenges of the current global biodiversity crisis. Providing reviews, syntheses and results of the latest research into Southeast Asian earth and organismal history, this book investigates the history, present and future of the fauna and flora of this bio- and geodiverse region. Leading authorities in the field explore key topics including palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, biogeography, population genetics and conservation biology, illustrating research approaches and themes with spatially, taxonomically and methodologically focused case studies. The volume also presents methodological advances in population genetics and historical biogeography. Exploring the fascinating environmental and biotic histories of Southeast Asia, this is an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers as well as environmental NGOs.

Reflecting new thinking about conservation in Southeast Asia, Beyond the Sacred Forest is the product of a unique, decade-long, interdisciplinary collaboration involving research in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Scholars from these countries and the United States rethink the translation of environmental concepts between East and West, particularly ideas of nature and culture; the meaning of conservation; and the ways that conservation policy is applied and transformed in the everyday landscapes of Southeast Asia. The contributors focus more on folk, community, and vernacular conservation discourses than on those of formal institutions and the state. They reject the notion that conservation only takes place in bounded, static, otherworldly spaces such as protected areas or sacred forests. Thick with ethnographic detail, their essays move beyond the forest to agriculture and other land uses, leave behind orthodox notions of the sacred, discard outdated ideas of environmental harmony and stasis, and reject views of the environment that seek to avoid or escape politics. Natural-resource managers and policymakers who work with this more complicated vision of nature and culture are likely to enjoy more enduring success than those who simply seek to remove the influence and impact of humans from conserved landscapes. As many of the essays suggest, this requires the ability to manage contradictions, to relinquish orthodox ideas of what conservation looks like, and to practice continuously adaptive management techniques.Contributors. Upik Djalins, Amity A. Doolittle, Michael R. Dove, Levita Duhaylungsod, Emily E. Harwell, Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, Lye Tuck-Po, Percy E. Sajise, Endah Sulistyawati, Yunita T. Winarto