Carried out in consultation with officials and researchers from across the region, Towards Green Growth in Southeast Asia provides a framework for regional leaders to design their own solutions to move their countries towards green growth.

This volume discusses environmental change, natural resource exploitation and the prospect for ecological sustainability in Southeast Asia. The contributors including sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, economists, political economists and historians, presents the findings of recent archival and field research mainly from ongoing programmes of team research based in European universities and institutes. Among the themes discussed are European and indigenous perceptions of the environment; historical processes of environmental change; the politics of resource use; ecotourism and development; deforestation and smallholding land-use strategies; migration and environmental degradation; disease environment and human geography; demography, sustainability and resource exploitation.

The relationship between industrialization, economic growth and environmental protection is now recognized as the essence of the sustainability issue in Asia. One of the more difficult aspects facing the development policymaker is how to measure this relationship in concrete ways. This study develops a set of environmental indices to serve as guides to assess the state of the environment, measure the nature and degree of environmental change, and indicate the financing requirements for remediation.

Environmental Change in South-East Asia brings together scholars, journalists, consultants and NGO activists to explore the interaction of people, politics and ecology. Ostensibly "green" activities - plantation forestry, eco-tourism, hydro-electricity - are revealed as guises used by elites to promote their own political and economic interests. Highlighting fatal flaws in presently exclusive economic and ecological approaches, the authors stress that neither the quest for sustainable development nor the process of environmental change itself can be understood without reference to political processes.