This collection brings together insightful analyses of how developing countries can manage serious hazards. Natural disasters have long been threats to developing countries, but now climate change is increasing many risks and posing new challenges.

Named after Lapindo Brantas, a gas exploration company that was drilling at the eruption site, the Lapindo mudflow initially burst in 2006 and continues to flow today, becoming the most expensive disaster in Indonesia’s history. Using this environmental incident in Indonesia as a case study, this book explores representations of disaster in scientific reports, public discourse, literature, and other cultural forms, observing the impact of these portrayals on the ways people both understand and respond to complicated environmental disasters. The author argues that power is expressed and contested in every representation of a disaster and its stakeholders. This book develops terminologies and perspectives that not only probe the social and ecological conditions that make disaster possible but also foster more effective and equitable strategies for adapting to a world fraught with hazards. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book makes a significant contribution to the fields of green cultural studies, disaster studies, science and technology studies and studies of political ecology in Southeast Asia.

Despite carefully constructed conservation interventions, deforestation in Indonesia is not being stopped. This book identifies why large-scale international forest conservation has failed to reduce deforestation in Indonesia and considers why key stakeholders have not responded as expected to these conservation interventions. The book maps the history of deforestation in Indonesia in the context of global political economy, exploring the relationship between international trade, the interests and ideology behind global sustainability programmes and the failures of forest conservation in Indonesia. Global economic and political ideologies are shown to have profoundly shaped deforestation. The author argues that the same forces continue to prevent positive outcomes. Case study chapters analyse three major international programmes: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), the Norway-Indonesia bilateral partnership, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Indonesia. The findings provide insight into the failures of global climate change policy and suggest how the book's theoretical model can be used to analyse other complex environmental problems. The book is a useful reference for students of environmental science and policy, political theory, international relations, development and economics. It will also be of interest to forestry professionals and practitioners working in NGOs.

A theoretical and practical analysis of the complex liability issues raised by carbon capture and storage systems for containing greenhouse gases. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems inject highly compressed carbon dioxide gas deep into geological formations in order to contain the gas, and its harmful effects on the planet, for the foreseeable future and beyond—for centuries or even millennia. Used effectively, CCS could lessen the impact of climate change while carbon-free energy sources are developed. And yet CCS is not widely deployed. In this book, Michael Faure and Roy Partain offer a theoretical and practical discussion of one of the main obstacles to CCS adoption: complex liability and compensation issues. Faure and Partain point out that current liability rules are unclear in their application to CCS. Causation is complicated, and the timeline of hundreds of years goes beyond the lifetimes of people or corporations. Examining the subject from legal and economic perspectives, they consider whether rules of civil liability can govern CCS risk; how a liability system might address the open-ended timeline; what role public and private regulatory measures could play; and whether compensation should be provided from public or private resources. They investigate the utility of different forms of insurance and of such financial tools as guarantees, deposits, and catastrophe bonds. They offer not only a rigorous framework for assessing policy but also a summary of policy recommendations they develop from their findings.

This is the first comprehensive picture of the nomadic and formerly nomadic hunting-gathering groups of the Borneo tropical rain forest, totaling about 20,000 people.

“The Politics of Educational Decentralisation in Indonesia: A Quest for Legitimacy is a well written, analytically sharp, and compelling study of educational decentralisation in Indonesia. Irsyad Zamjani, provides fresh insights into this important topic. The author treats educational reform as a window into much deeper questions about power, the government’s responsibility to its citizens, and social change in Indonesia. His findings should interest academics as well as practitioners with an interest in educational reform.” —Professor Christopher Bjork, Vassar College, New York “This is a remarkable book which should appeal not only to Indonesian scholars, but also to educationists and political scientists, to name just a few. By tracing the path of decentralisation in the Indonesian educational reform in the early 2000s, Zamjani shows how the central and municipal governments struggled in different ways to retain control over education in their domains through various mechanisms largely related to claims of legitimacy. The study is grounded in new institutional theory, and the interview and case study data provide a richness and depth in showing the dynamics of reform attempts.” —Professor Lawrence J. Saha, Australian National University, Canberra This book discusses the dynamics of educational decentralisation in post-reform Indonesia. Taking sociology’s new institutionalism approach, and drawing upon data from documents and interviews with strategic informants, the book investigates how institutional legitimacy of educational decentralisation was garnered, manipulated, and then contested. Besides analysing global institutional pressures which influenced the national adoption of decentralisation reform, and the central government’s attempts to restore its legitimacy, the book also offers comparative case studies of education governance in two local districts to highlight how this reform is responded to at the local level.