ABSTRACT
Politicisation of the environment in Southeast Asia can be interpreted in a number of ways. Environmental politics are sometimes seen as part of the ‘globalisation’ that has drawn worldwide environmental concern, along with other ideological, social, political, and economic currents, into Southeast Asia. Thus, at one level, protest over large dams may be dismissed as imitative of the Franklin, James Bay, or Danube disputes. A parallel analysis has environmentalism in the Southeast Asian context, and the politics that go with it, as a natural outcome of the growing influence of the middle classes and their concerns over quality-of-life issues. Both these approaches, one externally oriented and one domestically driven, tend to be elitefocused.
