ABSTRACT
Introduction Asia has been the fastest growing economic region in the world since the 1970s. Economic development has primarily been driven by adopting a labour-intensive, export-oriented industry development strategy, including tourism, that has been supported by substantial exploitation of both human resources and natural resources (United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for the Asia and the Pacic (UNESCAP) 2012). Asian populations are regarded as having a strong intrinsic environmental ethic (Yencken 2000), yet despite this, environmental losses in the region have been profound with respect to deforestation and desertication, pollution, extinction and biodiversity loss (UNESCAP & ADB 2000; Hubacek et al. 2009; Avishek et al. 2012; Galli et al. 2012; Shively & Smith 2014). As Barua and Khataniar (2015: 23) note specically with respect to the policies of national governments in relation to sustainability in the Asian context, ‘in their pursuit of achieving higher economic growth and standards of living, resources have been exploited at a rate much faster than the regenerative capacity of nature’.
