ABSTRACT
As the previous chapter has shown, economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region has generated costs as well as benefits. While significant numbers of people can be described as ‘winners’, others, including small farmers, women, minority ethnic groups and informal sector producers, may currently be seen as ‘losers’. This chapter moves from this theme to emphasize environmental aspects of economic growth through the adaptation of traditional production systems. Societies and population groups which still strongly sustain themselves through traditional production are well represented in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the Pacific micro-states. They are not necessarily, as the preceding discussion might imply, the ‘losers’. Through modern forms of traditional production, in which human populations sustain themselves by combining subsistence use of natural resources in a non-cash economy with cash-earning activities compatible with subsistence, it is possible to be a ‘winner’. Historically traditional production has been remarkably resilient and innovative in its reaction to wide sweeping economic and political changes and we anticipate that, provided its vital role is still recognized and supported, such adaptations can continue into the twenty-first century.
