ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the environmental state in Southeast Asia as products of historical continuities that unfold in the nexus between state development and nature. Any realistic appraisal of human-nature relationships must deal with capitalism, trade and land tenure systems. Pre-colonial Southeast Asian countries had rather loosely defined land tenure systems based on the Indian Laws of Manu or indigenous customary laws such as adat based on village usufruct rights, which was rarely endorsed by the prevailing political authority. The Southeast Asian region is home to a couple of thousand tribal and indigenous groups who have lived in relative 'harmony' with their ecosystem for centuries. These ethnographic studies across different ecosystems provide insights into how varied communities and indigenous groups adapted to environments, exploited natural resources, managed nature and sustained livelihoods. Southeast Asian communities are caught between the indigenous circulatory and cyclical notions of time and the Western linear views of temporal progress.
