ABSTRACT
Most recently, the few general studies of environmental issues in SouthEast Asia which we have available, rather than country-specific ones, have
again been provided by geographers. But publications on the environment in relation to particular nation-states have grown in number since 1990, and increasingly economists, political economists, anthropologists, historians and geographers are contributing to the debates (e.g. Hardjono, 1991; Hirsch, 1990). Among the most important recent general contributions by geographers are two edited volumes - one by Raymond Bryant,Jonathan Rigg and Philip Stott, The Political Ecolog;y of Southeast Asian Forests: Transdisciplinary Discourses (1993a) and the other by Michael Parnwell and Raymond Bryant, Environmental Change in South-East Asia: People, Politics and Sustainable Development (1996). These are multidisciplinary texts - the first concentrates specifically on the concept of 'political ecology', broadly defined as 'an inquiry into the political sources, conditions and ramifications of ecological change' (Bryant et al., 1993b: 102). The second explores, among other things, the concept of environmental sustainability, particularly in relation to political economy, and the possibilities and limitations of attempts to encourage more appropriate, longer-term uses of the environment. The texts are therefore concerned, though to varying degrees, with the political context of processes of environmental change as well as the prospects for more sound and viable resource management strategies.
