Pamela D. McElwee

The rapid economic development experienced by Southeast Asia has come at the cost of considerable environmental degradation, including deforestation and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water and ocean pollution, rising greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing vulnerability to climate change. While sustainable development as a concept recognizes the fundamental importance of nature to future human well-being, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a set of policies falls far short of this ideal. The SDGs, particularly the environmental goals relating to life on land, life under water, and climate action, are essentially impossible to meet in Southeast Asia, as no country is on a sustainability trajectory, but these goals are superficial and modest at best anyway. Alternative approaches that recognize trade-offs and seek to integrate across solutions, that create spaces for inclusion, and which center equity and justice could help meet SDG goals, but face considerable challenges in implementation across Southeast Asia.

The rapid economic development experienced by Southeast Asia has come at the cost of considerable environmental degradation, including deforestation and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water and ocean pollution, rising greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing vulnerability to climate change. While sustainable development as a concept recognizes the fundamental importance of nature to future human well-being, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a set of policies falls far short of this ideal. The SDGs, particularly the environmental goals relating to life on land, life under water, and climate action, are essentially impossible to meet in Southeast Asia, as no country is on a sustainability trajectory, but these goals are superficial and modest at best anyway. Alternative approaches that recognize trade-offs and seek to integrate across solutions, that create spaces for inclusion, and which center equity and justice could help meet SDG goals, but face considerable challenges in implementation across Southeast Asia.

Forests Are Gold examines the management of Vietnam's forests in the tumultuous twentieth century—from French colonialism to the recent transition to market-oriented economics—as the country united, prospered, and transformed people and landscapes. Forest policy has rarely been about ecology or conservation for nature's sake, but about managing citizens and society, a process Pamela McElwee terms "environmental rule." Untangling and understanding these practices and networks of rule illuminates not just thorny issues of environmental change, but also the birth of Vietnam itself.

Forests Are Gold examines the management of Vietnam's forests in the tumultuous twentieth century—from French colonialism to the recent transition to market-oriented economics—as the country united, prospered, and transformed people and landscapes. Forest policy has rarely been about ecology or conservation for nature's sake, but about managing citizens and society, a process Pamela McElwee terms "environmental rule." Untangling and understanding these practices and networks of rule illuminates not just thorny issues of environmental change, but also the birth of Vietnam itself.