It is said that modern society is a “risk society.” This expression is used in the sense that modern industrial society produces and distributes not only wealth but also risks produced by industrialization.
Needless to say, environmental problems are an important part of these risks. Since environmental protection and environmental science were born in the West, they seem to conceal within themselves western ideas tinted with the theory of stages of economic growth, such as the environment as a superior good, privatization and nationalization of resources, or the environmental Kuznets curve. Because these were adopted unchanged in Asia and other spheres of civilization that differ from the West, mainly through state systems, they led to serious conflict between the state and local communities.
Historically, people in this region have adopted survival strategies to disperse various risks such as natural disasters and epidemics through individual lifestyles and the features of “communal sphere” such as communities and commons. Ensuring peoples’ livelihood was regarded as top priority in these societies, and consequently the environment (and “humanosphere”) should also be sustained in order to ensure the life of dependent people.
Many of the contradictions and conflicts that later arose in these societies were tragic by themselves. However, if we change our perspective, they can also be seen as opportunities for encouraging a “sustainable humanosphere” type of social development. In recent years, the concept of “ecological modernization” has been promoted by environmental sociologists in the West. They do not see the environmental disruption due to modernization and globalization as something that is necessarily inevitable. Rather, they take the position that modern social conditions make it possible to change the behavior of companies, consumers and governments and to build a society with a high level of environmental governance.
It cannot be denied that to a large extent, this concept at present is based on the Western context. In contrast, however, would it not be possible to postulate an “ecological modernization” that is of a different type, based on the traditional “sustainable humanosphere” society of the Asian region, with a historical background that is different from that of the West? Keeping this question in mind, I would like to use the following two studies (corresponding to the production and conservation of resources), along the lines of the research that I have conducted, as case studies, to investigate, in an interdisciplinary manner, how the behavioral principles and relationships between actors at the global, national, and local levels in the Asian region affect the formation and outcomes of systems related to environmental governance, how it might be possible for these systems to coexist with modern global society, and how the non-region-specific universality and specificity of the region interact in this series of processes.
Toward “ecological modernization” in forestry and related industries
While large-scale plantation forestry operated by companies has brought forth various social and environmental problems, a system of material procurement based on agricultural family forestry, which has fewer ill effects, has been adopted in the pulp industry in Thailand since the 1990s. I have been studying this transformation from the perspective of political economics and, focusing on the technical and geographical features related to forestry and the industry and trends among the actors such as the state, companies, and residents. In future studies, I would like to apply this perspective to Indonesia and compare the two systems by analyzing how the full-scale introduction of such a system has been hampered in Sumatra’s pulp industry and why the opposition movement there has not led to a system change reflecting the wishes of the residents. In doing so, I will describe the divergence of paths toward “ecological modernization” from a variety angles. I also plan to analyze the situation concerning rubber plantations and forestry in formerly cultivated areas of Laos and the southern area of China from the same perspective.
Community-based natural resource management and environmental governance
In recent years, there have been many attempts in the developing countries to adopt community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) to preserve and regenerate resources by transferring usufruct rights for natural resources to local residents. This trend is becoming increasingly rooted due to the trend toward administrative decentralization. I have been studying the process of establishment of a local CBNRM system in one region in Thailand. However, since the relative importance of CBNRM in the overall resource conservation policy and its efficacy in relation to actual environmental governance differ greatly depending on the country and region, there is a need for a more macro oriented perspective. Therefore, I plan to look at the actual cases of forestry preservation policies of Thailand, Laos, the Philippines, and Indonesia, whose resources differ in total amount and relative importance in the domestic economy, and analyze from different angles how various actors have been involved in the CBNRM policymaking process and reflected in the local reality/systems, and thus elucidate the patterns of paths toward “ecological modernization” followed by each of them.
Through these studies, I will examine “ecological modernization” from a comparative perspective and at the same time construct a framework that transcends the “simple dualism of the state and local community, industry and livelihood, and production and conservation” that is the mainstream view when discussing the environment and society in Asia.