In the face of hostile environmental politics, what can we learn from environmental activists and artists in Southeast Asia? Drawing on deliberative workshops in Malaysia and the UK, Dr Felicia Liu and Dr Thomas Smith explore how artists, activists, and researchers collaboratively reimagine our relationship with the environment to shape behaviour and action. Three insights emerge: art as a form of environmental knowledge in its own right; art has the power to bridge disciplines, geographies, and lived experiences; but there remain structural challenges in enabling art-activist-researcher collaboration. While tensions persist, these encounters highlight the potential for building an international community of practice for sustaining imagination, resistance, and collective environmental futures worldwide.

At a time of escalating climate and ecological crises, what lessons can we learn from environmental artists and activists in Malaysia in driving environmental action in an increasingly hostile politics for climate action? 

In the summer of 2025, Thomas Smith, together with a research team from the University of York led by Felicia Liu, hosted two deliberative workshops in Malaysia and the UK to explore this question. Together, these gatherings brought artists, activists, and researchers into the same room to explore how artivism, i.e. the fusion of art and activism, can shape climate discourse and resistance.

Despite differences in geographies and our lived interaction with the environment, three key themes emerged  from both workshops. outreach. 

‘Art’ as Knowledge

Across both Malaysia and the UK, participants challenged us to break down exclusive definitions of ‘art’ and contributed their conceptualisations of what ‘art’ means in their own culture. For example, one participant pointed out that in some cultures there is no specific vocabulary for ‘art’ and ‘artist’. Rather, ‘art’ is woven into everyday social, cultural, and spiritual rituals, which are in turn deeply embedded within the natural environment. 

Participants returned to one crucial point: art in itself is a form of environmental knowledge. 

As such, art should not be reduced to an instrument to translate environmental science into cognitively digestible and emotionally relatable messages. This “art versus science” knowledge hierarchy is especially sensitive within Southeast Asian contexts, wherein ‘environmental science’ is often associated with ‘Western’ authority, while other forms of knowing the environment are marginalised.  

To this end, participants discussed approaches to artistic practice as a site of inquiry, critique, and imagination in its own right, which ranged from outdoor classrooms by the River Klang, artistic documentation of (re)introducing native species, to using public spaces as canvases to solicit interaction with the general public. 

Bridging Worlds Through Art

Participants come from diverse artistic, academic, professional, and personal backgrounds, representing practices in painting, printmaking, sculpture and music, as well as research in science and humanities.

It became clear very quickly that art acts as a bridge between disciplines, sectors, and geographies.  For example, Greenpeace Malaysia shared its success in galvanising awareness and action through a haze art exhibition. The pieces reminded the general public of the emotions they felt during a haze crisis, and motivated them to take action outside of the haze season. Similarly, Beyond Borders in York shared the power of storytelling in instilling hope, building resilience, and empowering the general public to construct more environmentally progressive narratives amid the climate crisis. 

In both workshops, our participants stressed that by evoking shared memories of lived experiences of anthropogenic environmental change, art can make abstract crises immediate. It can also give voice to communities and perspectives, especially the perspectives of Indigenous communities, women, and ethnic minorities, that are typically marginalised in mainstream environmental discourse and science. Amid the dominance of techno-scientific approaches in environmental discourse, art rehumanises the conversation by reminding us that the environmental crisis is, at its core, a lived experience.

Collaboration Within Structural Limitations

Despite the enthusiasm in the room, we are realistic about the challenges of praticising environmental artivism’. Even though international collaborations across art and academia can be generative, but they are not frictionless: academic timelines do not always align with activist urgency; artists often navigate precarious funding and employment landscapes; institutional structures can privilege certain forms of labour over others.

Participants in both contexts stressed the need for:
● Clear shared values and goals
● Ongoing, open communication
● Attention to power imbalances, including but not exclusive of the tensions between Global North and South, between institutional employment and freelance work, between ethnicities and races
● Resources to support the time and care required for genuine co-creation

Our workshops demonstrated that while deliberative spaces can catalyse collaboration, including multiple funded follow-on projects since the workshops, they do not automatically undo entrenched hierarchies in how knowledge and creative labour are valued.

Towards an International Community of Practice

The Malaysia and York workshops revealed both possibilities and fragility. We’ve built friendships; we’ve shared our common goals and purposes; we’ve begun to explore new collaborative frameworks. Yet, there remain unanswered questions that only continued conversation and deliberation can resolve. 

Moving forward, we aim to foster deeper exchange between Malaysian- and UK-based participants and to develop a shared framework for ethical artivist collaboration, co-authored with those who contributed their knowledge to the workshops. This has already led to the commissioning of seven art works and a piece of gamelan music to be produced by Malaysia- and UK-based scientists and artists/musicians.

Southeast Asia, with its rich creative cultures and varied political contexts, offers powerful lessons about how art can help people to imagine and galvanise action to forge alternative futures. As governments worldwide tighten controls on speech and climate action, these lessons resonate internationally. In a time when formal environmental governance channels often feel blocked or insufficient, art sustains the spaces in which better futures can still be collectively imagined, debated, and acted upon.

If you are interested in joining this evolving conversation, we welcome you to get in touch and be part of what we hope will become a lasting international community of practice in environmental artivism.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the authors alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

The post Towards a Community of Practice in International Environmental Artivism first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Recent years have seen the sad passing of leading lights in the study of Southeast Asia: James C. Scott in 2024, Anthony Reid in 2025, and now, most recently, Vicente – or Vince – Rafael in February 2026. Born in 1956 in the Philippines, Vince Rafael exemplified the onset of a long overdue shift in the intellectual centre of gravity in Southeast Asian Studies to new generations of scholars hailing from the region. Thus even as we mourn the terrible loss that comes with Vince’s passing, we should also commemorate and celebrate the huge contribution that he made to the study of the Philippines and of Southeast Asia and beyond.

Vince conducted his doctoral studies and received his PhD at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and he lived and taught in the United States – at the University of Hawai’i, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Washington – for the remaining years of his life. But he continued to focus his attention and his affections on the Philippines, without really committing himself to the field of Asian-American Studies despite its strong relevance and resonance among so many students in Honolulu, southern California, and Seattle. His research, his writings, his travels, his family, and, in due course, a deep romantic attachment brought him back to the Philippines over the long and very productive years of his life.

Vince first came to prominence – in the study of the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and beyond – with his brilliant first book, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, which was first published in 1988 by Ateneo de Manila University Press and again by Duke University Press in 1993. The book’s insights on the importance of language – and translation – in both colonialism and religious conversion were highly original, eye-opening, and illuminating, and it is no exaggeration to say that the book was, is, and will long remain one of the most interesting and important books ever written about Philippine history and about Southeast Asia more broadly.

In fact, Contracting Colonialism easily ranks among the most influential books ever written about colonialism in general, as is evident in bibliographies, footnotes, and reading lists with coverage extending far beyond Southeast Asia. To take one notable example, Edward G. Gray’s classic New World Babel: Languages and Nations in Early America (Princeton University Press, 1999), treating linguistic encounters between Native Americans and European colonial settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries along the eastern seaboard of North America, cited Contracting Colonialism in its very first footnote, fulsomely acknowledging the author’s indebtedness to this earlier volume for inspiring him in the research and writing of the book.

Vince Rafael was exceptionally talented as a thinker and a writer, as a speaker and as a teacher and supervisor, as his many former students can attest. Working at the fertile intersection of history, anthropology, comparative literature, and social theory, his writings explored and extended the insights of his former teachers and mentors – Ben Anderson and James Siegel – to previously unexplored aspects of the history of the Philippines. His brilliant first book was followed by several subsequent highly original and interesting volumes, notably including White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Duke University Press, 2000), The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (Duke University Press, 2005), and Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation (Duke University Press, 2016) bringing his account of Philippine history from the sixteenth century all the way up through the final years of Spanish colonial rule, the Revolution, and on onwards into the twentieth century, treating American colonial rule, and the Marcos and post-Marcos eras in highly original and illuminating ways.

Rafael complemented other historians’ analyses of economic and social change, and of the interplay of institutions and interests in the field of politics, through close attention to questions of nationalism, communication, and representation – and the limitations and failures of communication and representation – through language and beyond language. Moving beyond materialism and muckraking, his work was distinctive in its close attention to identity, ideology, and experience from a vantage point inspired by various strands of critical social theory rather than cultural essentialism.

Rafael’s last book, The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke University Press, 2022), offered a characteristically original and eye-opening account of the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022). Building on the works of Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe, and drawing on recent research by his partner Lila Shahani, he coupled his close, careful analysis of the grotesque ‘necropolitics’ of Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ with a commensurately critical account of the seemingly more benign ‘biopolitics’ of the conditional cash transfer (CCT), education, health care, and other social welfare programs advanced and expanded under the Duterte administration.

A distinctly gendered divide between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor citizens of the country, Rafael suggested, was produced and reproduced in ways which served to discipline and divide the population. Under Duterte, good-for-nothing un(der)employed Filipinos susceptible to drinking and illegal drug consumption were pathologized and punished through arbitrary violence and incarceration, even as overworked – and often overseas – Filipinas were enlisted as primary caretakers and custodians of the production and reproduction of the family and the household as an economic and social unit.

The Sovereign Trickster thus showed how biopolitics, necropolitics, and widespread precarity combined to create what Nicole Curato termed a ‘politics of anxiety’, enabling Duterte’s election in 2016. Viewed from this perspective, Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ – and its earlier iterations dating back at least to the 1990s in the Philippines and much earlier elsewhere – represent not (only) the idiosyncratic obsession of a single (psychopathological) president, but (also) the deeper structural logics of neoliberal governance in the contemporary Philippines and elsewhere.

Vince Rafael’s long and highly productive scholarly career was thus quite literally ‘bookended’ by two highly original and important books, beginning with Contracting Colonialism and ending with The Sovereign Trickster. But over the intervening years and beyond, he also touched the lives of countless family members and friends, students and supervisees, colleagues, readers, and others whom he encountered on the way. He was effervescent if not positively electric in his enduring intellectual appetite, interest, and curiosity, highly inquisitive, eager to engage, to listen, and to learn about the world. He was extremely gifted and extremely generous, giving so much of himself to those who had the pleasure and privilege to know him in person and to those who knew him through his writings and teachings over the years. He led a rich and rewarding life. He was deeply loved, and he will be sorely missed.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

*Banner photo by Sebastian Schuster on Unsplash

The post Vicente L. Rafael (1956-2026) in Memoriam first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and ASEAN each face mounting environmental crises, yet these three countries’ governments and their regional organisation consistently respond by strengthening state control as well as rescaling state power at regional level instead of addressing root causes. Drawing on comparative analysis across these three countries and ASEAN, Syed Mohammed Ad’ha Aljunied argues that environmental governance in maritime Southeast Asia is designed to manage political pressure, protect business interests and marginalise communities while allowing civil society activism within constrained parameters.

In September 2023, thick haze filled Kuala Lumpur environment pushing air quality into hazardous territory and forcing school closures across several states. The cause of the haze is the all too familiar phenomenon of fires burning across Sumatra and Kalimantan which were set to clear land for palm oil and pulpwood plantations. Indonesian officials however blamed the weather while Malaysian politicians demanded action. Yet, these fires kept returning because the economic incentives that drive them remain firmly in place.

This continuous cycle of environmental as well as health crisis and public condemnation is not a failure of governance as it is meant to work the way it always has. Across maritime Southeast Asia, governments have become increasingly deft at appearing to take environmental action while preserving the development-first priorities that cause environmental harm. Even though Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia differ significantly in their political systems, ranging from Singapore’s tightly managed competitive yet gerrymandered democracy, Malaysia’s competitive electoral democracy to Indonesia’s more open but contestable democratic system, yet all three share a strikingly similar approach in using environmental policy to extend as well as rescale state authority, co-opt civil society and insulate economic elites from accountability.

The State as Manager and Regulator

In Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the state is not a neutral referee between economic growth and environmental protection. It is a direct stakeholder in the industries causing the most environmental damage and health crisis across Southeast Asia.

Malaysian government-linked companies dominate palm oil, petroleum and mining industries that are simultaneously the country’s most environmentally destructive and most economically significant state economic enterprises. The state is both manager and regulator, creating an inherent conflict of interest that shapes environmental policy decisions. When the Malaysian government must choose between enforcing forest protection rules and preserving the revenue streams of state-linked enterprises, the latter is given priority.

Indonesia’s post-Suharto political system has formalised what might be called an oligarchy-led economy wherein governors, regents (bupati), mayors, and capitalists are embedded in networks that profit from land clearance, logging and extraction. Decentralisation, which is intended to bring governance closer to local communities, has instead created multiple entry points for business interests to secure licenses and concessions and to avoid environmental review. President Jokowi’s decision to merge the body responsible for overseeing forest carbon programmes into the mainstream Environment and Forestry Ministry eliminated its independent oversight role, one of the clearest examples of institutional restructuring that has weakened environmental accountability while appearing to streamline it.

Singapore presents a different version of the same pattern. With no significant domestic natural resources to exploit, the Singaporean government positioned itself as a regional hub for green finance and carbon trading, thereby commodifying environmental governance and generating economic value from climate concern while simultaneously hosting one of Asia’s largest petrochemical refining complexes on Jurong Island. The Singaporean government’s Green Plan 2030 is long on targets and technology solutions but falls short of any fundamental challenge to the city-state status as a global trading and consumption hub.

The Role of Civil Society

Each of these Southeast Asian states has developed sophisticated mechanisms for managing civil society engagement on environmental issues with mechanisms that create the appearance of consultation without permitting genuine influence over reforms.

The Singaporean government’s feedback portal REACH and the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) provide structured channels for public input. But these processes operate within parameters already set by the state, and they have never produced policy outcomes that challenge core development priorities. Dissenting voices are tolerated but they are rarely heard.

Malaysia’s semi-democratic system allows more civil society contestation. The 15,000-person campaign against the Lynas rare earth processing facility in Pahang, which raised concerns about radioactive waste, successfully pressured the federal government to delay licensing and commission a safety review. This is an example of civil society influence but it is also an exception. Routine enforcement failures on illegal logging, river pollution and forest encroachment proceed with minimal accountability because they involve state-linked interests.

Indonesia WALHI, the country’s largest environmental advocacy network, has documented forest destruction, filed legal challenges, and mobilised communities for decades. Yet WALHI and similar organisations were excluded from key international climate negotiations even as Indonesia positioned itself as a global leader on reforestation-based carbon credit projects . Domestic activism is tolerated as long as it does not disrupt the oligarchy patronage networks that bind political and business elites together.

At the regional level, ASEAN’s toothless regulatory approach compounds these problems. The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, the primary regional instrument for addressing the fires that blanket the region each dry season, has no enforcement mechanism. Under the “ASEAN Way” of non-interference and consensus, member states cannot be compelled to act. Meanwhile, the ASEAN Civil Society Conference, which brings together hundreds of organisations from across the region, produces recommendations that are formally received but hardly enforced.

Human Rights and Indigenous Communities

Indigenous communities in Sumatra, Malaysia and Borneo bear the heaviest consequences of these environmental degradations as they have lost lands, livelihoods and legal standing as forest concessions for businesses expand. Their customary land rights remain unrecognised in most national legal frameworks, even as their territories are cited in international conservation agreements as critical biodiversity zones.

Urban poor communities in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and smaller industrial cities live alongside polluting industries, breathe the worst air, and have negligible access to the legal resources which are needed to challenge environmental violations. Furthermore, the green bonds, carbon credits and sustainability certifications generated by the same industries that displace them are traded on international markets and absorbed into corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) reports.

Voluntary certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) which is the Indonesian government national ISPO standard have been repeatedly shown to be insufficient safeguards. Independent evaluations have documented the role of RSPO-certified plantations in ongoing deforestation, labour abuses and community land conflicts. These schemes serve primarily to maintain market access for exports, not to transform practices on the ground.

The Way Forward

The environmental challenges facing Southeast Asia are real and urgent, from the loss of some of the world most biodiverse forests to accelerating coastal erosion driven by climate change. Incremental improvements in monitoring, certification and policy language are insufficient.

First of all, genuine reform would require regional enforcement mechanisms with real power which means revisiting the non-interference principles that have protected governments from accountability within ASEAN. Second, genuine reform would require civil society participation that goes beyond consultation and allows indigenous communities to veto projects that violate their rights. Third, genuine reform would require legal recognition of indigenous land rights, which would simultaneously protect biodiversity and give forest communities the standing to preserve their territories. Fourth and finally, genuine reform would require a willingness to challenge the commodification of environmental governance with the assumption that market mechanisms and green investment can solve problems rooted in political economy and power favouring state and capitalist at the expense of human and land rights and environment.  

Conclusion

The haze will return, forests will continue to shrink, and environmental commitments made in regional as well as international forums will continue to diverge from practices on the ground. Southeast Asian governments do not lack the capacity to act differently, as the Singaporean government, for instance, has demonstrated extraordinary state capacity to act when it chooses to. Inaction stems from the political and economic structures that currently prevail in the region and consistently reward environmental harm and penalise those who challenge it. Understanding these state-society political dynamics helps to explain how and why environmental governance in Southeast Asia lacks transparency and accountability, solidifies state power and entrenches business interests at the expense of civil rights.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

*Banner photo by mandylin on Unsplash

The post Critical Political Economy Analysis of Environmental Politics, Governance and Social Conflict in Southeast Asia first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

The 2025 SC-80 and SC-81 gas contracts in the Sulu Sea mark historic Bangsamoro participation in resource management, promising revenue and energy security. Yet without transparent oversight, community consent, and ecological safeguards, these agreements risk reproducing elite capture, undermining true Muslim self-determination and the long-fought sovereignty of the southern Philippines, writes Elroi Son Oller Panganiban.

In October 2025, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr signed two petroleum service contracts, SC-80 and SC-81 (formerly PDA-BP-2 and PDA-BP-3), covering 1.31 million hectares of the Sulu Sea in the Sandakan Basin, ancestral waters of the Tausug, Sama, Yakan, and other native peoples of the southern archipelago. SC-80 includes the Dabakan-1 and Banduria-1 gas discoveries, with estimated 2C contingent resources of 4.7–5.7 trillion cubic feet, while investor disclosures project roughly 10 TCF in prospective mean resources comparable in scale to the Malampaya gas field that once supplied about 40 per cent of Luzon’s electricity. Yet between 2009 and 2012, ExxonMobil spent nearly $400 million drilling three wells in the same basin, encountered gas, and ultimately withdrew, citing non-commercial quantities.

The officials were not wrong to call it historic. Because for the first time in Philippine history, a Bangsamoro governmental authority, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), co-signed petroleum contracts as an equal partner with the national government.

The BARMM Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy said, “Who would have thought that the Bangsamoro could reach this level of autonomy, allowing us to actively participate in the decision-making process and, more importantly, to have a share of resources and revenues? ”

Yes, it looks promising. It is indeed the fruit of a Muslim struggle that stretches back to the arrival of the Spaniards in the archipelago. But let us look back to uncover the core questions this moment raises. These petroleum contracts could represent genuine sovereignty, or they could reproduce elite capture unless transparency, consent, and governance safeguards are enforced immediately.

It is cruel to offer a people centuries-late justice through a slice of the very resources that were once taken from them. The Philippine Muslim struggle, a fight carved from fire, with soldiers torching villages, laws declaring centuries of habitation “unowned”, and settler colonials occupying a homeland where sovereign sultanates once stood, was long denied. The spark of the Bangsamoro Revolution was inevitable, for one cannot reasonably bargain with a newborn republic that carries only a narrow vision of nationhood that centres only on lowlander Christians and Tagalog-Catholic nationalism.

The Philippine Muslims have been waiting for this moment for centuries. The Sulu Sultanate, formally established in 1457, taxed foreign traders and managed royal monopolies over pearls, sea cucumbers, and beeswax, where the sea was not a barrier but a highway that interconnected the islands under an Islamic civilisation that predated the Philippine Republic by more than four hundred years.

Then Spain arrived, criminalising Muslim traders as “barbarians” and waging more than a hundred campaigns against people who refused subjugation. It hardened social divisions across the archipelago: Christianised and Hispanised natives were classified as Indio, Muslim natives were stereotyped as Moro, and those outside both categories were labelled Infiel. The United States followed by annexing Mindanao into the Philippine Archipelago and institutionalizing these three labels through the Public Land Act of 1905, shaping how Muslims and Indigenous Peoples would be governed and perceived by the Republic

Applying the doctrine of terra nullius, “land belonging to no one,” to Mindanao, and since then, it has neglected and bypassed the ancestral domain and Islamic customary tenure. Within a single generation, an estimated 2.5 to 3.5 million hectares of Muslim lands were transferred to American corporations, Japanese agribusiness, and Christian settler families. Muslim communities shifted from majority to minority in their own homeland, and titles were prioritised for corporations and settlers; disproportionately larger portions were granted to Christian settlers compared to Muslims.

Then came the timber economy, extracting sixty to seventy per cent of Philippine log exports from Mindanao’s forests in the 1960s and 1970s, while revenues bypassed Muslim communities entirely. Then came the Agus River Hydroelectric Complex, harnessing sacred Maranao waters to generate nearly 900 megawatts of electricity for the national grid for over 50 years.

So, when BARMM officials speak of these petroleum contracts as “fruits of a long and painful struggle”, they are not romanticising the past. They are describing a balance sheet of dignity finally restored, right where it belongs, in honour of the martyrs.

In October 2025, the Philippine government awarded Service Contracts SC-80 and SC-81 in the Sandakan Basin of the southwestern Sulu Sea to an Australian-British-Filipino consortium. One block alone is estimated to hold natural gas resources comparable in scale to the Malampaya field, which supplied roughly 40 per cent of Luzon’s electricity for two decades. The urgency behind these contracts is national energy insecurity: the Philippines imports nearly all of its petroleum, and Malampaya is projected to be depleted by 2027. With Chinese aggression stalling development in the West Philippine Sea, now, neoliberals have eyed going southward into the Philippine map into uncontested internal waters that have turned Bangsamoro waters not merely into development zones but into an energy security safety net. Hence, when President Marcos Jr said that “we have a sufficient supply of oil…So, we are okay for that period of time,” he meant the unexplored oil beyond the contested waters beyond the West Philippine Sea, as oil prices threaten to go up amidst the Israel-US military’s continuous meddling and aggression in the Middle East.

Under the Bangsamoro Organic Law of 2018, the Bangsamoro government is entitled to 50 per cent of the government’s petroleum revenues, a historic fiscal stake. However, this 50-50 split applies only to the government’s share of “profit petroleum”, not to gross production. Under the Philippine production-sharing model, contractors may recover 60–70 per cent of gross revenues as costs before profits are divided. Of the remaining petroleum profit, around 60 per cent goes to the government, and only then is that portion split equally between Manila and BARMM.

Consider Aceh. The Indonesian province’s 2005 Helsinki Peace Agreement, which ended a thirty-year separatist war, granted Aceh up to 70 per cent of its oil and gas revenues, more generous than BARMM’s 50-50 arrangement. Yet two decades later, Aceh remains among Indonesia’s poorest provinces. What bullets failed to capture, patronage quietly absorbed. Studies of the Special Autonomy Fund points to elite concentration and limited poverty reduction. Revenue sharing alone does not dismantle patronage; it can just as easily institutionalise it.

Across the world, post-conflict autonomy settlements increasingly hinge on resource extraction from Aceh to South Sudan to Iraqi Kurdistan. The promise is simple: peace will pay for itself. But without transparent institutions and community consent, resource wealth consolidates power rather than redistributes it.

The current Bangsamoro Transition Authority should also be understood within the context of the peace process itself. Transitional periods carry layered responsibilities, reflecting the movement from armed struggle to social movement to civilian governance. As established in the Bangsamoro Organic Law, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) leads the Bangsamoro Transitional Authority (BTA), tasked with steering democratic institutionalisation until the Bangsamoro Parliament elections, while remaining partners in the peace process. The success of the Bangsamoro project is thus inseparable from the success of the peace process itself.

As Patricio Abinales argues, Mindanao is stable when the central state leaves it alone and erupts in conflict when the state intervenes aggressively. Whenever Manila imposes itself aggressively, Sulu resists; when Manila negotiates and retreats, Sulu is peaceful. Nassef Adiong has pointed out that the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao has been channelling billions of pesos into Sulu for infrastructure, health, education, and social services, contributing to a drop in poverty from 64 per cent to 14 per cent. And the Supreme Court ruling on the Sulu exit from BARMM has reset the conditions that historically determine whether the periphery consents or resists. Severing Sulu from this framework threatens to unwind those gains. Beyond fiscal loss, Sulu forfeits preferential fishing rights in regional waters, participation in maritime governance arrangements, and the political weight of belonging to a constitutionally recognised autonomous region.

In most post-conflict situations, former revolutionary leaders who achieved power during their revolution will stay in their dual political and security positions until their government needs to protect its unity and prevent internal splits. The same military leaders who used to command their troops now handle the negotiation process for development projects, which include resource exploration agreements. The existing situation functions as a practical solution that protects stability during an unstable transition period that needs delicate institutional management until normalisation reaches its full state.

The question, therefore, is not one of impropriety but of trajectory. The current stage of this process determines whether it serves as a key step for establishing peace through controlled power distribution to developing civilian governance systems or whether it requires improved power separation systems for upcoming political development in the region. The peace process will remain sustainable through former combatant leaders who govern because institutional safeguards will develop to protect transparency, accountability, and public participation rights at all times.

No community consent mechanism for the affected Sulu Sea communities, such as the fishing families of Tawi-Tawi, the often stateless Sama sea nomads, and the Liguasan Marsh farmers, who inhabit one of the Indo-Pacific’s most ecologically significant wetlands, has been publicly documented. The Sulu Sea is a lifeline sustaining the ways of life of these communities, but it is now viewed by neoliberals as an energy frontier. The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act mandates Free, Prior, and Informed Consent for activities affecting ancestral domains. No public evidence indicates that such consent was sought before the contracts were signed.

The Sulu Sea is the central area of the Coral Triangle, the world’s most important region for marine biodiversity, which contains more than 600 coral species and over 2,000 reef fish species that currently face severe threats from climate change, dynamite fishing, and overfishing. The first phase of offshore petroleum exploration, which uses seismic airgun surveys, has been shown in worldwide research to disrupt cetacean navigation, fish spawning cycles, and the structural integrity of coral reefs. Public access to baseline biodiversity surveys and Environmental Impact Assessment scoping documents for SC-80 and SC-81 has not occurred because all documents remain undisclosed.

The Liguasan Marsh, a 288,000-hectare wetland and critical Indo-Pacific bird sanctuary, is the last refuge of the Philippine crocodile. Its survival was ironically ensured by decades of armed conflict, which deterred industrial development that could have destroyed it. Designated a game refuge in 1941, the marsh now faces proposals for horizontal drilling outside sanctuary boundaries. While these may limit surface disruption, wetland hydrology and methane seepage systems are interconnected, so subsurface extraction does not guarantee ecological neutrality.

The Bangsamoro Organic Law’s co-management framework is a genuine and hard-won advancement of constitutional rights. A 50/50 revenue split is better than what came before. These things are true. However, the real test of self-determination is not the ceremony where contracts are signed, but the questions of when gas is extracted, who controls how revenues are used, who ensures environmental commitments are honoured, and who represents the fishermen in Tawi-Tawi whose livelihoods can vanish when seismic ships arrive.

The Philippine Muslim people did not endure five centuries of dispossession, the Spanish galleons, the American land acts, the Marcos militias, the Ilaga massacres, and the decades of armed conflict to become co-managers of their own extraction. They endured it for sovereignty, not merely a percentage of profit from petroleum, but the power to design institutions that prevent the repetition of colonial extraction under greater autonomy. The Bangsamoro peace agreement created a milestone of how far we can stretch the 1987 Philippine Constitution. However, sovereignty is not yet guaranteed by any contract signed in October 2025. It must be demanded, structured, monitored, and protected. Not later. Now. Before the drilling starts.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo by Joedith Lego on Unsplash.

The post Peace Dividends: The Philippines’ Southern Gas Gamble first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Southeast Asia’s digital and green transitions are deeply intertwined, raising urgent questions about social and environmental justice. Drawing on regional research and collaborative discussions among researchers, journalists, and activists at a two-day workshop in Singapore, Birgit Bräuchler, Lukas Fort and Walker DePuy reflect on what these initiatives reveal about contemporary transformations in environmental governance. Rather than treating digital technologies as either solutions or threats, they argue that these technologies simultaneously enable environmental protection while redistributing environmental risk and inequality. 

In Southeast Asia, digital technologies promise greener futures and enable new forms of environmental monitoring and activism – yet they also redistribute environmental harm, reshape governance, and deepen social inequalities.  

Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems and rich cultural diversity. Yet it is also a region profoundly shaped by resource extraction, rapid urbanisation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. Floods, landslides, and forest fires are increasingly common across both maritime and mainland Southeast Asia. Far from being purely natural disasters, these events reflect cumulative pressures produced by deforestation, infrastructural expansion, and uneven development. These pressures now intensify alongside rapid digitalisation, placing the region at the centre of a profound digital-environmental transformation.  

Across Southeast Asia, governments, NGOs, and technology firms increasingly promote digital technologies as tools for environmental governance. Satellite monitoring tracks deforestation, sensors measure pollution and wildlife movement, and mobile platforms coordinate recycling and environmental reporting. Conservation initiatives use mapping technologies, while social media campaigns mobilise environmental participation and awareness. This narrative suggests that technological innovation can help to repair damaged environments. However, the region also reveals a more complicated reality: digital technologies are not only potential solutions to environmental problems. They are also material systems embedded in extractive supply chains, energy infrastructures, and waste streams, as well as governance tools that can re-entrench and even amplify power inequities and the political-economic structures that sustain them. 

The dilemma is therefore not whether digital technologies help or harm the environment, but how they do both simultaneously. The same infrastructures used to monitor environmental change depend on energy-intensive data centres, cooling water, and mineral extraction. Batteries require nickel and other rare earths mined across the region, especially in eastern Indonesia. These processes generate new sacrifice zones and reproduce inequalities, often far from the places where the benefits of digitalisation are most tangible. Digital environmental governance thus reorganises environmental harm rather than eliminating it.  

These dynamics were at the heart of the two-day workshop, ‘Bytes and Biomes: Navigating the Digital-Environment Nexus across Southeast Asia’, held at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on 16-17 October 2025. Organised by the authors of this piece in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and the Asia Research Institute at NUS, and supported by the DIGINEX project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, the workshop brought together scholars from multiple disciplines, journalists, environmental activists, and policy practitioners working across Southeast Asia. The conversations highlighted a recurring tension: digital tools can empower communities, support environmental accountability, and open new spaces for resistance, while also intensifying surveillance, marginalising vulnerable groups, and legitimising extractive endeavours framed as sustainable development. The significance of the workshop lay not in the event itself but in what it revealed about broader transformations in environmental governance. 

One recurring theme across the workshop was the close entanglement of the digital-environment nexus with questions of social and environmental justice. In a session on Environmental Advocacy in the Digital Age, participants explored how digital media are used to raise awareness and mobilise action around climate change and biodiversity loss, including through social media campaigns and forms of constructive journalism calling for a more participatory and solution-oriented coverage of environmental issues. At the same time, the session highlighted how governments and business conglomerates deploy the very same digital platforms and technologies to promote narratives of national growth, green development, and job creation. These dynamics raise critical questions about who controls the platforms that shape environmental narratives, whose voices are amplified, and whose are systematically marginalised or silenced. 

These issues were pursued further in a session on Big Data, Small Data, and Digital Justice that examined the ethical, justice, and political implications of data science in environmental governance. While big data is frequently framed as essential tools for sustainability – whether in carbon accounting, land-use planning, or emission monitoring – their impacts on local communities are far from straightforward. In many Southeast Asian contexts, governments are often reluctant to acknowledge the impact of climate change, the extent of environmental degradation, and share environmental data openly. This has led researchers, journalists, and activists to search for other data sources, or generate their own, through satellite imagery, community mapping, and qualitative methods that challenge official narratives. A key issue here is not simply data availability, but data ownership, access, representation, and ethics: whose realities are rendered visible through data and whose remain excluded. Data can thus be used either to empower or to marginalize communities affected by environmental destruction. 

A third session focused on Sensing and Mapping the Environment, examining how digital technologies can variously be used to monitor ecosystems, track wildlife movement, support nature-based solutions, and resist environmental harm through participatory methods. Case studies ranged from urban environmental monitoring in Singapore to deforestation tracking in Malaysia and counter-mapping initiatives in Myanmar and Thailand. These discussions underscored that digital data and the technologies used to collect them are never neutral. Data interpretation, methodological choices, and the political contexts in which data are produced and deployed all shape their effects on the ground. Participants also raised concerns about the rise of large-scale projects reliant on predictive models and real-time sensing technologies, which increasingly treat ecological futures as computable and controllable and raise serious ethical questions around both individual privacy and collective sovereignties.  

The final session on Green Transitions and Circular Economies turned explicitly to questions of governance and policy. Here, participants examined how digital technologies are mobilised to support renewable energy adoption, waste management, circular economy initiatives, and sustainable urban development, while also addressing issues of inequality and rebound effects. Discussions highlighted that the digital infrastructures underpinning online platforms and data-driven governance rely on intensive mining, extensive water use, and energy-hungry data centres. As a result, the strong urban focus of green and digital policies has significant environmental consequences and can further marginalise peripheral communities, where resource extraction, energy production, and data storage typically take place. Digital technologies can also produce exclusionary effects within urban contexts themselves. Waste management provides a revealing example. Here, digital platforms promise efficient recycling systems, optimised collection routes, and measurable sustainability targets. Yet these innovations also exclude or displace informal waste workers and undermine longstanding urban practices of reuse.  

Across these sessions, one point became clear: Southeast Asia’s socio-environmental future will be shaped by how digital transformations affect the health and resilience of its ecologies as well as the lives, lifeways, and rights of its diverse communities. Looking ahead, the workshop placed a strong emphasis on collaboration, translation, and policy engagement. Participants highlighted the need for greater data transparency, improved access to reliable data, and approaches to data governance that prioritise community needs over political or corporate interests. It was repeatedly stressed that data cannot be separated from the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they are generated and used. 

Media emerged as another critical actor in shaping the digital-environment nexus. Journalists play a key role in framing environmental issues, yet many operate under precarious conditions and economic pressures that constrain critical reporting. Participants also raised concerns that media coverage often prioritises issues over people’s stories, making environmental information less accessible. At the same time, news is frequently framed in predominantly negative terms, with limited attention to solutions or positive examples. In parallel, the widespread circulation of misinformation has contributed to a growing erosion of trust in media. In response, discussions pointed to closer collaborations between researchers, journalists, and communities as one possible way forward – an approach that foregrounds lived experiences, avoids sensationalism, and renders complex environmental issues more intelligible. 

Building on these discussions, participants identified the importance of meaningful multi-stakeholder partnerships in navigating the digital-environment nexus. Effective engagement must run across different sectors and disciplines, including between data producers and data users (to identify needs), researchers and journalists, and experts and affected communities. Across Southeast Asia, there are already promising examples of such collaborations, from community mapping initiatives combined with data science to partnerships between environmental NGOs, journalists, and local communities. At the same time, these efforts reveal persistent challenges: translation across different forms of expertise takes time and resources, digital interventions often privilege urban contexts over rural ones, and ethical questions around access, surveillance, and control remain unresolved. Addressing these tensions requires not only better technologies, but sustained attention to justice, inclusion, and the conditions under which digital tools are designed and deployed. 

For us as anthropologists and workshop organisers, one striking feature of the discussions was the recuring theme of ‘remoteness’ – not in the sense of physical distance or detachment, but as a methodological and ethical challenge to be considered and negotiated. Many presentations relied on remote sensing, satellite imagery, and large-scale data analysis, approaches that contrast with anthropology’s traditional emphasis on being in situ and relationally embedded. Yet the scale, speed, and complexity of digital-environmental transformations increasingly exceed what individual field-based research can capture and point to the need for new forms of engagement: participatory mapping, community-based data collection, camera traps, acoustic monitoring, and collaborative research designs that combine digital tools with grounded knowledge. No map is perfect – whether produced by satellites or our participants – but the challenge lies in using these tools reflexively and ethically.  

Overall, the questions posed at the intersection of bytes and biomes do not have easy answers, but they point to what is at stake. Southeast Asia shows that digital technologies can enable environmental protection while simultaneously generating new environmental harms and inequalities. Recognising this dual character does not require rejecting technology, but it does require moving beyond technological optimism to more clear-eyed, grounded, and socio-environmentally attentive engagements. The challenges ahead are substantial, but so are the opportunities. The region’s future will depend on how it navigates tensions between digital expansion and ecological limits, and between technological promise and people’s dignity and autonomy. Sustainable futures depend not only on devices and data, but on how digital systems are governed, who participates in their design, and whose interests they serve. Bytes and biomes are now inseparable, and the challenge is to ensure that digitally mediated efforts to protect nature do not obscure their environmental costs, political implications, and uneven impacts. 

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the authors alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo: AI-generated illustration imagining Southeast Asia’s digital–environment nexus, created using Sora OpenAI from prompts written by the authors. 

The post Bytes and Biomes: The promises and limits of digital environmental governance in Southeast Asia  first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

In this blog post, Maaike Matelski, Eva van Roekel and Htet Hlaing Win describe the strong reactions which the removal of Venezuelan President Maduro by the United States elicited from online audiences in Myanmar, who predominantly called for a similar intervention in their country. 

On 3 January 2026, the United States carried out a military intervention on Venezuelan soil, abducting President Maduro and bringing him to the US to stand trial on drug-related charges. The invasion was widely condemned as violating international law and as an example of the imperialist mindset of US President Trump. Yet there were also celebrations among Venezuelan dissidents in exile, who had escaped Venezuela’s repressive environment and saw the forceful removal of Maduro as a possible way out for the country and its people. Inside Venezuela, both celebration and condemnation were largely muted, giving way instead to an atmosphere of suspended anticipation, as people grappled with uncertainty about what kind of future might now unfold in the absence of Maduro.  

The invasion prompted widespread online reactions both across Latin America and the Caribbean and in other parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. Dissidents from Myanmar, facing repression for many decades and increasingly since the military coup of February 2021, wrote provocative statements on social media such as “Mr. Trump please also raid Myanmar” and “Hey Trump we have rare earth with genocidal regime.” While such social media comments should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, they do reveal a broader pattern: the tendency to reduce complex matters of human rights and global power relations to a simple depiction of good and evil. Based on our long-term engagement with Myanmar and Venezuela, we offer some critical observations on recent developments in both countries. 

Authoritarian socialism and the politics of Nobel Peace Prize recognition 

Both Myanmar and Venezuela have historically been underreported in international media, at least until recently. Despite their sizable populations and geopolitical importance, neither Myanmar nor Venezuela feature regularly in European reporting. This may partly be a matter of proximity but also opportunity to report, as repressive leaders in Myanmar and Venezuela have heavily restricted access to internet and international journalism in an attempt to quell dissent. When the countries do receive international attention, the everyday dilemmas which ordinary people experience tend to be reduced to a simple narrative of good against evil.  

This depiction is partly due to historical political relations. Myanmar suffered under a repressive self-proclaimed socialist military government for 26 years, whereas a new political era between 2010-2020 led to economic prosperity in parts of the country, and consequently a predominantly positive perception of neoliberalism. The fact that China, a nominally communist state, supported the military led to further disillusionment with left-wing ideologies. In Venezuela, the political project known as chavismo emerged after Hugo Chávez’s election in 1999, with “21st-century socialism” as its flagship left-wing ideology. Fuelled by oil revenues and expanded state control over key industries, it profoundly reshaped Venezuela’s political and economic landscape over the past two decades. Over time, this model became increasingly centralized, marked by growing political repression and the steady erosion of democratic institutions. Authoritarian tendencies deepened, leaving chavismo as the dominant force in Venezuelan politics, with little room for meaningful opposition. Yet the continued struggles of opposition leaders have not gone completely unnoticed. 

In both countries, opposition leaders received the Nobel Peace Prize, but not without controversy. Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize in 1991 while she remained under house arrest by the military. After she entered the formal political sphere in the early 2010s, she was held responsible for the mass violence against the Rohingya population in 2017, for which Myanmar is currently facing charges at the International Court of Justice. Venezuelan leader María Corina Machado won the prize in 2025. Although she enjoys considerable support in Venezuela and among the diaspora, her repeated pledges of support for Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela underscore the difficulties Venezuelans face in judging her actions and assessing her commitment to the country. While international human rights activists have called for the withdrawal of the Nobel Peace Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi, María Corina Machado recently offered President Trump her own Nobel Peace Prize. Neither options are in accordance with Nobel Peace Prize regulations. 

Humanitarian crises 

The controversies around the Nobel Peace Prize winners expose broader misreadings of, and unfamiliarity with, the political realities in both countries. Based on our long-term engagement as ethnographers in Myanmar and Venezuela, we argue that the situation of domestic populations inside these countries deserves more attention than reporting on bipartisan political positioning. In Myanmar, the military coup of February 2021 and the subsequent widespread popular resistance have not only resulted in extreme repression, detention of dissidents (including Aung San Suu Kyi and former President U Win Myint) and airstrikes on perceived rebellion regions resulting in countless victims, but also made the socio-economic situation throughout the country almost unbearable. Crime is rampant, security and rule of law have become practically non-existent, and inflation has risen to 400%, meaning that many people struggle to obtain food and other basic necessities. Similarly, millions of Venezuelans have faced a complex humanitarian crisis for more than a decade, marked by runaway inflation reaching up to a mindboggling 1,000,000% by 2018, severe shortages of fuel, food, and medicine, daily power outages lasting hours, limited access to clean water, and empty classrooms as many schoolteachers have left the country. 

Both countries have seen a huge outflow of people, with approximately five million migrants and refugees from Myanmar now residing outside the country, predominantly in neighbouring Bangladesh and Thailand but also throughout Asia, in the US and in Europe. The recent outflow adds to previous waves of forced migration and is caused by economic degradation as well as the military conscription law. This law was enforced in January 2024 and has increasingly been implemented to force youth under the age of 35 to fight in dangerous circumstances for a cause they do not support. In Venezuela, the economic collapse, combined with rising political repression, has forced more than eight million people to leave the country. They now reside in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, the US, Spain, and other countries across Latin America and Europe. 

While in Myanmar we can speak of a broad civil war combined with military repression, in Venezuela the crisis is best understood as a prolonged and overlapping set of political, social, economic and armed conflicts that permeate everyday life since 2014. Both countries have held elections which failed miserably, with the Myanmar military recently holding a three-phase national election to legitimize its ongoing rule. Election turnout was reportedly at an all-time low, despite the military pressuring the population to participate in a poll they set up to win. The most recent presidential election in Venezuela, in 2024, was similarly conducted amid widespread allegations of fraud. Despite growing popular protests, which were harshly repressed, Nicolás Maduro was inaugurated for another term. However, independent polls suggested that the opposition candidate won by a decisive margin. Following Maduro’s detention, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president. Critics argue that this transition does not represent a democratic succession but rather reflects a continuation of alleged electoral irregularities. 

The issue at hand is the restrictions on residents of Myanmar and Venezuela to voice their opinions publicly, leading actors and supporters on both sides of the political divide attempting to construct their versions of events. While in Myanmar the conflict environment is reduced to an armed opposition versus a ruthless military, the Venezuelan situation risks being reduced to a pro-Trump or pro-Maduro camp. What is lost in this back-and-forth of ideological conflicts are the voices of ordinary people, whose perceived needs are internationally utilized to support one particular narrative. We argue that the voices of ordinary people should be uncovered to determine how these momentous events affect their everyday lives, including through social media. 

From Yangon to Caracas: Myanmar’s Digital Responses to Venezuela’s Invasion 

When news about the invasion of Venezuela reached Myanmar online audiences, the US embassy in Yangon (in response to its statement on Myanmar’s independence day) received close to 5000 Facebook comments overnight, with over 90% asking for a similar intervention in Myanmar. Since then, we have conducted a brief online study of the many social media reactions from people in Myanmar to the events unfolding in Venezuela in January. Reports that China criticized the US government for acting as ‘world’s judge’ have received particular cynical reactions from Myanmar dissidents, stating that the US actions are justified because the United Nations has remained inactive. While Myanmar opposition groups such as the All-Burma Federation of Students’ Union published statements condemning the US invasion of Venezuela, others reacted critically asking why they never speak out on far-reaching Chinese interference in Myanmar’s economy and armed conflict. Another comment stated that it is still better to live under the US than in China’s sphere of influence. 

The comment “hey Trump we have rare earth with genocidal regime” refers to the fact that Myanmar’s natural resources are currently being exploited largely by China, which needs the minerals from northern Myanmar for its defence and renewable energy industries. The profits of this rare earth mining flow directly to the Myanmar military and a number of other armed groups, while the population suffers the impact on its health and natural environment. Myanmar activists have emphasized the presence of rare earth minerals in an attempt to persuade the US to intervene in the country’s ongoing conflicts. Social media comments further point towards Myanmar military leader’s Min Aung Hlaing’s perceived involvement in the illegal drugs trade and the booming online scam business in Southeast Asia; despite the transnational impact of these activities, no meaningful international intervention has taken place beyond the countries directly bordering on Myanmar. 

If US intervention in Venezuela is seen as a combination of interest in natural resources (mainly oil) and professed concern about the freedom of the Venezuelan people, why would the US not intervene in a similar manner in Myanmar? This is not an uncommon question among Myanmar people. Following the 2021 coup, activists in Myanmar appealed in vain for the international community to invoke the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to free them from military rule and its violent repression. The answer to the question lies in the different geopolitical positions of the two countries, and the inconsistent policy (to say the least) of the US administration when it comes to international human rights protection. In the beginning of 2025, the US government announced a sudden halt to all USAID and affiliated development and humanitarian assistance programs, leaving countless refugees and dissidents from Myanmar and Venezuela without financial support overnight. Later in 2025, the US ended its protection for Myanmar and Venezuelan refugees and stopped the processing of new visa applications, although this is now being challenged in US courts.  

It is obvious that the US is acting out of self-interest and does not have the interests of local populations at heart when it invades a country like Venezuela. However, this does not mean that such interventions may not be welcomed by sections of the population who have suffered repression and international neglect for decades, as the reactions on social media from Myanmar attest. While academics debate the immorality of US intervention in Venezuela, the people of Myanmar and Venezuela are living the consequences of these interventions or the lack thereof. Yet their experiences rarely make it into the discussions of even the most progressive academic or political circles. We therefore argue for more international coverage on, and solidarity with, populations living under repression in undemocratic environments such as Myanmar and Venezuela, even if they are not invaded or oppressed by western forces. Populations may equally suffer from selective international involvement and economic or political self-interest of other countries, as is the case for China, Russia and other global actors in Myanmar and Venezuela. Only a receptive and open-minded perspective can help to explain the broad variety in reactions to events like the US invasion in Venezuela, and their reach across the globe, inspiring responses as far away as Myanmar. People living under repressed circumstances may not have the luxury of choosing which sphere of influence they are subjected to, but they do consistently express desires for political freedom, economic well-being and self-governance of natural resources, notably on social media. 

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

** Banner photo by Zack Tu Nan

The post Myanmar online reactions to the abduction of President Maduro from Venezuela  first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Tropical Cyclone Senyar in Indonesia illustrates how underfunded climate resilience does not eliminate costs but shifts them onto communities after disasters strike. Focusing on Indonesia’s adaptation finance architecture, Nela Navida and Anisa Indah Pratiwi examine whether prevention is funded ex-ante, how resources are distributed across levels of government, and why private finance rarely supports community resilience. They argue that a response-heavy system creates predictable fiscal losses and poverty traps, and call for prevention-centred, accountable financing that prices disaster risk upstream rather than downstream.

It is widely recognised that government provision for climate preparedness and resilience – commonly grouped under climate adaptation finance – remains chronically underfunded. But the devastation from Tropical Cyclone Senyar in Sumatra, Indonesia in late 2025 shows what that underfunding means in practice: it doesn’t make costs disappear – it shifts them onto communities after the shock hits, instead of paying upfront to reduce risk. When prevention, enforcement, and pre-arranged protection are not financed, the burden surfaces first as deaths, displacement, and destroyed homes — and then as less visible damage that are just as severe: emergency debt, disrupted schooling, worsening health, and lasting trauma. These longer-run impacts are what turn a climate disaster into a mechanism for perpetuating intergenerational poverty, long after the floodwaters recede.

Tropical Cyclone Senyar’s preparedness gaps reflect more than inadequate finance alone: operational capacity, governance, last-mile communication, and coordination all matter. However, this blog takes an Indonesia-focused financing lens, whether prevention and community resilience are funded before disasters hit, where that money sits across levels of government, and how quickly it can be released when warnings arrive. This question is becoming more urgent as climate risks intensify: research suggests that warming exceeding the 1.5°C  increases the likelihood of triggering multiple, interacting climate tipping points, with cascading effects that can amplify future hazards.

Globally, climate agreements place a clear expectation on wealthier countries to support developing countries’ adaptation efforts, and recent negotiations have tried to raise the ambition on scale. The COP29 outcome, for example, set a new post-2025 climate finance goal of at least US$300 billion per year by 2035, alongside efforts to scale overall finance towards US$1.3 trillion per year by 2035. But the gap between “what is needed” and “what reaches prevention” remains wide. UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025 estimates developing countries’ adaptation needs at US$310-365 billion per year by 2035, yet international public adaptation finance was only around US$26 billion in 2023 — lower than in 2022. This reversal suggests that, on current trends, international public finance is unlikely to close the gap on its own.

In practice, this reversal implies that countries like Indonesia still rely heavily on public finance for adaptation and community resilience. That is because the most important community resilience investments, such as evacuation readiness, local risk mapping, watershed enforcement, safe settlement planning, and resilient public services, do not generate a reliable cashflow for private investors. This is consistent with global patterns, CPI finds tracked adaptation finance remains overwhelmingly public (about 98%), with private flows relatively fragmented.

Indonesia’s resilience financing is hard to track because there is no single budget line called “community resilience.” A practical national proxy is the annual budget of three core disaster institutions – the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG), the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), and the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas). As Graph 1 suggests, the combined budget of these three agencies has fallen compared with pre-pandemic levels. This measure does not capture the full scope of adaptation finance, as prevention and preparedness spending is spread across multiple ministries and programmes, including public works, social protection, and environmental management. However, these three agencies sit at the centre of the national disaster management system and shape early warning, coordination, and search-and-rescue, making their budget trend a useful signal of overall priority.

This national picture also reveals a deeper “prevention versus response” paradox. The 2026 draft budget reportedly reduces BNPB’s core allocation to around Rp491 billion, its lowest level in a decade. At the same time, the government has earmarked Rp53-60 trillion in “ready-to-use” emergency contingency funds. Emergency reserves are essential, but the imbalance matters. When the system prioritises a large war chest for the aftermath while shrinking the agencies that finance and implement prevention, it effectively locks the fiscal strategy into reactive spending – paying most when things go wrong, rather than paying earlier to reduce losses.

Emergency reserves are essential, but they should not crowd out the routine expenditures that prevent crises. When prevention budgets shrink, capacity erodes between events and response funds become the default tool. That is a cycle to repeat.

The picture is more worrying beyond national totals. Frontline preparedness is delivered by local agencies, especially Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD), and funded mainly through regional budget (APBD). In many regions, APBD depends heavily on central transfers, so when transfers tighten – as in 2025 and 2026 – preparedness is easy to defer. This helps explain why funding can fall even as hazards rise, particularly in disaster-exposed and transfer-dependent provinces like Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra.

Senyar shows the consequences. Despite an eight-day warning, many local systems struggled to translate forecasts into action. Programmes like Disaster Resilient Village (Destana) exist, but without steady funding for drills, evacuation logistics, and enforcement, they risk becoming paperwork rather than protection.

Why private finance is less likely to be a rescue

If public budgets are tightening, it’s natural to ask whether private finance can fill the resilience gap. In practice, it largely doesn’t. In Indonesia, most “climate finance” that is private tends to show up on the mitigation side (energy, transport, efficiency) through bank lending and project finance, rather than toward prevention measures such as evacuation readiness, watershed enforcement, and settlement safety. CPI’s Indonesia private climate finance landscape work in 2023 already showed that private finance was limited and not the dominant driver of investment overall.

Private finance cannot be assumed to emerge organically. A more realistic pathway is to mandate risk creators to pay: firms that profit from extraction and land conversion should contribute to prevention when activities degrade watersheds and raise downstream flood risk. That shifts part of the disaster bill upstream through predictable, enforceable payments tied to verified impacts.

Where the private sector does “pay” today is often through compliance-style mechanisms that are designed for clean-up, not prevention. A good example is mining reclamation and post-mining guarantees where companies are required to place guarantees, intended to ensure rehabilitation after operations end. Whatever the merits, this measure is structurally reactive, and it is not built to finance ongoing watershed maintenance, flood-risk reduction, or “last mile” readiness while extraction is happening upstream.

Similar limits apply in palm oil and other land-based commodities. Companies may pay for permit and licences (e.g. AMDAL), taxes, levies, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending, but these outlays rarely finance the specific public goods that lower flood and landslide risk – watershed maintenance, slope protection, drainage, and preparedness. The largest costs still surface later as public spending and household losses.

Senyar hit a landscape that had already been heavily altered by deforestation and land conversion. Since 2001, Global Forest Watch estimates that Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra have lost about 1.03 million hectares of humid primary forest and 3.2 million hectares of cumulative tree cover. These estimates suggest permanent land-use change rather than temporary destruction. After the late-2025 floods and landslides, media and civil-society reports highlighted upstream deforestation and extractive activity as factors that worsened impacts, alongside extreme rainfall. In other words, Senyar is not only a climate hazard but also a vulnerability that is shaped by land management decisions. When land conversion remains profitable while the public bears the disaster bill, underfunded resilience is a predictable outcome — not an accident.

So the question is not whether firms will fund resilience voluntarily, but whether rules can make prevention financially mandatory. One step is to evolve guarantees and fees into performance-based resilience instruments. Instead of locking reclamation funds until the end of a project, a portion could be released during operations when independent monitoring shows watershed degradation or non-compliance, with transfers earmarked for locally usable preparedness and mitigation, such as evacuation readiness, slope stabilisation, and drainage maintenance. A second step is to realign incentives across levels of government so provinces and districts that enforce land-use rules and protect critical watersheds are financially rewarded rather than squeezed. The goal is to reduce the extent to which disaster costs are externalised onto households and public budgets.

Economic loss and disaster-induced poverty as the impact

Cyclone Senyar makes the fiscal case for prevention hard to ignore. Government estimates put reconstruction and recovery needs at Rp51.82 trillion (about US$3.1 billion) across Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. CELIOS separately estimated the economic loss at Rp68.67 trillion (roughly US$4-4.5 billion), and a parliamentary commission chair argued that material losses could be far higher, potentially above Rp200 trillion (around US$12 billion) once wider damages are accounted for. These figures are not strictly comparable, but they point in the same direction that large, repeated disaster bills are becoming normal.

The comparison to “what gets priced upstream” is revealing. The national mining sector generates very large state revenue flows – official data puts non-tax state revenue from mineral and coal at Rp138.37 trillion (around US$8 billion) in 2025 – yet most of these revenues are not automatically tied to the protection of the environment and communities that bear disaster risk. Meanwhile, prevention needs are substantial. Even acknowledging that such estimates are necessarily rough and open to debate, the Ministry of Forestry has estimated the cost of rehabilitating forests and critical lands nationally at around US$1 billion per year — and that is only one slice of the resilience investment required. As climate hazards intensify, the logic of ex-ante prevention rather than ex-post response becomes increasingly unavoidable.

And these headline numbers still understate the real burden, because they largely exclude the slower, intergenerational costs that turn a disaster into a poverty trap. Evidence from Indonesia shows that disaster-affected households often face large out-of-pocket costs. Scaled across the hundreds of thousands of displaced families, even conservative assumptions imply debt shocks in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, disproportionately concentrated among poorer households with no safety-nets that lack formal credit and fall back on high-cost borrowing. Without systematic debt relief, temporary shocks can become permanent welfare losses.

The same pattern holds for health and schooling. IFLS-based research finds flood exposure increases acute morbidity and depressive symptoms among poorer groups, with mental health impacts persisting longer than physical injury – while wealthier households are far less affected. Educational disruption compounds the damage: displacement and debt reduce schooling investment, and each year of schooling lost is associated with meaningful lifetime earnings penalties. The policy implication is that the disaster bill is not only what the state pays for repairs – it is also what households pay through debt, lost human capital, and lasting health impacts.

Conclusion: From emergency response to resilience

Senyar underlines an uncomfortable truth: Indonesia is financing resilience in a way that makes losses predictable. When prevention is squeezed, last-mile readiness weakens, and disasters become recurring fiscal liabilities.

This matters even more because the current administration has put poverty reduction at the centre of its agenda. But climate disasters are one of the fastest ways to reverse poverty gains. They push households into emergency debt, disrupt schooling and health, and destroy assets and livelihoods — especially for those already near the poverty line. In this sense, disaster resilience is not a separate policy lane from poverty alleviation, it is a core precondition for protecting poverty-reduction progress. The paradox is also straightforward: a government can expand poverty alleviation programmes, but if resilience is underfunded, each major shock can reverse the gains from these programmes and widen vulnerability again.

More money helps, but architecture matters. Funds must be positioned to move fast when warnings arrive through a protected prevention envelope, resources closer to local agencies and communities, and trigger-based disbursement so preparedness is not delayed by approvals. Private actors matter too. Because prevention is rarely bankable, the route is risk pricing and responsibility such as redesign fees, guarantees, and incentives so sectors profiting from land conversion and extraction contribute predictably to prevention, rather than leaving public budgets to absorb the bill.

Resilience must also protect long-term welfare. The disaster bill includes the debt trap for individuals, disrupted schooling, and lasting health impacts. Financing should treat anticipatory protection and service continuity as core functions, not add-ons. Senyar is a warning shot. The next extreme event may strike elsewhere in the country. The test is whether adaptation finance remains reactive or becomes a system that pays earlier, closer to the frontline, and reduces losses before they cascade.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

*Banner photo by Satria Aji Putra on Unsplash

The post The Resilience Paradox: Why Indonesia Pays More After Disasters Than Before first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

A recent remark questioning whether Malaysia was “meant to be” has reignited debate about secession in the Borneo States of Sabah and Sarawak. In this article, Dr Arnold Puyok argues that such rhetoric reflects bargaining and renegotiation within the federation rather than genuine ethnic mobilisation and separatism in the classic sense. By examining the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) demands, constitutional changes, and comparative federal experience, he shows that Malaysia’s survival as a federation lies in continuous renegotiation of the federal bargain.

A Renewed Debate over Secession

A recent interview featuring Alexander Nanta Linggi, a senior cabinet member of the Madani government, sparked nationwide debate when he remarked that Malaysia “maybe [was] never meant to be one nation in the first place.” The reaction was immediate and mixed. In the Borneo States of Sabah and Sarawak especially, comments that touch on difficult relations between the Borneo States and Peninsular Malaysia often resonate strongly. Whenever a prominent Borneo leader hints that leaving the federation might be an option, sections of public opinion appear receptive — all the more so in this case, given that the remarks came from Alexander Nanta Linggi himself. He is the grandson of Jugah anak Barieng (the Paramount Chief of the Iban community in Sarawak and one of Malaysia’s founding figures), a senior federal minister from Sarawak, and a vice-president of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera (PBB), the dominant party in Sarawak’s state assembly.

This is not new, as calls for secession surfaced as early as the 1970s, particularly after Singapore’s separation in 1965. In Sarawak, a locally based party, Parti Bumi Keyalang (PBK), even openly campaigned for independence from the federation. The language of exit has therefore long existed in the political vocabulary of the Borneo States.

Why the Borneo States Are Different

Part of the reason lies in the clear differences between Peninsular Malaysia and the Borneo States. The divide is not only geographical — separated by the South China Sea — but also social and historical, particularly in terms of ethnoreligious composition.

In Sabah, although Islam is the official and majority religion, the non-Muslim population is substantial. Religious and regional identities frequently overlap. A Kadazandusun Muslim, for instance, may strongly identify with Kadazandusun culture, and to an outsider, it is often difficult to distinguish between Muslim and non-Muslim Kadazandusun, as many non-Muslims Kadazandusun also carry Malay names.

Sarawak presents an even more distinctive case. The state has no official religion, and Christianity — largely among the Dayak community — forms the largest religious grouping. The Dayak population is dispersed across the state and maintains cultural ties with the Dayak communities in neighbouring Kalimantan, Indonesia. The political implication is important — no single ethnic group commands an overwhelming majority. Government formation therefore depends on negotiated coexistence rather than majoritarian dominance. Compared to Peninsular Malaysia, regional and cultural identities in the Borneo States often soften the boundaries of religion and ethnicity.

But what do the Borneo States actually want? Do they seek separation? And is separation inevitable?

From Peripheral States to Political Kingmakers

Political developments since 2008 suggest otherwise. When Barisan Nasional (BN) lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority, and especially after its defeat in 2018, the Borneo States ceased to be peripheral partners in the federation. Instead, they became key actors in federal government formation. Competing coalitions increasingly courted Borneo-based parties in order to secure parliamentary majorities.

This bargaining position gave the Borneo States leverage. They used it to press for the restoration of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), the foundational pact that enabled the formation of Malaysia. Progress has been incremental, appearing mainly in administrative decentralisation and limited devolution. Yet the most symbolically significant development was the constitutional recognition of the Borneo States as “equal partners” within the federation, even though the concept of equal partnership remains undefined in the constitution and opening to differing interpretations. But for the Borneo States, this recognition is enough to distinguish them from the eleven states of Peninsular Malaysia. MA63 was also formally acknowledged as a founding document of the federation alongside earlier constitutional agreements such as the Federal Agreement 1948 and Federal Agreement 1957. These historic constitutional amendments were passed in 2021, with more than 80 percent of the 222 members of parliament voting in favour.

These amendments have begun reshaping Malaysia’s federal structure. A system long characterised by centralisation is gradually moving — at least in principle — toward greater decentralisation and devolution of power, not only for the Borneo States but potentially for other states as well.

Secession as Political Rhetoric

Why, then, do secessionist sentiments still surface?

Often, such statements function less as literal political movements than as bargaining rhetoric. Invoking separation draws attention to unresolved grievances and signals the seriousness of autonomy demands. To understand this rhetoric, it is important to identify three key MA63-related issues that leaders in the Borneo States continue to regard as unresolved. First is natural resource management. Both Sabah and Sarawak seek greater autonomy over the management of their resources, although their approaches differ: Sabah generally favours collaborative arrangements with the federal government, while Sarawak has pursued greater direct control. Second, questions of fiscal distribution remain unsettled. Sabah continues to press for the resolution of its 40 percent revenue entitlement, while Sarawak is seeking a clearer financial arrangement with the centre. Third, both states have called for an increase in parliamentary representation so that Sabah and Sarawak can exercise a stronger voice at the national level. The point is not necessarily exit, but recognition and enforcement of rights already embedded in MA63.

Why Malaysia Survived When Others Failed

A larger historical comparison is revealing. Around the time when Malaysia was formed in 1963, two other federations — the West Indies Federation and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland — collapsed. Malaysia, by contrast, has endured. More than six decades later, the federation remains intact. If Malaysia was truly “not meant to be,” why has it survived?

Political theory offers a useful clue. Federations survive only so long as their component members believe that the original bargains remain meaningful. As Burgess (2006) observes, “secession can be justified on the moral basis that the federal bargain or contract has been either abandoned or undermined to such an extent that it neither satisfies the goals nor meets the basic needs of one or several parts of the federation”. 

In other words, secession becomes thinkable only when a federation stops delivering what its constituent units believe they were promised. The Malaysian federation, however, has never been static. It has been repeatedly renegotiated. Political crises, coalition instability, and electoral division have compelled the centre to accommodate regional demands. Since 2008 especially, federal governments have relied on support from the Borneo States, reinforcing a pattern of bargaining and renegotiation between the federal and regional actors.

Not Secession but Renegotiation

It is also important to consider the full context of Alexander Nanta Linggi’s remarks. In the same interview, he also said that he “loved” Malaysia, describing himself as “duty-bound” to protect Malaysia and noting that Sarawak’s prosperity contributes to Malaysia’s prosperity. His comments were less a rejection of the federation than a reflection on its continuing political and religious debates, particularly in Peninsular Malaysia.

In this context, secession talk in the Borneo States differs markedly from classical separatist movements in  such contexts as Quebec, Catalonia, Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, South Sudan, or Timor-Leste. The mobilisation is not driven primarily by ethnic exclusion or a project of independent statehood. Rather, it centres on renegotiating autonomy within the federation.

This has been consistently stated by Sarawak leaders themselves. The former Chief Minister of Sarawak, Adenan Satem, despite being outspoken on MA63, described separation as a “foolish” idea. Adenan’s successor, Abang Johari Openg, has likewise affirmed that efforts to restore Sarawak’s rights do not imply leaving Malaysia.

A light-hearted local joke captures the point. If Sarawak truly intended to secede, the first step would be to rewrite the third verse of its state anthem, Ibu Pertiwiku, which declares: “Sarawak dalam Malaysia” — Sarawak within Malaysia.

Conclusion

The debate today is not about dissolving the federation. It is about redefining how the federation works. Malaysia survives not because conflict is absent, but because conflict is managed through negotiation. The question, therefore, is not whether Malaysia was meant to be — but whether it can continue to adapt. Ultimately, the survival of the Malaysia federation will depend on whether its political leaders maintain what T.M. Franck described as a “political-ideological commitment” to the federation — treating it not merely as a convenient arrangement, but as a shared project valued “for its own sake” (Franck, 1968).

References

Burgess, M. (2012). In search of the federal spirit: New comparative empirical and theoretical perspectives. Oxford University.perspectives. Oxford University.

Franck, T.M. (Ed) (1968). Why Federations Fail. London University Press.

Puyok, A. (2024). Autonomy in Sarawak and Sabah: Different paths and diverging outcomes (Trends in Southeast Asia, Issue 28). ISEAS–Yusof Ishak.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo by Masrur Rahman on Unsplash

The post Malaysia’s Borneo Question: Adaptation or Separation? first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Indonesia’s blue economy views community adaptation and coordination as markers of success, but Eman Zahid Jokhio‘s fieldwork in Aceh reveals that this so-called “harmony” masks unequal power relations, environmental harm, and the failure of policies, instead of resolving them.

Indonesia’s Blue Economy Tells the Wrong Story

Indonesia often showcases its blue economy as a benchmark for national development. It is espoused as a strategy that achieves economic growth, environmental sustainability, and community benefits simultaneously. Aceh is often cited as an example of success, especially due to the continual participation of Panglima Laot, a centuries-old customary maritime institution that governs fishing and dispute resolution at sea.

In policy narratives, Aceh is presented as a unique example wherein traditional governance, modern regulation, and economic development seamlessly coexist. Indonesia’s Blue Economy gained the most traction under the administration of President Joko Widodo through the “Global Maritime Fulcrum” vision of 2014. With an archipelago with 17,000 islands and one of the world’s longest coastlines, the policy can leverage vast ocean resources for sustainable growth This agenda was formalized through the Blue Economy Development Framework by the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas), which later informed Indonesia’s comprehensive Blue Economy Roadmap and subsequent policy planning towards vision 2045. The framework promises to achieve three goals: economic development, environmental sustainability, and community empowerment through participatory governance.  

Aceh became a strategic showcase for this framework owing to its unique governance structure. The province enjoys special autonomy due to a peace agreement in 2005 which ended decades of conflict. Thus local traditional governance systems such as Panglima Laot share regulatory powers with the central state. For the Widodo administration, Aceh was a blueprint to show that Indonesia’s blue economy policy can incorporate and honour indigenous systems of governance, thus making it both a test case and a showcase for national policy.

However, field research in Banda Aceh points to a much less complete and more misleading version of success. What many claim to be success in “coordination” is often the masked acceptance of unequal relations of power which, rather than being resolved, continue to be sustained.

The Panglima Laot Works, But Within Tight Limits

Panglima Laot is one of the oldest traditional maritime institutions, and is older than the state of Indonesia itself. It predates the formal establishment of Indonesia, and manages the Acehnese fishing communities using the “Adat Laot”, which is a traditional law. Traditionally, the Panglima Laot exercised full control over all governance functions pertaining to the maritime domain, and thus controlled the first governance structures over the sea before any modern state ever existed. Under the Aceh Special Autonomy Law (Law No. 11/2006), Panglima Laot received formal recognition under the Acehnese traditional law and governance structures within the legal framework of the Republic of Indonesia; thus, creating a framework of legal recognition in which customary maritime governance operates alongside national law within defined jurisdictional limits, yet independently.

As such, it holds great significance in regard to the law and sovereignty of traditional institutions in Indonesia, as it is one of the few customary maritime institutions that possess the legal constitutional power to govern. For the blue economy policymakers, the legitimacy of the Panglima Laot and the institution’s ability to sustain itself, demonstrated that self-governance existed in the outer limits of state control and could remain intact for the purposes of integrating modern self-governance systems. This self-governance system became central to the ‘progressive and modern’ integrated blue economy narrative that the Indonesian government wanted to promote, as it provided a fundamentally local and culturally exclusive base to work from.

Panglima Laot is certainly effective within the confines of its remit. It manages fishing activities, resolves conflicts, coordinates sea rescues, and enforces maritime order. Fishermen trust the institution, and the state relies on it to carry out governance to a higher degree of competency than other formal institutions in the rest of Indonesia.

However, effectiveness is not the same as exercising power. The Panglima Laot is limited to Aceh’s territorial waters, it has no authority to grant license to industries, no power to regulate pollution, and no control over the national development agenda. It can manage  the consequences of inequality, but cannot transform  the conditions that produces it

This is the most common oversight in the blue economy discourse. The presence of geographically decentralized local governance is seen as a positive achievement of the system. But often it is an indication of the system’s ability to manage inequality rather than to eliminate it.

“Making Harmony” as a Governance Strategy

This phenomenon becomes most apparent when industrial operations move into the coastal zone. Addressing the issue of pollution and unregulated trawlers and the response of fishing communities, Panglima Laot leader Taufik Abda states:

“It is disturbing, but we try to make harmony by coordinating with industry.”

This is very telling. There is no mention of negotiating with a party on equal footing. Instead, the statement speaks to a dominant party’s strategy of coping. Industries engage in ecological violence; communities adapt. One party inflicts damage; the other party has to cope with the consequences.

Describing the situation as harmony is a euphemism. It is very indicative that the industrial practices are not to be changed at all; it is the communities instead that are expected to find the means to coexist with these practices. The purpose of coordination, then, becomes to alleviate the problem, rather than redistribute power and the responsibility.

This is the so-called collaboration that Indonesia’s blue economy proudly claims. But when one party incurs environmental and economic disadvantages, coordination is not collaboration. It is containment.

When “Less Pollution” Becomes the Benchmark

The environmental success of Aceh is often contextualized comparatively. Mr. Azwir, the General Secretary of the Panglima Laot, noted:

“In Aceh, we do not have big industrial ships, so we have less pollution.”

Indeed, while this holds true relative to more industrialized cities such as Jakarta and Surabaya, it serves to lower the bar. The phrase, “less polluted” says nothing about being clean, safe, or sustainable. It simply means less environmentally damaged in relative terms.

In Lampulo, Banda Aceh’s main fishing port, pollution is a visible reality. Plastic waste floats between boats, sanitation is poor, and the water is severely compromised.  However, these conditions are almost entirely absent from official documents. Instead, they are used as background problem rather than signifying a policy failure.

This is how the normalization of environmental decline occurs. When success is measured and kept in line with more egregious failures, the degradation of the environment is no longer perceived as urgent. The blue economy is then perceived as an economy that becomes a system to manage the slow degradation of the environment, rather than to prevent degradation.

Resilience as a Policy Shortcut

When asked by fishermen Mr. Suleman about the challenges he faces he sea.

“Not any”, he said immediately.

However, earlier that very day, he discussed the prospect of traveling to fish 120 miles offshore for a stretch of fifteen days. His co-worker, Muhammad Noor, explained the adverse weather conditions that can, for weeks, effectively ground them on land, resulting in no fishing, and thus no income and no money for food. Another fisherman recounted the government permits that he must obtain to engage in fishing.  

Challenges? None.

This is what normalized hardship looks like, when these mundane realities are rarely treated as problems and simply part of normal daily life.

Development policy tends to frame this as ‘resilience’. However, ‘resilience’ can also mean that people have simply stopped hoping for something better. When communities begin to describe extreme challenges as normal, it indicates not just strength, but also the extreme limits to their options.

A policy that ‘resilience’ is built on is one that abdicates responsibility. It does not minimize risk but rather moves the responsibility of adaptation to those who lack the power to refuse. The blue economy measures the extent to which communities are able to manage the effects of climate change. It seldom, if ever, attempts to understand why communities are required to manage risk in the first place.

Systematic Exclusion of Women

Another challenge of Aceh’s blue economy governance is also voice inclusion. In formal discussions on maritime governance, custom leaders, officials, and fishermen, were all men. In contrast, women occupy almost all fish markets, control household economies, and make income and food security decisions.

To leave them out is not only unjust; it also is ineffective. Policies that are created and implemented without an inclusive approach are bound to fail. A blue economy that is purportedly community-oriented is fundamentally inequitable, and engages only with particular segments of the community.

Such a gap only further reiterates the interlocking of inequalities, and the injustices within the policies formulated. The only explanation for this is an intentional structural gap.

Managing Inequality Is Not Solving It

The success of Aceh’s maritime governance is attributed to the low level of conflict and the ease of collaboration. However, stability should not be confused with justice. Panglima Laot can to keep the system running, but it cannot change its trajectory.

The governance system manages rather than reduces inequality. Environmental degradation is not prevented, but rather absorbed. While local communities change, the industries do not. The dominant discourse of harmony gives the illusion of consensus, when in fact there are few options.

This is not a local institutional failure. This is a failure of the blue economy’s definition of success.

Redefining Indonesia’s Blue Economy Success

Blue economy initiatives in Indonesia should not just be evaluated on how quiet and submissive coastal communities are in the face of pressure. Yes, adaptation might keep communities quiet, but that doesn’t mean it is equitable. When fishermen are praised and recognized for simply “adapting” to new levels of pollution, extended fishing trips, and income instability, the real work of sustainability is being pushed onto those with the least power to refuse it.

The Aceh region of Indonesia demonstrates that there is a paradoxical kind of ‘harmony’ that can be achieved, even when there is no equitable redistribution of assets and resources. But such ‘harmony’ should not be mistaken for ‘justice’. If the blue economy is genuinely concerned with achieving true ‘sustainability’ in all its forms, it needs to do far more than simply ‘manage relationships and ‘order’ the unjust inequities that such initiatives have placed on fishing Otherwise, the term “making harmony” will continue to be a euphemism for just managing the status quo. A blue economy founded on such principles will be stable, yes, but also incredibly inequitable.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo by Misbahul Aulia on Unsplash

The post In Aceh’s Waters, “Making Harmony” Hides Indonesia’s Blue Economy Failures first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

What is unfolding along the Thailand–Cambodia border is neither a collapse of diplomacy nor a path to settlement, but a managed cycle of instability in which both, ceasefires and use of limited force coexist between two sovereigns. Understanding why this cyclical pattern of conflict recurs requires a need to move beyond immediate triggers and gauge the structural politics of the frontier itself along with its colonial past. Writes Deepanshu Mohan**

In late December 2025, Thailand and Cambodia agreed to yet another ceasefire after weeks of intense fighting along their disputed border. The agreement followed nearly twenty days of clashes which left more than a hundred people dead and forced over half a million civilians to flee their homes, according to humanitarian reporting. Artillery exchanges, rocket fire, and air operations marked one of the most serious escalations in tensions between the two neighbouring countries in years.

The truce was framed as an extension of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord, signed in October 2025 under external mediation, which sought to stabilise the frontier through demilitarisation and confidence-building measures.

Its durability, however, was tested immediately.

In early January 2026, a Thai soldier was wounded by Cambodian mortar fire during the ceasefire period. Phnom Penh described the incident as an operational error, while Bangkok issued warnings but stopped short of abandoning the agreement.

What is unfolding along the Thailand–Cambodia border is neither a collapse of diplomacy nor a path to settlement, but a managed cycle of instability in which ceasefires and limited force coexist.

A Flashpoint That Keeps Evolving, Not Resolving Itself

The January incident was not an anomaly. It was the latest episode in an escalation cycle that took shape in mid-2025. A skirmish near Chong Bok earlier that year resulted in the death of a Cambodian soldier, followed by the wounding of Thai troops by landmines in the same contested area. By July, the confrontation widened, with Thailand launching retaliatory airstrikes and both sides mobilising forces along multiple stretches of the border.

Reporting by the United Nations documents the use of heavier weaponry, including rocket systems and combat aircraft, alongside mass civilian displacement across border provinces. Diplomatic interventions punctuated this cycle but failed to arrest it.

July mediation efforts brokered with the involvement of the United States, China, and Malaysia collapsed within weeks amid mutual accusations and the absence of credible enforcement.

The October Peace Accord promised demilitarization but offered little in the way of binding compliance. The December truce froze active hostilities, as it left intact the incentives that had driven escalation in the first place.

Understanding why this cyclical pattern of conflict recurs requires moving beyond immediate triggers to the structural politics of the frontier itself. The roughly 800-kilometre Thailand–Cambodia border is a colonial construct shaped by the Franco-Siamese treaties of 1904 and 1907, with disputes around sites such as Preah Vihear and Ta Muen Thom carrying enduring symbolic weight.

While International Court of Justice rulings clarified sovereignty, they failed to depoliticise the frontier, leaving history less a cause of conflict than a resource repeatedly mobilised for contemporary political leverage.

Thailand’s Side: Sovereignty, Security Narratives, and Electoral Utility

For Thai governments, the contested border with Cambodia has long functioned as a reliable site for asserting sovereignty during domestic uncertainty. The December 2025 escalation coincided with leadership instability and civil–military strain, making firmness vis-à-vis Cambodia a low-cost signal of sovereign authority incentivising Thai movement along the border.

This vulnerability was exposed months earlier. On 18 June 2025, a leaked phone call between then prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen suggested a breakdown in civilian authority over border commanders at a moment of rising tension.

The political fallout was swift: more than 20,000 protesters rallied in Bangkok, the Bhumjaithai Party withdrew from the governing coalition.

What followed were legal petitions alleging ethical and national security violations leading to Paetongtarn’s removal from office within weeks. Her successor, Anutin Charnvirakul, assumed office on a platform centred on restoring sovereign resolve, dissolving parliament on 12 December 2025 amidst active air operations near Poipet and effectively synchronising military escalation with electoral positioning ahead of the February 2026 polls.

What distinguishes the current escalation cycle is the expansion of Thailand’s justificatory framing of its use of force. From early December 2025, military deployment operations were presented not only as responses to territorial violations but as efforts to dismantle industrial-scale scam centres in Cambodian border provinces.

Airstrikes and artillery targeted sites in Poipet, Banteay Meanchey, and Bavet long linked to casino economies such as O’Smach resort, online fraud, human trafficking, illicit finance, and alleged military purposes. This reframing embedded territorial escalation within a broader transnational security narrative centred on cybercrime and organised criminal networks.

The political utility of this approach was significant. It justified airpower, artillery, and counter-rocket fire as clashes intensified.

By mid-December 2025, at least 15 Thai soldiers were killed, civilians died in Sisaket and Surin, and evacuations exceeded 400,000 people on Thailand’s side. Framing operations as counter-crime measures limited the diplomatic backlash and sustained external engagement. The resulting is managed escalation, wherein sovereignty claims and transnational security narratives reinforce political legitimacy while leaving instability intact.

Cambodia’s Side: Regime Legitimacy, Strategic Asymmetry, and Diplomatic Pushback

During the December 2025 escalation, Cambodia’s leadership adopted a de-escalatory public image even at moments of intense tension. Yet this restraint did not emerge in a vacuum. The pattern began earlier: on July 25, the Royal Thai Air Force deployed F-16s in two waves, striking Cambodian military positions near Preah Vihear Temple, Ta Muen Thom, and Phu Makua.

Four jets hit two targets at noon and two more struck additional targets later that afternoon, with Thailand claiming these were firing bases used to attack Thai civilian homes and hospitals. This escalation set the stage for Cambodia’s subsequent diplomatic strategy. Deputy Prime Minister Sun’s call to “lower the temperature” was a posture that functioned as a diplomatic strategy aimed at reassuring domestic elites and foreign investors. This diplomatic restraint unfolded alongside active Thai military operations.

Cambodia’s trade with the US reached $13.5 billion in 2024, while China’s exports to Cambodia totalled $15.33 billion in the same year. China represents 43% of Cambodia’s FDI inflows, with foreign direct investment accounting for 13.5% of GDP as of 2019, significantly higher than Thailand’s 1.1%.

Against this backdrop, diplomatic restraint can be viewed as a signal directed as much at Washington and Beijing as at Bangkok. By projecting itself as the stabilising actor, Phnom Penh seeks to reassure its principal economic partners that it will not become a source of regional disruption, while implicitly shifting responsibility for renewed instability onto Thailand.

As Bangkok expanded its justificatory framing of the use of force, Phnom Penh moved to narrow it, directly contesting the use of ‘anti-scam’ narratives to legitimise cross-border strikes. By rejecting Thailand’s claim that scam centres justified military action, Phnom Penh sought to prevent law-enforcement narratives from legitimising cross-border force.

Phnom Penh has accepted ceasefire arrangements while avoiding language that could be read as retroactively endorsing Thailand’s military actions. As active hostilities have eased, contestation has increasingly shifted to official statements and diplomatic exchanges.

Violations are masked under defensive operational errors or miscommunication, which preserves the foundation of the ceasefire while simultaneously refusing to concede that Thai operations were justified or proportionate. Cambodia continues to demand that Thailand withdraw from the disputed areas, favouring boundary commissions and international legal mechanisms over military pressure.

External Geopolitical Dynamics: Mediation, Leverage, and Transactional Peace

External powers have actively shaped the latest Thailand–Cambodia border crisis, seeking to stabilise the frontier but without altering the domestic incentives that drive recurrent escalation. In January 2026, the United States announced a $45 million aid package to support implementation of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords, a ceasefire framework agreed in October 2025 under U.S. and Malaysian auspices.

According to U.S. officials, the funding includes $15 million for border stabilisation and displaced persons’ support, $10 million for demining and unexploded ordnance clearance, and $20 million for anti-scam, drug-trafficking and transnational crime initiatives. This assistance follows intense clashes in July and December 2025 that killed at least 101 people and displaced over half a million civilians on both sides of the frontier, with artillery barrages, fighter-jet sorties, and rocket exchanges reported along sectors of the 800-kilometre border.

China has also sought to cast itself as a stabilising actor. Beijing confirmed that the December truce was being “gradually implemented,” noting Thailand’s return of eighteen Cambodian soldiers as a confidence-building step. The Chinese foreign ministry publicly expressed hope that the ceasefire would be “comprehensive and lasting,” signalling Beijing’s interest in a peaceful outcome.

Yet much of this engagement is transactional. ASEAN has largely followed the conflict rather than shaping it. Observer deployments and mediation arrive after violence, constrained by consensus rules that limit enforcement and leave escalation incentives untouched. Aid disbursement and diplomatic traffic follow moments of crisis without embedding mechanisms that address domestic incentives that drive renewed escalation.

On The Way Forward

The civilian cost has been severe yet politically contained. By mid-December 2025, Cambodian authorities reported 518,611 people displaced by artillery, rocket fire and Thai F-16 airstrikes, while Thai officials acknowledged around 400,000 evacuees across eight border provinces.

Fighting around crossings such as Poipet left up to 6,000 Thai citizens stranded after Cambodia closed checkpoints, disrupting labour mobility and informal trade. Markets, schools and hospitals across Sisaket, Surin, Oddar Meanchey and Banteay Meanchey were repeatedly shut, agriculture near the artillery range was abandoned, and tourism hubs suffered abrupt demand shocks, affecting investors and production networks tied to regional connectivity.

Durable de-escalation would require shifting escalation management away from military signalling and towards shared civilian mechanisms. Joint civilian border structures involving local authorities, community leaders, and other elements of civil society could manage the essential cooperation, such as evacuation protocols, incident logging and rapid clarification of alleged violations. Independent monitoring of buffer zones would also help in narrowing down the space for fabricated claims and tactical ambiguity.

However, these measures do not signal progress toward settlement. They constitute a conflict-response architecture — protocols for border closures, labour movement, evacuation, and incident clarification — designed to absorb shocks rather than prevent escalation. They function as buffers, not bridges.

Finally, legal and technical demarcation would not resolve the dispute, but it could provide a platform for structured engagement through joint mapping, transparent cartography, and incremental reference to past ICJ rulings. Such processes would not eliminate nationalist claims, but they could channel contestation into procedural arenas rather than military ones.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Saksham Raj, Aditi Lazarus & Simar Kaur, as researchers from Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES) also contributed to this column.

***Banner photo by Bram Wouters on Unsplash

The post A Border in Disarray: Understanding the Complexities of Thai-Khmer Regional Conflict first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

In this article, Marcus Andreopoulos examines the renewed hostilities between Thailand and Cambodia, arguing that the unravelling of a fragile peace deal overseen by President Trump exposes the limits of his peace-making credentials. Not only did Thailand’s suspension of the truce in November undo Trump’s efforts over the preceding month to end the conflict, but Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s declaration that he does not ‘care about trade and tariff negotiations’ was a direct challenge to the tariff pressure that has become Trump’s preferred tool for ‘ending’ conflicts.

In early December 2025, Thailand launched fresh military strikes against Cambodia as tensions continued to escalate since the two countries’ brief and fragile pause in hostilities was agreed. The renewed fighting followed an announcement on 10 November, by the supreme commander of Thailand’s military, General Ukris Boontanondha, who declared that he was ‘halting all agreements’ between his country and Cambodia. This announcement came after a landmine explosion injured four Thai soldiers along the country’s border with Cambodia. The two sides had been observing a precarious peace brokered by Trump in Kuala Lumpur at the end of October, itself following an earlier ceasefire agreement months earlier for which Trump had also claimed credit. Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly positioned himself as a global peacemaker, taking credit for ending ‘eight wars in eight months.’ However, critics of the U.S. president have pointed out the fragility of his peace-making, which has been overly reliant upon the threat of increased tariffs, rather than attempts to resolve the fundamental grievances underpinning the conflicts.

In the case of Southeast Asia, the limits of Trump’s tariff-peace diplomacy have now been laid bare. Following the suspension of October’s Kuala Lumpur peace agreement, Washington sought immediately to apply the same economic pressures that had proved so effective in forcing an initial ceasefire back in July. Having already agreed to a blanket tariff rate of 19% for Thai goods exported to the U.S., the pair had been set to negotiate a potential further reduction of tariffs. This was before the Trump Administration suspended negotiations in light of renewed hostilities. Rather than force a reversal of policy in Bangkok, however, the strategy backfired, with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul boldly declaring that he ‘no longer care[d]’ about trade and tariff negotiations. In doing so, Anutin undermined the principal element of Trump’s peace-making strategy.

In the end it was Washington that blinked first. Soon after this exchange, the Thai government issued a clarification, affirming that ‘tariff negotiations [would] move forward and remain separate from border issues.’ This announcement followed a phone call between Anutin and Trump, during which the U.S. President is said to have insisted that he did not ‘wish to interfere in the Thailand-Cambodia issue.’ That private assurance did not align with Trump’s own remarks made aboard Air Force One that same day, in which he claimed to have ‘stopped a war just today through the use of tariffs, the threat of tariffs.’ The disparity between these two claims suggests that whilst Trump had intended to lean upon economic levers to force Thailand’s adherence to its peace deal with Cambodia, Anutin’s public dismissal of the threat forced an urgent change in strategy. To avoid a direct, and embarrassing, challenge to his authority, therefore, Trump chose to quietly backtrack on his earlier suspension of trade negotiations. For Trump to claim that the two issues are separate contradicts the publicly declared principles that have guided his peace efforts over the past year.

Thailand’s unwillingness to overlook Cambodia’s alleged breach of their peace deal is understandable, even if it posed economic consequences for Anutin. The explosion along the disputed border, which severed the leg of a Thai soldier, demanded a forceful response from the Thai government. Anutin recognised this reality, visiting the wounded in Sisaket province before declaring that peace with Cambodia had effectively ended. Bangkok rejected Phnom Penh’s claims that the land mine was a remnant of ‘past conflicts,’ viewing the incident instead as a clear violation of any peace agreement. Public support throughout this clash has also leaned far more toward the Thai military than the government. Under these conditions, it would have therefore not been politically viable for Thailand to look past the explosion simply to preserve trade negotiations with a third country, even if that country was the U.S.

Trump had touted October’s agreement in Kuala Lumpur as a major diplomatic victory. Yet even then there were doubts as to its durability. Of the three parties involved, only Trump seemed jubilant, launching into a monologue about how ‘momentous’ the day was for the region. The Thai government, by contrast, was more reserved, with Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow describing the agreement only as a ‘pathway towards peace’ rather than the definitive peace accord that Trump was insisting it was. The statement in itself suggested that the peace was already precarious even without a potentially deadly explosion occurring along the border.

Washington’s immediate turn to the threat of tariffs as soon as the peace between Thailand and Cambodia began to fray in November 2025 reveals just how much importance Trump attributes to the approach as a means of mediating conflicts. Anutin’s dismissal of the threat, however, followed by Trump’s rapid reversal and private insistence that the tariffs were unrelated to the border clash, demonstrated the fragility of this strategy. Shortly after meeting with his wounded soldiers, Anutin forcefully declared that ‘no one can claim sovereignty over Thai territory.’ In doing so, the Thai Prime Minister underscored not only the depth of the decades-old territorial dispute and conflict but also the sheer inadequacy of tariffs as a means of resolving it. Trump will now hope that this affair has not diminished his ability to leverage tariff threats as a means of conflict resolution in the future.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner image generated by ChatGPT.

The post The Limits of Trump’s Peace Efforts in Southeast Asia first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

In this study, Kyunghwan Choi (recipent of the 2024/25 Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) assesses the effectiveness of Debt-for-Nature Swaps (DNS) as a climate finance mechanism through the Indonesian case. Using political ecology and ecological debt perspectives and drawing on semi-structured interviews with government officials and NGOs, it finds that contradictory state policies undermine environmental protection and local rights. These contradictions are interpreted as structural outcomes of a historically extractive, debt-based economic system shaped by global power asymmetries. 

Background  

The escalating climate crisis has fundamentally transformed the global financial landscape, compelling governments, multilateral institutions, and private actors to channel trillions of dollars toward adaptation and mitigation strategies. The significant fact is that this pressing climate crisis has been disproportionately impacting Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs), and half of these countries are already in debt distress. Another study shows that climate events have caused damages equivalent to 1% of GDP, which directly leads to fiscal deficits, especially in developing countries. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the IMF also underscore that climate-related shocks pose severe risks to LIDCs, warning that LIDCs’ reliance on foreign currency bond financing heightens their vulnerability to solvency and liquidity crises, potentially triggering sovereign defaults. This dynamic exemplifies the Climate-Debt Doom Loop, wherein climate-induced economic damages and adaptation costs compound debt distress, constraining resources for resilience investments and ultimately amplify climate vulnerability.  

Facing this dual crisis, the climate finance mechanism called Debt-for-Nature-Swaps (DNS) has recently gained attention again. DNS is a financial mechanism conducted between creditor and debtor countries wherein debt is reduced or cancelled in exchange for the debtor government’s commitment to redirect payment to mutually agreed nature conservation or environment-related projects. DNS is believed to generate both economic gains from debt relief and environmental improvements through conservation projects.  

Study Scope and Theoretical Framework 

I picked Indonesia as a study case since it represents a unique example, having the most DNS agreements with the same creditor country since 2000. Having signed its fourth DNS agreement in 2024 with the USA since its first deal in 2009, Indonesia provides an excellent opportunity to examine whether projects have been implemented sustainably and whether their effectiveness has improved over time. 

In my review of the literature, I found that most studies have focused primarily on the economic impact of DNS, such as increased fiscal space, transaction costs, additionality, sovereign credit ratings, debt reduction, and fiscal stability. The understanding of the socio-ecological impacts of DNS projects, such as the power dynamics that lead to local exclusion and the resulting acceleration of ecosystem destruction, has remained relatively limited. Although some studies have analyzed the socio-ecological impacts of DNS projects, most of these analyses are based on cases from the pre-2000s which lack contemporary relevance. This gap hinders a deeper understanding of how DNS projects actually function on the ground, particularly by overlooking the complex power dynamics and inequalities that are often hidden beneath the goal of environmental conservation. As such, my study was intended to fill this gap by examining the socio-ecological impacts of recent DNS projects. 

My initial academic approach was to conduct comprehensive research that combined both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the effectiveness of DNS. For the quantitative analysis, I planned to examine how the introduction of DNS affects economic indicators. For instance, whether Indonesia’s government credit rating improved after reducing its sovereign debt, and if so, how such an improvement in creditworthiness contributed to lower bond interest rates or facilitated additional green financing. On the qualitative side, I intended to explore the power dynamics between creditors and debtors during the implementation of DNS through interviews. However, while conducting formative research and preliminary interviews, I found that the amount of debt forgiven through DNS is significantly small compared to the rising level of Indonesia’s sovereign debt. In other words, it seemed difficult to identify any meaningful changes in the economic data. Therefore, I decided to adjust the scope of my study and focus primarily on qualitative data collected through interviews. 
 

During formative research, the study revealed significant criticisms regarding unsustainable project implementation and infringements on local communities’ rights. Through the pre-interviews as part of formative research conducted prior to the main field work, interviewees highlighted that power asymmetries and concerns over resource exploitation have persisted across all four DNS projects in Indonesia, from the first in 2009 to the most recent. These findings further reinforce the imperative of analyzing the impacts of DNS beyond simple economic indicators, focusing instead on socio-ecological dimensions. Therefore, this study employs political ecology theory, which understands environmental issues not merely as technical problems, but as phenomena shaped by the dynamics of social and political power. This study also adopts ecological debt theory, which posits that the Global North owes the Global South for exploiting Southern resources and causing environmental degradation, ultimately perpetuating debt-driven extractive economic systems. With these theories, this study aims to answer the main research question “Why do questions about the effectiveness of Debt-for-Nature-Swaps persist in Indonesia?” 

Results  

Qualitative Research – NVivo 

I was awarded the SEAC Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, which supported my fieldwork and in-person interviews with key stakeholders. In Indonesia, over ten days, I conducted interviews with five government officials and eight NGO workers, and the transcripts were subsequently analysed using NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software package. By examining the most frequently cited words, co-occurring terms, and their contextual meanings through NVivo, my study identified core arguments emerging from the data. The NVivo analysis played a crucial role in reinforcing the insights derived from the interviews and in systematically categorizing and labeling the data. 

For instance, NVivo findings highlighted two major themes surrounding DNS. First, many participants mentioned “ecological debt” as the Global North’s moral and historical responsibility for climate change, arguing that environmental financing should take the form of grants rather than debt-based instruments like DNS. Second, NGO respondents criticised the contradiction between the government’s conservation rhetoric and its ongoing extractive practices, using phrases such as “contradictory actions” and “government’s responsibility.” They referred to the continued nickel mining in DNS project areas and the recent amendments to the Mining Law and the Omnibus Law as examples of this inconsistency. 

Taken together, these perspectives reflect a broader scepticism toward DNS as a mechanism that perpetuates structural inequalities rather than addressing ecological injustices. In addition to the NVivo data, extensive research conducted during and after the interviews further enriched the findings, helping the study to extract meaningful quotes and insights, which were subsequently organized into two thematic areas: (1) Socio-ecological Impacts on Local Communities and (2) Contradictory Government Policies. 

Socio-ecological Impacts and Power Imbalances 

The findings reveal that Indonesia’s DNS projects continue to reproduce historical patterns of exclusion and inequality in conservation governance. Interview evidence from both national and local stakeholders indicates that DNS initiatives have infringed upon local and indigenous communities’ rights, particularly through state-led land appropriation and displacement under the guise of environmental protection. These practices reflect a “fortress conservation” approach, where conservation is pursued against communities rather than with them. Instances in South Kalimantan and the Coral Triangle illustrate that the establishment of national parks and conservation areas often occurs without meaningful consultation, resulting in the erasure of customary land rights and, in extreme cases, violent repression of local protests. 

Furthermore, the exclusion of local actors from DNS oversight and decision-making processes reinforces a deep power asymmetry between the state and local communities. Although formal governance structures include NGOs, they largely represent national organisations rather than grassroots groups. This exclusion reflects broader institutional patterns that prioritise state and donor accountability over participatory legitimacy, thereby replicating the very governance deficiencies earlier DNS projects sought to address. 

These local-level inequities are aggravated by contradictory national policies that undermine conservation objectives. Legislative reforms, such as the Omnibus Law (2020) and the Mining Law Amendment (2025), have weakened environmental safeguards, abolished the mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (AMDAL), and encouraged unregulated investment in extractive industries. While DNS projects claim to promote ecological restoration, these laws simultaneously expand nickel and palm oil extraction within protected zones, producing a paradoxical policy landscape where conservation and exploitation coexist. Such contradictions demonstrate how Indonesia’s governance structure prioritises economic growth and foreign investment over environmental justice and community rights, thereby deepening ecological and social vulnerability. 

Structural Inevitability of Extractive Economies 

Building on these findings, the study situates the contradictions of DNS within a broader political–economic and historical context. Drawing on Martínez-Alier’s concept of ecological debt and Robbins’s political ecology framework, the persistence of extractive practices is interpreted not as a policy failure but as a structural inevitability embedded within global systems of debt and dependency. Indonesia’s dependence on resource extraction is rooted in its debt history, dating back to the petrodollar crisis and IMF-led Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980s, which institutionalised export-oriented growth and the commodification of natural resources as the primary means of debt repayment. 

From this perspective, Indonesia’s simultaneous pursuit of DNS conservation and extractive expansion represents a debt-driven paradox. As one NGO worker expressed, “We cannot always prioritise environmental conservation. We also need economic growth”. This statement encapsulates the ecological debt logic: nations that have contributed least to global emissions are compelled to overexploit their own ecosystems to service debts accumulated through a global economic order designed by and for the Global North. 

Interview narratives also introduced the notion of “colonial continuity”, wherein extractive development and environmental governance are sustained through epistemic dominance rather than formal colonial control. Development finance, technical feasibility studies, and Northern-led policy frameworks operate as instruments of subtle hegemony, prescribing what counts as “rational” or “scientific” approaches to conservation. In this sense, DNS itself can be viewed as a product of Northern knowledge systems, reinforcing rather than transforming the extractive economic order it seeks to mitigate. 

Thus, questions about DNS effectiveness persist not because of isolated implementation shortcomings, but because the mechanism remains embedded within, and dependent upon, the same structural forces of debt, dependency, and ecological inequality that define the global capitalist system. Without confronting these foundational asymmetries and the political economies that sustain them, DNS risks perpetuating cycles of dispossession and environmental injustice, rather than achieving equitable conservation outcomes. 

Implication and Concluding remark 

The study reveals that DNS projects in Indonesia reproduce socio-ecological inequalities and deepen extractive dependencies. These outcomes underscore the structural contradictions between conservation and economic growth, suggesting that DNS effectiveness cannot be enhanced without addressing underlying governance asymmetries and debt-driven development models.  

By examining DNS through the lenses of political ecology and ecological debt, this study aimed to address two critical gaps: the predominant focus on economic indicators in DNS effectiveness assessments, and the lack of socio-ecological impact analyses in recent DNS implementations. By incorporating voices from diverse stakeholders and unpacking the historical roots of Indonesia’s debt and how these roots have shaped and influenced the country’s present situation, this study provides essential insights into how climate finance instruments should be approached, implemented, and evaluated amid the dual crises of climate change and debt. Furthermore, the study holds significance in encouraging critical reflection on the enduring legacy of colonial-era power imbalances between the Global North and South, and on how these historical inequalities continue to shape not only the climate crisis itself but also the effectiveness of contemporary initiatives like DNS in developing countries. 

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

**Banner photo by Imat Bagja Gumilar on Unsplash

The post Debt-for-Nature Swaps in Indonesia: A Political Ecology Perspective on Conservation and Debt first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.