Pamela D. McElwee – Författare

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

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

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

The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Ecosystem Services provides an overview of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), which are the nonmaterial aspects of benefits that people derive from nature. These diverse and multifaceted contributions can include experiences, capabilities, and identities, among others. The Handbook addresses how these CES are valued, how they reflect human-nonhuman relationships, and what roles they can play in improved human well-being, ecosystem management, and trajectories towards sustainability.This Handbook presents a wide array of perspectives on the roles CES can play in understanding relationships to nature, and on how those relationships might translate into policy. The Handbook includes philosophical approaches to CES, typologies and classifications of types of CES, and case studies of places, people, policies and projects engaging CES. Across seven distinctive Parts, the chapters deliver a number of important practical lessons on how to understand, measure, and value CES, and use examples and applications from around the world, including how CES apply across different biomes. The Handbook also includes a selection of compelling artworks that represent CES in different cultural contexts. The 91 authors represent 19 different countries, providing a rich range of experiences, including a strong focus on the Global South.This book can serve as a comprehensive guide to researchers who are new to CES and wish to understand more about the field, and as a set of go-to instructions for experienced CES researchers. It can also inform policymakers who wish to better incorporate CES into their work.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license