Register now for the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre's upcoming event: A mobile political ecology of sand and shifting resource-based livelihoods Tickets, Wed 18 May 2022 at 12:00 | Eventbrite
Southeast Asian Waters Series: Expanding transboundary water governance: A mobile political ecology of sand and shifting resource-based livelihoods in Southeast Asia
Wednesday 18 May 2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
As part of the SEAC Southeast Asian Waters Seminar series Dr. Vanessa Lamb (Senior Lecturer, School of Geography, University of Melbourne) will speak on sand extraction and its consequences in Southeast Asia. An unprecedented rise in sand extraction from rivers and coasts for use in construction and urban development is impacting resource-based livelihoods, prompting scholars to declare “a looming tragedy of the sand commons”. Within a global context, Southeast Asia is emerging as one sand mining hotspot. Yet, while demand and extraction is set to intensify, the governance of sand and sediment flows has been characterised as a serious challenge in the region, particularly in the ways that this “unseen transboundary commons” is being depleted and sand mining is impacting local resource users and livelihoods. In this talk, I will outline a proposal to ‘expand’ the transboundary governance of water via a mobile political ecology framing that emphasises not only the importance of riverine sand and sediments (and the impacts of their extraction) but the range of shifting livelihoods and resource users in the region and their potential role in transboundary debates. I do so with consideration of the ‘dual crises’ of climate change and the covid-19 pandemic, where challenges for water governance, and a need to expand participation, have become more pronounced.