Events

This conference is organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, with support from Yale-NUS College.

Rapid biodiversity decline has imperiled not only nature’s capacity to provide essential ecosystem services, but also, and perhaps more gravely, society’s reliance on these vital services for food production, economic security, and global health. Human drivers have accelerated the loss of biodiversity, particularly since the turn of the twentieth century. As home to one of the world’s richest regions of terrestrial biodiversity as well as the planet’s foremost center of marine life—a unique biogeographical space known as the Coral Triangle—Southeast Asia and the West Pacific are at the heart of today’s environmental crisis and the catastrophic consequences posed by unprecedented biodiversity decline. Similar issues are also a concern for governments in other parts of Asia and for a variety of transnational companies, NGOs, and IGOs, such as the UN.

According to a recent UN report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, invasive species constitute one of the most serious drivers of ecosystem change and biodiversity loss across the Asia-Pacific region (IPBES (2018), Regional Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Asia and the Pacific: xii-xiii). From plants and animals to pathogens and microbes, invasive alien species have increased in number and abundance in Asia and the West Pacific region since the end of the nineteenth century, often traveling through trans-regional networks of trade, transport, and migration. These channels and infrastructures of mobility have expanded the spread of invasive ecologies, directly threatening island habitats, coastal edges, agricultural zones, and port cities. From Singapore’s estuarine waters and Vietnam’s upland forests to Chinese rivers and Japanese fishing grounds, alien forms of flora and fauna have become pervasive and notorious, impacting native biodiversity as well as ecosystem functioning and productivity (xxiv). For example, among scientists and policy-makers in the region and beyond, urgent attention has been drawn to how aquatic invasive species endanger—both ecologically and economically—the ocean’s food webs and critical fisheries. Moreover, a growing body of scientific evidence contends that climate change further compounds—in known and unknown ways—these complex risks especially in tropical Southeast Asia’s marine environment. In fact, recent research suggests that the annual economic loss attributed to invasive species is estimated at $33.5 billion in Southeast Asia (xxiv). And yet, our knowledge of invasive species—from understanding their histories to explaining their implications—remains uneven and fragmented across disciplines, languages, and regions.

This conference aims to foster a base of critical knowledge on the rise and the consequence of invasive ecologies in Asia and the West Pacific region. By bringing together scholars who work on alien species, biodiversity, and environmental transformations in water, land, and air, it seeks to cultivate a repository of policy-relevant information as well as a set of timely tools drawn from different intellectual, methodological, and cultural traditions. In this way, the conference will strengthen Singapore’s capacity for urgent environmental work by building inter-area and inter-disciplinary linkages through the study of invasive species. In the face of climate change and rapid biodiversity decline, the event plans to demonstrate how interactions between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities sharpen not only our forms of social and historical analysis, but also, and more importantly, it will emphasize the environmental humanities’ role in understanding biodiversity decline and for providing policy advise.   

REGISTRATION

Participation in the closed-door event is limited and by invitation only.
Kindly forward all enquiries to Ms Valerie Yeo at valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg.

CONFERENCE CONVENORS

Dr Stefan Huebner (Hübner) | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | arihust@nus.edu.sg

Dr Anthony D. Medrano | Yale-NUS College, Singapore
E | anthony.medrano@yale-nus.edu.sg