Events

This conference is jointly organised by the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, the History Department, National University of Singapore, and the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity with support from a Faculty of Science-Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Collaborative Grant, National University of Singapore.

Southeast Asian habitats are home to some of the world’s richest centres of biodiversity. From Indonesian peatlands to Thai swamps and from Philippine lakes to Burmese mangroves, these habitats of heritage are sites of rare, endemic, migratory, and endangered species while at the same time serving as places of historical, social, and economic value. They provide essential ecosystem services as well as invaluable cultural services. Yet this “biodiversity heritage,” as we collectively call it, is in a state of crisis in Southeast Asia. Anthropogenic forces such as mega-urbanisation, infrastructure development, and industrial food production are rapidly converting peatlands into plantations, rivers into dammed-up waterways, and mangroves into mass aquaculture. The impact of these conversions—coupled with the effects of climate change—is grave for Southeast Asia’s flora and fauna and the communities that depend on them. But just as the entanglement of habitat losses, global extinctions, and local extirpations are on the rise in the region, so too is the urgent drive to map and know ecosystems, collect data on biological species, expand coverage of nature parks and protected reserves, and cultivate conservation awareness (and action) among publics and policymakers in Southeast Asia and beyond. Today’s regional biodiversity work is further bolstered and networked by a long history of inter-Asia connectivity, making this compelling work increasingly collaborative, interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, community-facing, and evidence-based.    

In partnership with the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), our conference will produce new insight into Southeast Asia’s peatlands, mangroves, and freshwater swamps. Building on our past ARI events, which highlighted practice and scholarship in invasion ecology (2020), Asian wet natures (2021), environmental humanities (2023), and biodiversity sciences (2023), this conference will create a platform for historians, biologists, anthropologists, park managers, museum curators, conservationists, community organizers, and others to report updates on the state and status of specific Southeast Asian habitats as well as provide cultural and historical analyses into their biodiversity heritage. By focusing on and framing the region’s peatlands, mangroves, and freshwater swamps as habitats of heritage, our conference (aptly titled) aims to foster a climate of inter-Asia engagement that spans disciplines, languages, methods, publics, and ecologies.

The conference will take place on 6 and 7 November 2024, followed by a closed-door session on 8 November 2024. 

CONFERENCE CONVENORS 

Dr Anthony D. Medrano | Yale-NUS College & Department of History, NUS
Dr Arvin Diesmos | ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, Philippines