Events

This workshop is jointly organised by the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, Department of History, and Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS); and the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), Philippines. The event is also supported by the NUS Faculty of Science – Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Collaborative Grant.

Southeast Asian habitats are home to some of the world’s richest centres of biodiversity. From Indonesian lakes to Thai peatlands and from Philippine mangroves to Burmese swamps, 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 and invaluable cultural services too. Yet this biodiversity heritage 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 networked by a long history of inter-Asia connectivity, making this nature-based engagement increasingly collaborative, interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, community-facing, and data-driven.    

In partnership with the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, our workshop aims to produce new insight into Southeast Asia’s peatlands, mangroves, and freshwater swamps. In particular, it seeks to create a platform for biologists, historians, park managers, museum curators, conservationists, community organizers, and others to report updates on the state and status of Southeast Asian habitats as well as to provide cultural, scientific, and historical analyses into the region’s local biodiversity heritage. By framing and focusing on Southeast Asia’s peatlands, mangroves, and freshwater swamps as habitats of heritage, our forum hopes to foster new kinds of biodiversity conversations that span disciplines, languages, methods, publics, and ecologies.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this online talk have been sent out to registered attendees.
Please write to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.
Kindly note that in-person participation is by invitation only. However, the event will be open to all for online participation.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS 

Dr Anthony D. Medrano | Yale-NUS College & Department of History, National University of Singapore
Dr Arvin C. Diesmos | ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, Philippines
Dr Eunice Jingmei Tan | Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore
Assoc Prof Maitrii V. Aung-Thwin | Asia Research Institute & Department of History, National University of Singapore