Organizer: New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN)

Type/Location: Hybrid / New York, NY

Description:

This conference brings together scholars and practitioners to examine the politics of the environmental crisis across Southeast Asia—a region where socio-ecological ruptures are not aberrations but products of longstanding structures of extraction and governance failure. Panelists trace the roots of these crises and assess how extractive industries, increasingly legitimized through the language of green transitions and climate finance, reproduce entrenched patterns of dispossession and injustice. From nickel mining and biofuel expansion to sand dredging and flood aid corruption, the panels situate contemporary crises within deeper histories of resource conflict and structural inequality.

The conference foregrounds questions of resistance and accountability: what are communities, activists, and civil society organizations doing to contest new forms of ecological crisis? And what political conditions are necessary to advance climate action while achieving social and environmental justice? Beyond critical analysis, we seek insights into the strategies—legal, political, and grassroots—that have worked or might work to address Southeast Asia’s intertwined ecological and democratic crises.

Speakers:

• Ward Berenschot, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam

• Arthur Blundell, Natural Capital Advisers

• Pianporn (Pai) Deetes, Executive Director, Rivers and Rights

• Jessica DiCarlo, Assistant Professor School of Environment, Society & Sustainability, University of Utah

• Muhammad Naser El Haq, Rights CoLab

• Brian Eyler, Senior Fellow and Director, Southeast Asia and Energy, Water, & Sustainability Programs

• John Gershman, Clinical Professor of Public Service, Director of International Specialization, NYU Wagner

• Erik Harms, Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asia Studies, Chair, Council on Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University

• Thuy Ho, Department of Geography, Indiana University at Bloomington

• Sidney Jones, Program in International Relations, New York University

• Guinevere “Gwen” Latoza, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

• Yifei Li, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, NYU Shanghai

• Munawar Liza, Aceh Center for Peace and Development

• Danny Marks, Assistant Professor of Environmental Politics and Policy, Dublin City University

• Dian Patria, Indonesian Anti-Corruption Commission

• Natchaya Pichetsatha, Climate Change Policy Advisor and Environmental Justice Lawyer

• Frances Seymour, Senior Policy Advisor, Woodwell Climate Research Center, Yale School of the Environment

• Jewellord “Jojo” Nem Singh, Principal Research Fellow in Global Political Economy at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

• Dewi Suralaga, Lead Consultant for Indonesia Coordination, Climate, and Land Use Alliance

• Eve Warburton, Research Fellow, Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University

• Piyaporn Wongruang, Founder and Editor, The Bangkok Tribune

• Kevin Woods, Associate Researcher, Chulalongkorn University

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here for Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference.

To attend the event virtually, please fill out this pre-registration form. We will notify you when the Zoom registration forms are ready.