The Journal of the Siam Society

Full issue

Chris Baker — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

E-book version

Chris Baker — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Chris Baker — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Introduction

Chris Baker — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Contributors

Chris Baker — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Acknowledgements and Thanks

Chris Baker — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

SEACHA

Chris Baker — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

From the Floating Lotus to Groot’s Wisdom

Chaiwat Satha-Anand — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The late ASEAN Secretary General, Surin Pitsuwan, had a yet to be realized dream of turning ASEAN from a relatively successful regional organization into a community. Given the heightened threats to human security coming from ecological problems, it is important to ponder the ways in which cultural treasures in Southeast Asia could help Southeast Asians, young and old, face these ecological threats as a community. To pursue this thesis, this paper is organized in five steps. First, it identifies the ecological threats in Southeast Asia in the forms of traditional elements, earth/soil, wind, fire, and water. Second, it examines the traditional epistemic grounds for knowledge and practices in dealing with nature. Third, it uses the ancient story of a wounded warrior discovering the Malay martial art of Silat to suggest solutions to these threats. Fourth, it reviews two successful cases of protecting nature in Southeast Asia, “yellow trees” in Thailand and “green mosques” in Indonesia. Finally, it turns to a successful Marvel movie for inspiration on how to achieve a new self-understanding to protect and foster human (and non-human) community.

Youth Presentations

Widya Amasara — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Prior to the conference, a search was made to identify youth leaders on climate change and related issues from all countries of ASEAN. In August 2022, twenty-four were brought together for a workshop in Bangkok. They elected Joshua Anak Belayan to give a conference keynote on their behalf, and they formed into four groups which each chose a topic to work into a presentation at the conference. Below is a lightly edited text of the keynote speech, and a summary of the four presentations.

Indigenous Art and the Biodiversity Crisis

Shaq Koyok — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Indigenous people and local communities play a vital role in the protection of land to foster biodiversity. Peatland is especially important for storage of carbon. Malaysia has a large area of peatland, including areas which are the traditional lands of the Orang Asli indigenous people. These lands are under threat from the development of highways, dams, ports, and plantations. As an artist, the author focuses on the fight of indigenous peoples to protect the land, their identity, and their way of life. Protecting indigenous land rights is a critical environmental strategy, a bottom-up approach to climate mitigation.

The Protection of Water and Livelihood in Two Communities in Sarawak

Jayl Langub — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The Penan and Lun Bawang communities practice sustainable management of natural resources in Sarawak. Both communities have a vocabulary which expresses simultaneously their claims to the usage of natural resources of the forests and rivers and their responsibility to conserve them for the future. Both communities pay special attention to the cleanliness of water which is vital for the production of their staple foods of sago and rice respectively. The arrival of logging companies since the late 1980s has resulted in contamination of the water. The Penan attempted to blockade logging roads and petition government while the Lun Bawang erected signage warning the loggers to stay away. These community lands merit definition as areas of High Conservation Value.

Community Forests as a Traditional Nature Based Solution to Climate Change in Myanmar

Tint Lwin Thaung — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly recognized by politicians, businesspeople, academics and donors as effective means to address climate change and biodiversity loss. Although NBS is a new terminology, it refers to ways that local people have used and managed natural resources for many years. In Myanmar, the traditional practice of shifting cultivation known as Taung Ya, under which farmers were allowed to cultivate crops in forested land while caring for the teak plantations, was well integrated with scientific forest management since the colonial days. The development of modern community forests dates back to the 1970s. These forests contribute to the supply of timber while also helping with mitigation and adaptation of climate change. Community forests are proven to sequester carbon, especially in mangrove areas. The market for carbon credits is being developed through improved policies and regulatory framework development. The experience in Myanmar has lessons for developing community forests as tangible and intangible cultural heritage which contributes to the mitigation of climate change.

Traditional Natural Resource Stewardship in Malaysia’s Rapidly Changing Landscape

Nurul Abdul Latif Salmi — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Malaysia is exceptionally rich in natural resources, especially in its forests. The indigenous peoples, known as Orang Asli, live in the forests and depend on their natural resources. One such group is the Temiar living in the forest on the Titiwangsa range. They view forest as Tuhad, the creator. They have accumulated indigenous knowledge on preserving the forest over centuries. Some of this knowledge is encapsulated in their calendar, known as Tahud. They observe rules on the timing of cultivation, on the hunting of animals, and on the extraction of resources. These rules ensure the survival of the forest for the future. As Malaysia has embraced development, many projects threaten the forests, especially the clear-cutting by logging companies. Deforestation affects other aspects of the ecosystem such as water supply, biodiversity, and the climate. For the indigenous peoples, forest is life so the loss of forest is like the loss of life. Some have been forced to migrate to the cities to work, and there they lose their indigenous knowledge. Some communities have defended their traditional lands by blockading the loggers, and getting help from lawyers and NGOs. It is vital to preserve, document, and mainstream this indigenous knowledge for the benefit of the indigenous communities, the nation, and the planet.

Karen Environmental Stewardship of Natural Resources

Suwichan Phatthanaphraiwan, Alexander Greene — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

In northern Thailand, state-driven discourse has often labeled diverse highland minority groups or “hill tribes” as destroyers of the forest, associated with the drug trade, and as non-indigenous migrants. The reality is far more complex. Indigenous groups such as the Karen practice sophisticated traditional ways of environmental stewardship. Specific sites and portions of community lands are set aside and protected from resource usage, including watershed forests, cemetery forests, and forests of spiritual protection where community members’ umbilical cords are ritually deposited. A series of complex and variable taboos regulate hunting activity, including bans on killing certain animals, restrictions and practices that limit waste and overuse. Portions of the landscape that are used for agriculture or resource extraction are carefully stewarded through a cyclical process of asking permission for the temporary use of the land, asking forgiveness for any misuse that may intentionally or unintentionally occur, and offering thanksgiving before ending the stewardship and returning the land to its true non-human owners. These three axes of Karen stewardship – permission, atonement and thanksgiving – comprise a “green circular cycle” that mediates reciprocal relations between human communities and non-human beings, spirits, and the land.

Heritage Conservation as Green Development at the George Town World Heritage Site

Gaik Siang Lim — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

George Town was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. The conservation of heritage buildings is based on the principles of green development. The characteristic shophouses, built since the 1790s, used locally sourced and eco-friendly materials such as clay bricks, terracotta tiles and timber in designs suitable to the climate, culture and geology to create naturally cool interiors with low energy use. Modern materials such as cement, concrete, steel, glass and plastic consume more energy in their production, are poorly suited to the climate and geology, and pose threats to traditional-style buildings. Conserving the heritage buildings using traditional materials and conforming to the traditional deisgn principles minimises the contribution to global warming and the depletion of the earth’s stock of natural materials.

Using Space Syntax to Rediscover Metro Manila’s Old Urbanism

Leandro Nicholas Rañoa Poco — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The sustainability of the built environment is reliant on the spatial configuration of our towns and cities. The post-war, car-centric suburban expansion of cities like Metro Manila must be retrofitted to adapt our built environment into something more sustainable and resilient to climate change and man-made disasters. New Urbanism distils concepts that can be used as best practices to retrofit suburbia and create new settlements that recall traditional towns and cities, but with mixed results. Some have argued that New Urbanism is historicist, and merely another way of creating new gated communities, while some have questioned the success of its application in retrofitting existing suburbs. An extension of New Urbanism is the discourse of the Fifteen-Minute City, which attracted renewed attention as a reaction to lockdowns brought about by the COVID pandemic. Distances covered by pedestrian and cycling journeys are used to define the Fifteen-Minute city. This paper uses space syntax, a set of techniques for analyzing urban space, to analyze the “old” urbanism of Metro Manila and discover the latent spatial configuration. The findings add some quantitative detail to the discourse on the Fifteen-Minute City and New Urbanism, which can guide the retrofitting of city-regions like Metro Manila. New Urbanism needs to learn quantitatively from “Old” Urbanism to rediscover how to create sustainable and resilient cities.

Architecture of Happiness

Nirmal Kishnani, Alakesh Dutta — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Hoang Thuc Hao’s projects, particularly the community buildings, ask what it means to be in Vietnam, what the transformative growth of recent years has meant to everyday lives. He is preoccupied with climatic response, local craft and materials, relationship between indoor and outdoor. He too seeks meaning, combining old and new, albeit not in the city but in rural Vietnam. Embedded within Hao’s reading of the zeitgeist, there is a position on the environment. Hao offers an implicit nod to the sustainability movement that has mushroomed in Vietnam since the 2010s. However, his worldview is rooted in the phenomenological, which contrasts with other green architects who rely mostly on technological solutions.

New Direction in the Culturally Inspired Urban Forms of Indonesia’s New Capital City of Nusantara

Sofian Sibarani, Diana Zerlina — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The plan to relocate Indonesia’s capital to Nusantara, Penajam Paser, Kalimantan Timur is a big leap in Indonesian history. Nusantara is visioned to represent Indonesia’s identity; establish social, economic, and environmental sustainability; and create a smart, modern, and international standard city (Smart Metropolis). Situated in the equator zone, Kalimantan Island, known also as Borneo, has a rain forest ecosystem with great biodiversity. Therefore, the relocation has sparked debate on deforestation in Borneo. From the contrary perspective, the existing environment of Nusantara is seen as an opportunity for Indonesia to forge an extraordinary example of city development that brings together nature and city as one ecosystem by rooting to Indonesia’s nature and cultural heritage, and by adopting advanced smart technology as enablers to create a city for the future. Nusantara is designed to respect and emulate the wisdom enshrined in the forests and culture of Indonesia. The axis principle of mountains and ocean in traditional Indonesian cosmology is used to create the city’s underlying structure. The tradition of stilt houses, the concept of veranda in tropical buildings, and provision of arcades for street vendors have been incorporated in the design in modern forms. This article describes the strategies and concepts underlying this new capital city of Nusantara.

Creating Safety and Beauty in the World Starting from Humans

Sri Ratna Saktimulya — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Cultural wisdom has a role in disaster management. Yogyakarta is situated in the Ring of Fire, prone to earthquake, tsunami, and eruption of nearby Mount Merapi. For centuries, people have been aware of the “bio-detectors” and “geo-detectors” that signal the approach of a disaster. However, such cultural wisdom is obscured by the rise of modern technological knowledge. The traditional Javanese cosmology positions humans as subordinate to the universe and its powerful forces. The traditional rulers of Yogyakarta strove to maintain harmony between human and human, human and nature, and between human and God. This cultural value is embodied in the ceremony of Labuhan, performed as a symbol of human gratitude towards God, nature, and the universe. Old manuscript accounts of fatal eruptions attribute the death toll to the failure of humans to respect their relations to God and nature. They also recount the efforts of past rulers to create harmony between the spirit of the sea, the spirit of the mountain, and the region of Yogyakarta through their own respect for nature and through management of their own attitude through meditation. By analogy, such attitude management on the part of everyone can achieve a more effective management of disasters in the present day. The watchword of Yogyakarta carried down from the past to the present is “creating safety and beauty in the world starting with humans.”

Animist Cosmology and Socio-cultural Practices among the Thái in Vietnam

Hoàng Cầm — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

This paper examines the main features of the animist cosmology of the Thái, an ethnic group of wet-rice cultivators in valleys in northwestern Vietnam and explores how this ontological stance influences their current socio-cultural practices. The Thái, like many other ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, conceive their surrounding as populated by a variety of spirits, including the spirits of mountains and forests (phii puu, phii paa), ancestors (đẳm pang), the spirit of the house (phii hươn), the spirit of rice (khoăn khảu), and the spirit of the rice terrace (khoăn naa). All spirits are thought of as having person-like features or personhood with full capacity of will, intention and agency. The relation between human being and these person-like sprits is divided but intersubjective. Unlike the classical understanding of animism, however, the spirits in the Thái cosmos, including ancestors and natural spirits, are not equal but are ranked along a hierarchical scale of power and agency. Although Thái animist practices were previously considered as “superstitious” and “backward’, this animist ontology continues to shape socio-cultural practices among the Thái, and is now considered part of heritage

Spiritual Connections to Nature and to Climate Change Action

Ven. Anil Sakya (Phra Dhammashakyavamshavisuddhi) — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The Anthropocene world has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and altered the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts. Human belief, spirituality, and practice mark the earth. One can hardly think of a natural system that has not been considerably altered, for better or worse, by human culture and spirituality. Budhism teaches that spiritual connections to nature and climate change action are inextricably linked and organically related.
The Buddhist canonical texts describe humanity’s relationship with the natural world under five laws (niyāma) which correspond to biosphere, biodiversity, will of mind, actions, and natural laws (dhamma). The Buddhist spirituality on anatta or “non-self” makes it clear that one cannot define “self” without “surrounding”, namely ecology. Buddhist spirituality teaches us to look at the planet earth as the interrelatedness of everything. Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me. Buddhist spirituality suggests human survival is only possible through sustaining the surrounding, the ecology. If we wish for a sustainable biosphere, we must live by the dharmic principle of self, sustenance, and surroundings with mindfulness.

Tri Hita Karana, a Spiritual Connection to Nature in Harmony

Catrini Pratihari Kubontubuh — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

The Balinese ancestors showed how to live in harmony with their natural environment, and how their traditional wisdom can mitigate the risk of natural disaster and the degradation now known as climate change. Today, the concept of harmony in Balinese Hinduism is not a relic of the past but part of people’s daily activities that will be passed on to the next generation. To illustrate the relationship between cultural heritage and climate change, this paper discusses the Balinese philosophy of Tri Hita Karana which promotes harmony in multiple ways: harmony among human beings through communal cooperation and friendship; harmony towards God, manifested in numerous rituals and offerings to the creator; and harmony with nature, through efforts to conserve the environment and promote sustainability and balance. Tri Hita Karana guides many aspects of Balinese life, from daily rituals to economic activities. Currently, efforts are needed to harness this philosophy in this era of urban development.

How Islamic Tradition Benefits Nature and Climate Change Action

Fachruddin M. Mangunjaya — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

This paper explores the contribution of Islamic tradition and teachings in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia, to benefit nature and climate change action. Indonesian Muslims follow the idea of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) based on the Imam Syafi’i school of thought, whose principles are practiced in daily life and provide many positive teachings on nature as God’s creation. Humans are regarded as the khilafah fil al ard, stewards of the earth, and the Qur’an teaches that God has created everything in the heavens and on earth as ayat, the sign of God. In Indonesia, organizations and scholars have explored the potential of Islamic teachings for climate action in the form of fatwas (verdicts) and for awakening the people’s awareness of climate change through religious lectures. Government officials and green activists have worked in partnership with the Ulama Council of Indonesia, Muslim leaders, and communities to issue important fatwas on certain issues including forest burning and the protection of wildlife. The Islamic principles of charity and finance, such as zakat, infaq, shadaqah and waqf as well as green sukuk (Islamic bonds), are also beginning to be mobilized for climate change action, including forest conservation. A Sumatra tradition of lubuk larangan has been applied to managing river environments. These examples show the potential of Islamic teaching to promote values important for combatting the climate crisis.

Nusantarazation

Mohammad Reevany Bustami — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Against the backdrop of the Nusantara Malay Archipelago’s history, the colonial legacy and the hegemony of colonial paradigms continue to dominate the present trajectories of social and political-economic realities. If this were to persist, Indonesia and Malaysia as a community of communities will continue being subjugated by these shackles of the colonial masters and can never be truly liberated to re-imagine and to realize their fullest potential based on their own mold. In this article, I examine three societal and environmental paradigms — namely the paradigm of space and property, the paradigm of knowledge, and the paradigm of development — critically examining the colonial legacies in each. I propose Nusantarazation as a discourse of decolonization and indigenization to counter the subjugating constructs by reintegrating solutions and practices from local wisdom and indigenous heritage, especially from socio-environmental ecology. In opposition to the Westphalian world-order, capitalist definitions of property, privatization and exploitation of resources, concentration of wealth, and epistemicide, I call on Nusantara perspectives of stewardship, shared spaces, commons, cultural heritage and local wisdom.

Elites, Climate Action and the Future

Pasuk Phongpaichit — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Like other Asian megacities, Bangkok is suffering from the “heat island” effect and from deteriorating air quality. While means to counteract these problems are well known, little has been done. The urban elite which dominates policy making has shown little interest in climate change, and seems confident in its ability to protect itself from its effects. By contrast, in the northern city of Chiang Mai, the persistent problem of haze prompted the formation of a broad-based coalition which planned innovative approach to managing forest to minimize fires. This case shows the importance of democratic process and coalition building for action to combat climate change. The coming generations will need to strengthen and exploit democratic process in order to supplant the old elite and institute policies to manage the impact of climate change.

The Journal of the Siam Society

Full issue

E-book version

Contents

Introduction

Contributors

Acknowledgements and Thanks

SEACHA

From the Floating Lotus to Groot’s Wisdom

Youth Presentations

Indigenous Art and the Biodiversity Crisis

The Protection of Water and Livelihood in Two Communities in Sarawak

Community Forests as a Traditional Nature Based Solution to Climate Change in Myanmar

Traditional Natural Resource Stewardship in Malaysia’s Rapidly Changing Landscape

Karen Environmental Stewardship of Natural Resources

Heritage Conservation as Green Development at the George Town World Heritage Site

Using Space Syntax to Rediscover Metro Manila’s Old Urbanism

Architecture of Happiness

New Direction in the Culturally Inspired Urban Forms of Indonesia’s New Capital City of Nusantara

Creating Safety and Beauty in the World Starting from Humans

Animist Cosmology and Socio-cultural Practices among the Thái in Vietnam

Spiritual Connections to Nature and to Climate Change Action

Tri Hita Karana, a Spiritual Connection to Nature in Harmony

How Islamic Tradition Benefits Nature and Climate Change Action

Nusantarazation

Elites, Climate Action and the Future