Southeast Asia and Oceania

How many countries are in Southeast Asia?

11 countries Southeast Asia is composed of eleven countries of impressive diversity in religion, culture and history: Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Indonesia is the largest and most populous country in Southeast Asia. Brunei Darussalam is the least populous country in Southeast Asia, and the region's only absolute monarchy. The region of Southeast Asia has attracted global attention for several decades because so many of its countries emerged poverty-stricken from World War II, only to embark on a rapid journey to relative prosperity. There have been ups and downs: difficulties in finding smooth paths to stable democratic processes and institutions; urbanization at too rapid a pace; and a tendency to rely on development strategies that carry grave environmental and social side effects. Some of this region's transitions are now emulated by other developing regions: rapid industrialization, expansion of the middle class, education for the masses, the empowerment of women, public health care, improved food security, and slower population growth.

How many countries are in Oceania?

14 countries Australia, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. . It is a unique world region in that it is composed primarily of ocean and covers the largest area of Earth's surface of any region, yet it is home to only 40 million people, the vast majority of whom live in Australia (23.9 million), Papua New Guinea (7.7 million), and New Zealand (4.6 million). In this book, we also include the U.S. state of Hawaii (1.4 million) in Oceania. Altogether, the thousands of other Pacific islands are home to only 3 million people. The Pacific Ocean is both a uniting feature and a barrier: the vast ocean serves as a link that unites Oceania as a region, profoundly influencing life even on dry land, but across the region, the ocean also acts as a biological and cultural barrier. Obviously, upon looking at the map, Australia is the largest landmass here. It is not considered an island, rather a continent.

How many people live in Oceania?

A number of factors are influencing population growth in Oceania; among them are important issues related to gender. While there is a trend toward equality across gender lines throughout Oceania, persistent gender inequality exists as well. A striking disparity is emerging between Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii on the one hand (where women are gaining political and economic power), and Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands on the other hand (where change is much slower). In Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, where opportunities for women have improved, fertility rates are low at 1.9, well below replacement rates. In the islands, where opportunities for women are fewer, fertility rates range between 2.3 and 4.7. Another and closely related factor affecting population growth is the age of the populations. On some of the poorer Pacific islands, close to 40 percent of the population is under the age of 15. So even if people decide to limit fertility, populations are likely to grow because a large proportion is just reaching reproductive age. This is not the case in Australia, New Zealand, and a few more wealthy islands, where just 20 percent is under age 15. Population numbers and distribution: Although Oceania occupies a huge portion of the planet, its total population is only 40 million people, close to that of the state of California (38 million). The people of Oceania live on a total land area slightly larger than the contiguous United States but spread out in bits and pieces across an ocean larger than the Eurasian landmass. The Pacific islands have nearly 4.75 million people, including Hawaii's 1.43 million; Australia has 23.9 million; Papua New Guinea, 7.7 million; and New Zealand, 4.6 million. Population densities remain low in Australia, at 7.8 people per square mile (3 per square kilometer) for the country as a whole and about 130 per square mile (50 per square kilometer) on Australia's arable land. New Zealand's arable land density is quite a bit higher, at 2064.4 people per square mile (794 per square kilometer). In the Pacific islands, densities vary widely. Some are sparsely settled or uninhabited, while others—including some of the smallest, poorest, and lowest in elevation (which are thus some of the most exposed to rising sea levels) —are extremely densely populated. For example, French Polynesia, in the eastern Pacific, and Palau, in Micronesia (see Figure 11.1), have 26,689 and 4625 people, respectively, per square mile (10,265 and 1779, respectively, per square kilometer).

Why did Southeast Asia struggled for independence?

Agitation against colonial rule began in the late nineteenth century when Filipinos fought first against Spain in 1896. They then resisted control by the United States, which began in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. However, the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia did not win independence until after World War II. By then, Europe's ability to administer its colonies had been weakened by the devastation of the war, during which Japan had conquered most of the parts of Southeast Asia that had been controlled by Europe and the United States. Japan held these lands until it was defeated by the United States at the end of the war. By the mid-1950s, the colonial powers had granted self-government to most of the region, and all of Southeast Asia was independent by 1975. The Vietnam War: The bitterest battle for independence took place in French Indochina (the territories of presentday Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), acquired by France in the nineteenth century. Although all three became nominally independent in 1949, France retained political and economic power over them. Various nationalist leaders, most notably Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, headed resistance movements against continued French domination. After failed diplomatic efforts in Europe and the United States, the resistance leaders accepted military assistance from Communist China and the Soviet Union, despite ancient antipathies toward China for its previous millennia of domination. In this way, the Cold War was brought to mainland Southeast Asia. In 1954, Ho Chi Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam. The United States stepped in because it had become worried about the spread of international communism should the anticolonial resisters, now supported by communists, succeed. The domino theory— the idea that if one country "falls" to communism, other nearby countries will follow—was a major influence in this decision, because both North Korea and China had recently become communist. The Vietnamese resistance, which controlled the northern half of the country, attempted to wrest control of the southern half of Vietnam from the U.S.-supported and quite corrupt South Vietnamese government. The pace of the war accelerated in the mid-1960s. After many years of brutal conflict, public opinion in the United States forced a U.S. hasty withdrawal from the conflict in 1973. The civil war continued in Vietnam, finally ending in 1975, when the North defeated the South and established a new national government. More than 4.5 million people died during the Vietnam War, including more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers. Another 4.5 million on both sides were wounded, and bombs, napalm, and chemical defoliants ruined much of the Vietnamese environment. Land mines continue to be a hazard to this day, and the effects of the highly toxic defoliant known as Agent Orange are still causing debilitating birth defects among many rural Vietnamese and Laotian people. The withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 ranks as one of the most profound military defeats in U.S. history. After the war, the United States crippled Vietnam's recovery by imposing severe economic sanctions that lasted until 1993. Since then, however, the United States and Vietnam have developed a significant trade relationship. The "Killing Fields" in Cambodia: In Cambodia, where the Vietnam War had spilled over the border, a particularly violent revolutionary faction called the Khmer Rouge seized control of the government in 1975. Inspired by the vision of a rural communist society, they attempted to destroy virtually all traces of European influence. They targeted Western-educated urbanites in particular, forcing them into labor camps where more than 2 million Cambodians—one-quarter of the population—starved or were executed in what became known as the "Killing Fields." In 1979, Vietnam deposed the Khmer Rouge and, until 1989, ruled Cambodia through a puppet government. A 2-year civil war then ensued. Despite major UN efforts throughout the 1990s to establish a multiparty democracy in Cambodia, the country remained plagued by political tensions between rival factions and by government corruption. In March 2009, Kang Kek Iew, the first of the Khmer Rouge leaders to be tried for war crimes and genocide, was forced to listen to and watch lengthy accounts of the torture of men, women, and children that he supervised. He was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Most operatives in the killing fields will never be prosecuted.

What is the climate like in Oceania?

Although the Pacific Ocean stretches almost from pole to pole, most of the land of Oceania is situated within the Pacific's tropical and subtropical latitudes. The tepid water temperatures of the central Pacific bring mild climates year-round to nearly all the inhabited parts of the region. The southernmost reaches of Australia and New Zealand have the widest seasonal variations in temperature. Moisture and Rainfall: With the exception of the vast arid interior of Australia, much of Oceania is warm and humid nearly all the time. New Zealand and the high islands of the Pacific receive copious rainfall; before human settlement, they supported dense forest vegetation. Now, after 1000 years of human impact, much of that forest is gone. Travelers approaching New Zealand, either by air or by sea, often notice a distinctive long white cloud that stretches above the north island. Seven hundred years ago, early Maori settlers (members of the Polynesian group) also noticed this phenomenon and they named that place Aotearoa, "land of the long white cloud," a name that is now applied to all of New Zealand. The cloud is the result of particularly high winds, complex landforms, and moist conditions. The legendary Roaring Forties (named for the 40th parallel south) are powerful air and ocean currents that speed around the Southern Hemisphere (usually between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees) virtually unimpeded by landmasses. These westerly winds (winds that blow west to east), which are responsible for Aotearoa's distinctive moist cloud, deposit a drenching 130 inches (330 centimeters) of rain per year in the New Zealand highlands and more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) per year on the coastal lowlands. At the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island, the wind averages more than 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers per hour) nearly 120 days per year. Farmers in the area stake their cabbages to the ground so the plants will not blow away. El Nino: The El Nino phenomenon, a pattern of shifts in the circulation of air and water in the Pacific that occurs irregularly every 2 to 7 years. Although these cyclical shifts, or oscillations, are not yet well understood, scientists have worked out a model of how the oscillations may occur. The El Niño event of 1997-1998 illustrates the effects of this phenomenon. By December 1997, the island of New Guinea had received very little rainfall for almost a year. Crops failed, springs and streams dried up, and fires broke out in tinder-dry forests. The cloudless sky allowed heat to radiate up and away from elevations above 7200 feet (2200 meters), so temperatures at high elevations dipped below freezing at night for stretches of a week or more. Tropical plants died, and people unaccustomed to chilly weather became ill. Meanwhile, at the other end of the system, along the Pacific coasts of North, Central, and South America, the warmer-than-usual weather brought unusually strong storms, high ocean surges, and damaging wind and rainfall. In the 1980s, an opposite pattern in which normal weather conditions become intensified, was identified and named La Nina. It is now understood that La Nina patterns can bring unusually severe precipitation events (including tornadoes and blizzards) to places from the Indian Ocean to North America. La Nina is thought to have played a role in the major floods of 2010-2011 in Queensland, Australia, which were especially damaging because they followed a lengthy El Nino-connected drought.

How did Oceania deal with the refugee problem?

As Australia and New Zealand struggled to find a way to address the overflow and simultaneously maintain their own social cohesion, they devised the controversial Pacific Solution to handle undocumented asylum-seekers—a solution that, when it was first proposed in 2001, was regarded by the international community as racist and inappropriate. Similarly viewed in the present, the Pacific Solution mandates that undocumented asylum-seekers—those who have exceeded both countries' limited quotas—be held in detention centers in Nauru and on an outlying small island off Papua New Guinea. Basic food and shelter are supplied and basic education is provided for the children, but for the adults, who range from physicians and teachers and technologists to unschooled farmhands, there is little to do and no future to look forward to. In April 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea declared the detention center (then holding more than 1300 people) illegal and subject to closure. Australia and New Zealand's controversial approach to the excess number of undocumented immigrants.

How did Oceania globalize and develop?

As the Pacific islands have become more connected to the global economy over the years, many unique species of plants and animals were driven to extinction as the islands were deforested and mined or converted to commercial agriculture. This has been the case in Hawaii, which is home to more threatened or endangered species than any other U.S. state, despite having less than 1 percent of the U.S. landmass. The extensive conversion of tropical Hawaiian forests to export crops, such as sugar cane and pineapples, has caused the extinction of numerous plant, bird, and land species Mining in Papua New Guinea and Nauru: Mining has rendered the islanders of Oceania losers in three ways: foreign-owned mining companies that took advantage of poorly enforced or nonexistent environmental laws are responsible for major environmental damage. In the Ok Tedi Mine on Papua New Guinea, 80 million tons of mine waste devastated river systems. The environmental degradation forced tens of thousands of indigenous subsistence cultivators into new mining market towns, where their horticulture skills were of little use and where they needed cash to buy food and pay rent. Also, most of the profits of mining go to foreign-owned mining companies, while the best-paying mining jobs go to outsiders. In 2007, thirty thousand Papua New Guinea people sued the Australian parent mining company, which was then BHP Billiton, for U.S.$4 billion. Two villagers, Rex Dagi and Alex Maun, traveled to Europe and the United States to explain their cause and meet with international environmental groups. They and their supporters convinced U.S. and German partners in the Ok Tedi Mine to divest their shares. However, the story of mining disasters in Oceania is extensive. The most extreme case of environmental damage caused by mining took place on the once densely forested Melanesian island of Nauru, which is one-third the size of Manhattan and located northeast of the Solomon Islands. Nauru: Nauru's wealth was once legendary, based on proceeds from the strip-mining of high-grade phosphates derived from eons of bird droppings (guano) that are used to manufacture fertilizer. The phosphate mining companies were owned first by Germany, then Japan, and finally Australia. For a time in the early 1970s, Nauru had the highest per capita income in the world (although not distributed equitably). Today, the phosphate reserves are nearly depleted, the proceeds have been ill spent, and the environment destroyed. Junked mining equipment sits on miles of bleached white sand where forest once stood. Instead, Nauru now serves as a detention camp for more than 500 asylum-seekers from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Rohinga). Nauru has become part of Australia's controversial offshoring policy for those seeking asylum, called the Pacific Solution. Tourism: Even tourism, which until recently was considered a "clean" industry, can create environmental problems. Foreign-owned tourism enterprises not only take the profits from tourism home and leave the stress and many other social costs of tourism to be absorbed by local communities, they often accelerate the loss of wetlands and worsen beach erosion by clearing coastal vegetation for hotel construction, golf courses, and waterfront-related entertainment. Tourism has also strained island water resources because of showering, laundering, and other services that consume fresh water. Furthermore, inadequate methods of disposing of sewage and trash from resorts have polluted many once-pristine areas. Ecotourism aimed at reducing these impacts is now a common element of development throughout the Pacific, but environmental impacts from ecotourism are still generally high

What type of government exists?

Authoritarian Tendencies: Some Southeast Asian leaders, such as Singapore's former prime minister, the late Lee Kuan Yew, have said that Asian values are not compatible with Western ideas of democracy and political freedom. Lee asserted that Asian values are grounded in the Confucian view that individuals should be submissive to authority; therefore Asian countries should avoid the highly contentious public debate of open electoral politics. Nevertheless, despite the high respect accorded Lee (the world's longest-serving prime minister), when confronted with governments that abuse their power, people throughout Southeast Asia have not submitted but rather have rebelled. Even in Singapore, the Western-educated son of Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister, has expressed more interest in the growth of political freedoms than his father did. While authoritarianism seems to be giving way to more political freedom and regular elections, these processes are often complicated by corruption and violent state repression of political movements. For example, after being plagued with a history of colonialism under the Spanish, then military occupation by the United States from 1898 to 1946 (the U.S. maintained a large military base until 1991), and a long line of dictators throughout the twentieth century, the Philippines has now elected governments that have resolved some significant problems in the north. However, in a long-standing confrontation with Muslim militants in the southern islands, the government has been reluctant to compromise and the militants have continued their insurgency, periodically resorting to violence. Constitutional Monarchy: Thailand, a constitutional monarchy, was regarded for some years as the most stable democracy in the region, despite its record of numerous coups d'etat. It was always a fragile democracy because of deep divisions between those who favored authoritarianism (including the monarchy, many among the economic elites, and the military) and those who were part of or supported the large populist political movement advocated by the political party Pheu Thai. In 2006, the military took over Thailand's government after a corrupt but charismatic prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was implicated in several scandals. In 2011, Shinawatra's sister, Yingluck, was elected prime minister, with overwhelming support from her brother's supporters. But in 2014, in the twelfth coup d'état since 1932, she was removed from power. She was tried on corruption charges when the military once again seized control of the government. The military suspended the constitution, declared martial law, reduced the power of political parties, and imposed censorship of the Internet and the media. Urban prosperous elites, dominant in Bangkok and to the west and south of the country, favor the authoritarian military government, while a large and vocal rural majority north and east of Bangkok coalesces around what is best characterized as an uncompromising version of populist absolutism. Thailand remains in political transition: a new constitution has not yet been approved (2016) and legislative elections are not expected until the middle of 2017. Other: Other countries are also struggling to find a balance between meeting demands for more political freedoms and relying on authoritarianism to create stability. Cambodia's democracy is precarious because of widespread and entrenched corruption, and violence there is common. The wealthier and usually stable countries of Malaysia and Singapore continue to use authoritarian versions of democracy that impose severe limitations on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Across the region, when more democratically oriented governments fail to keep the peace, authoritarianism, often backed by a strong military, is seen as a justified counterforce to "too much" democracy. In virtually every country, the military has been called on to restore civil calm after periods of civil disorder. Military rank is highly regarded and many top elected officials have had military careers. Very recently, authoritarianism has been challenged by political reform in Burma (Myanmar) where numerous regional ethnic minorities and pro-democracy movements have been repressed with an iron fist for decades. A gradual expansion of political freedoms has been taking place in Burma (Myanmar), as evidenced by the recent freeing of political prisoners such as Aung San Suu Kyi (who has led antimilitary protests and was under house arrest for 15 of the years between 1989 and 2010), a reduction in restrictions on the press, and more or less free elections in 2015. The military, calling these changes "disciplined democracy," still holds an unelected 25 percent of parliamentary seats, has the constitutional right to appoint key ministry positions (defense, home affairs, and border affairs), and must approve all changes to the constitution. But political change appears to be coming in Burma (Myanmar), and the country's economy is already anticipating transformation. Little political reform is taking place in Laos and Vietnam, where authoritarian socialist regimes have a firm grip on power; or in Brunei, which is governed by an authoritarian sultanate. For these and other reasons, authoritarianism is likely to remain a powerful force in the politics of this region for some time.

How is the economy in Southeast Asia?

Beginning in the 1960s, some national governments in Southeast Asia were able to create strong and sustained economic expansion by emulating two strategies for economic growth pioneered earlier by Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. One was the formation of state-aided market economies. That is, national governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and to some extent the Philippines intervened strategically in financial institutions to make sure that certain economic sectors developed; in addition, investment by foreigners was limited so that the governments could have more control over the direction of the economy. The other strategy was export-led economic development, which focused investment on industries that manufactured products for export, primarily to developed countries. These strategies amounted to a limited and selective embrace of globalization in that global markets for the region's products were sought but foreign sources of capital were not. These approaches were a dramatic departure from those used in other developing areas. In Middle and South America and parts of Africa, postcolonial governments relied on import substitution industries that produced low-quality manufactured goods mainly for local use. By contrast, export-led growth allowed Southeast Asia's industries to produce high-quality goods and to earn much more money in the vastly larger markets of the developed world. Standards of living increased markedly, especially in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. Other important results of Southeast Asia's success were a decrease in wealth disparities and improvements in vital statistics—lower infant and maternal mortality, longer life expectancy, and lower population growth. By the 1990s, Southeast Asian countries had some of the highest economic growth rates in the world. The growth was based on an economic strategy that emphasized the export of manufactured goods—initially clothing and then more sophisticated technical products. Export Processing Zones: In the 1970s, some governments in the region began adopting an additional strategy for encouraging economic development. This time, they sought foreign sources of capital, but the places in which those sources could invest were limited to specially designated free trade areas. Such export processing zones are places in which foreign companies can set up their facilities using inexpensive, locally available labor to produce items only for export. (Maquiladoras in Mexico are an example of companies set up by foreign firms.) Taxes are eliminated or greatly reduced as long as the products are re-exported (not sold within the country). Since the 1970s, EPZs have expanded economic development in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and are now used widely in China and Middle and South America, and to a lesser extent in sub-Saharan Africa. Economic Downtown: Periodically, economic crises have swept through this region, with varying effects on society. For example, in the late 1990s as part of an effort to open up national economies to the free market, and with a general push from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Southeast Asian governments relaxed controls on the financial sector, which had traditionally been highly regulated. Soon, Southeast Asian banks were flooded with money from investors in the rich countries of the world who hoped to profit from the region's growing economies. Flush with cash and newfound freedoms, the banks often made reckless decisions. For example, bankers made risky loans to real estate developers, often for high-rise office building construction. As a result, many Southeast Asian cities soon had far too much office space, with millions of investment dollars tied up in projects that contributed little to economic development. One of the forces that led bankers to make such bad decisions was a kind of corruption known as crony capitalism. In most Southeast Asian countries, as elsewhere, corruption is related to the close personal and family relationships between high-level politicians, bankers, and wealthy business owners. In Indonesia, for example, the most lucrative government contracts and business opportunities were reserved for the children of former president Suharto, who ruled the country from 1967 to 1997. His children became some of the wealthiest people in Southeast Asia. This kind of corruption expanded considerably with the new foreign investment money, much of which was diverted to bribery or unnecessary projects that brought prestige to political leaders. The cumulative effect of crony capitalism and the lifting of controls on banks was that many ventures failed to produce any profits at all. In response, foreign investors panicked, withdrawing their money on a massive scale. In 1996, before the crisis, there was a net inflow of U.S.$94 billion to Southeast Asia's leading economies. In 1997, inflows had ceased and there was a net outflow of U.S.$12 billion. This financial debacle forced millions of people into poverty and changed the political order in some countries. There were also some geographic aspects to the crisis: the banks involved were located primarily in Singapore and the major cities of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These were the countries to feel the immediate effects of the crisis. While urban areas were hit hardest, eventually the effects filtered into the hinterland, and workers lost jobs even in remote areas. The IMF Bailout and its Aftermath: The IMF made a major effort to keep the region from sliding deeper into recession by instituting reforms designed to make banks more responsible in their lending practices. The IMF also required structural adjustment policies (SAPs), which required countries to cut government spending (especially on social services for poor people, such as health care and education) and abandon policies intended to protect domestic industries. After several years of economic chaos and much debate over whether the IMF bailout and accompanying SAPs helped or hurt a majority of Southeast Asians, economies began to recover. In the largest of the region's economies, growth resumed by 1999; by 2006, the crisis had been more or less overcome. But the crisis of 1997-2006 remains an ominous reminder of the risks of globalization, and was the impetus to reform the SAP policies once so popular with the IMF Impact of China's Growth: During the Southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997-2006, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand lost out to China in attracting new industries and foreign investors. By the early 2000s, China attracted more than twice as much foreign direct investment (FDI) as Southeast Asia. However, China's growth also became an opportunity for Southeast Asia. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines "piggy-backed" on China's growth by winning large contracts to upgrade China's infrastructure in areas such as wastewater treatment, gas distribution, and shopping mall development. Southeast Asia has also used its comparative advantages over China to attract investment to itself. In poorer countries, such as Vietnam, wages have remained lower than in China. This has attracted investments in low-skill manufacturing that had been going to China. Some of the region's wealthier countries—Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand—have been positioning themselves as locations that offer more highly skilled labor and better high-tech infrastructure than China does.

How is labor feminized in Southeast Asia?

Between 80 and 90 percent of the workers in the EPZs are women, not only in Southeast Asia but in other world regions as well. The feminization of labor has been a distinct characteristic of globalization over the past three decades. Employers prefer to hire young, single women because they are perceived as the least expensive, least troublesome employees. Statistics do show that, generally, women across the globe will work for lower wages than men, will not complain about poor and unsafe working conditions, will accept being restricted to certain jobs on the basis of sex, and are not as likely as men to agitate for promotions; though, of course, there are many exceptions. In general, the benefits of Southeast Asia's "economic miracle" have been unequally apportioned. In the region's new factories and other enterprises, it is not unusual for assemblyline employees to work 10 to 12 hours per day, 7 days per week for less than the legal minimum wage and without benefits. Labor unions that typically would address working conditions and wage grievances are frequently repressed by governments, and international consumer pressure to improve working conditions at U.S.-based companies has been only partially effective. For example, the U.S.-based shoe company Nike has tried to sidestep the entire issue of customer complaints for years by outsourcing its manufacturing to non-U.S. contractors in the region. U.S. fair labor NGOs pursued one Nike subcontractor in Jakarta, Indonesia, where for 19 years workers were forced to work an extra hour every day without pay. The NGOs filed a lawsuit against the subcontractor, which they won, resulting in a $1 million settlement that will give the 4500 workers $222 each. However, given that there are more than 160,000 workers for Nike subcontractors in Indonesia alone, this settlement is but a drop in the bucket. A much more powerful force that is improving working conditions and driving up pay is the growth of the service sector throughout the region. Many service sector jobs require at least a high school education, and competition for hiring these educated workers means that wages and working conditions are already better than in manufacturing and are likely to improve faster. The service sector now dominates the economy as a percentage of GDP and as percentage of employment in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In all other countries except Timor-Leste and Brunei, the service sector accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP, though agriculture still employs more than a majority of workers in Burma (Myanmar), Laos, and Timor-Leste. In other countries in the region, the service sector is approaching parity with the industrial sector as a percent of GDP and of employment. Only in Brunei is the industrial sector still dominant; there it is entirely based on oil production. In Timor-Leste, oil is the mainstay of GDP but employs only 10 percent of the population. Sixty-four percent of the people in Timor-Leste work in agriculture, which produces only 6 percent of the GDP.

What are some landforms that can be seen in Oceania?

Continent Formation: The largest landmass in Oceania is the ancient continent of Australia at the southwestern edge of the region. The Australian continent is partially composed of some of the oldest rock on Earth and has been relatively stable for more than 200 million years, with very little volcanic activity and only an occasional mild earthquake. Australia was once a part of the great landmass called Gondwana that formed the southern part of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea. What became present-day Australia broke free from Gondwana and drifted until it eventually collided with the part of the Eurasian Plate on which Southeast Asia sits. That impact created the mountainous island of New Guinea to the north of Australia. Great Barrier Reef: Off the northeastern coast of the continent lies the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world and a World Heritage Site since 1981. It stretches along the coast of Queensland in an irregular arc for more than 1250 miles (2000 kilometers), covering 135,000 square miles (350,000 square kilometers). The Great Barrier Reef is so large that it influences Australia's climate by interrupting the westward-flowing ocean currents in the mid-South Pacific circulation pattern. Warm water is shunted to the south, where it warms the southeastern coast of Australia. Island Formation: The islands of the Pacific were (and are still being) created by a variety of processes related to the movement of tectonic plates. The islands found in the western reaches of Oceania— including New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the main islands of Fiji—are remnants of the Gondwana landmass; they are large, mountainous, and geologically complex. Other islands in the region are volcanic in origin and form part of the Ring of Fire. Many in this latter group are situated in boundary zones where tectonic plates are either colliding or pulling apart. The Hawaiian Islands were produced through another form of volcanic activity associated with hot spots, places where particularly hot magma moving upward from Earth's core breaches the crust in tall plumes. Over the past 80 million years, the Pacific Plate has moved across these hot spots, creating a string of volcanic formations 3600 miles (5800 kilometers) long. The youngest volcanoes, only a few of which are active, are on or near the islands known as Hawaii. Volcanic islands exist in three forms: volcanic high islands, low coral atolls, and makatea (sometimes called seamounts), which are coral platforms raised or uplifted by volcanism. High islands are usually volcanoes that rise above the sea into mountainous rocky formations that contain a rich variety of environments because of their varying height and rugged landscapes. New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, Mo'orea, and Easter Island are examples of high islands. An atoll is a low-lying island or chain of islets, formed of coral reefs that have built up on the rim of a submerged volcanic crater. . Because of their low elevation, atoll islands tend to have only a small range of environments and very limited supplies of fresh water

What is the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN)?

During the 1980s and 1990s, Southeast Asian countries traded more with China and the rich countries of the world than they did with each other. This issue of insufficient trade between Southeast Asian countries was the reason behind the creation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization of Southeast Asian nations that has grown in strength over the years. The ASEAN member countries are Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; candidate members are Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. Close associates of ASEAN are China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States. Regional Integration: ASEAN started in 1967 as an anti-Communist, anti-China association, but it now focuses on agreements that strengthen regional cooperation, including agreements with China. One example is the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone Treaty signed in December 1995. Another is the ASEAN Economic Community, or AEC, a trade bloc patterned after the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union, which was formalized on December 31, 2015. Now, ASEAN focuses on increasing trade between members of the association. ASEAN has also ratified free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, and is a major participant in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations (not yet ratified by the United States and other countries, as of 2016). The total intraregional trade between ASEAN countries in 2014 was more than trade with any other outside country or region; ASEAN countries represented 22.5 percent of total imports and 25.5 percent of total exports. By 2015, ASEAN was addressing a variety of other issues that were aimed at encouraging such things as the free flow of services, skilled labor, investment, and capital between countries. ASEAN's overall stated goals are to develop a sustainable regional economic community that protects consumers and intellectual property rights and levels the playing field for competition. Regional Inequalities: For all the emphasis on regional integration, the fact is that the 11 countries in the region of Southeast Asia vary widely in levels of economic development, as alluded to in the discussion above of the uneven performance in the growth of the service sector. Perhaps most telling are figures on gross national income (GNI) per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). Singapore, the smallest country, has a per capita GNI (PPP) of U.S.$80,270, one of the highest such figures in the world. The poorest country in the region is Cambodia, with a per capita GNI (PPP) of just U.S.$3080, one of the lowest such figures. Statistics on other aspects of human well-being are similarly divergent. Part of the divergence in development and well-being is related to the variations in size and geographic features of countries in the region, but it is interesting to note that despite efforts at regional trade integration, there has been little region-wide effort to decrease the gross disparities in levels of development among ASEAN member states. There is no central bureaucracy similar to that in Brussels in the European Union, no agency like the European Commission that works toward social cohesion for the entire region; and there are no standards for financial transparency. Tourism: International tourism is an important and rapidly growing economic activity in most Southeast Asian countries. Between 1991 and 2014, the number of intra-and extra ASEAN tourists went from about 20 million to 105 million. As in other trade matters, Southeast Asians are themselves increasingly engaging with neighboring countries (FIGURE 10.17). This is a positive trend because familiarity between neighbors lays the groundwork for various forms of regional cooperation, including business ventures, cultural exchanges, law enforcement, and infrastructure improvements. In response to its popularity with global and regional tourists, ASEAN members have been working to improve the region's transportation infrastructure. One such project is the Asian Highway, a web of standardized roads that loops through the mainland and connects it with Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (the latter by ferry. Eventually, the Asian Highway will facilitate ground travel through 32 Eurasian countries, from Russia to Indonesia and from Turkey to Japan.The surge of tourism in Southeast Asia is welcomed, but it also raises concerns about becoming too dependent on an industry that leaves economies vulnerable to events that precipitously stop the flow of visitors (natural disasters, political upheavals), or that leave local people vulnerable to the sometimes destructive demands of tourists. Examples of disasters are the tsunami of December 2004 that killed several thousand people in Thailand and Indonesia, many of whom were international tourists; the giant typhoon, Haiyan, in the Philippines in 2013; and various human-made disasters, such as the terrorist bombings in Bali (2002, 2005) and in southern Thailand (2006, 2012). In addition, tourism can divert talent from contributing to national development.

What are some sociocultural issues in Oceania?

Ethnic Roots: Until very recently, most people of European descent in Australia and New Zealand thought of themselves as Europeans in exile. Many considered their lives incomplete until they had made a pilgrimage to the British Isles or the European continent. In her book An Australian Girl in London (1902), Louise Mack wrote: "[We] Australians [are] packed away there at the other end of the world, shut off from all that is great in art and music, but born with a passionate craving to see, and hear and come close to these [European] great things and their home[land]s." These longings for Europe were accompanied by racist attitudes toward both indigenous peoples and Asians. Most histories of Australia written in the early twentieth century failed to even mention the Aboriginal people, and later writings described them as amoral. At midcentury, there were numerous projects to take Aboriginal children from their parents and acculturate them to European ways in boarding schools known for abuse and brutality. From the 1920s to the 1960s, whites-only immigration policies barred Asians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders from migrating to Australia and discouraged them from entering New Zealand. As we have seen, trading patterns in that era further reinforced connections to Europe. Weaking of the European Connection: displaced by the war. Hundreds of thousands came from Greece, Italy, and what was then Yugoslavia. The arrival of these non-English-speaking people initiated a shift toward a more multicultural society. Eventually, the whites-only immigration policy was abandoned and people began to arrive from many places. There was an influx of Vietnamese refugees in the early 1970s during the frantic exodus that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. More recently, skilled workers from India and elsewhere in Asia have been helping to meet the growing demand for information technology (IT) specialists throughout the service sector. As of 2015, 30 percent of the Australian population was foreign-born. The fastest-growing group was from India. Nevertheless, while new immigration policies are increasing the numbers of immigrants from China, Vietnam, and India, people of Asian birth or ancestry remain a small percentage of the total population in both Australia and New Zealand. In 2010, the latest year for which statistics are available, at least 26 percent of Australia's foreign-born residents were from Europe and 18 percent from Asia. New Zealand has similar proportions among its foreign-born residents, and most immigrants continue to come from Europe. Although (because of low birth rates and high immigration rates) Europeans are slowly decreasing as a percentage of the population in both Australia and New Zealand, they are projected to still constitute two-thirds or more of both countries' populations by 2021. The Social Repositioning of Indigenous Peoples in Australia and New Zealand: Perhaps the most interesting population change in Australia and New Zealand is one of identity. For the first time in 200 years, the number of people in both countries who claim indigenous origins is increasing. Between 1991 and 1996, the number of Australians claiming Aboriginal origins rose by 33 percent. By 2009, the Aboriginal population was estimated at 528,600. In New Zealand, the number claiming Maori background rose by 20 percent (to 652,900) between 1991 and 2009. These increases are mostly due to changing identities, not to a population boom. More positive attitudes toward indigenous peoples have encouraged the open acknowledgment of Aboriginal or Maori ancestry. Also, marriages between European and indigenous peoples are now more common. As a result, the number of people with a recognized mixed heritage is increasing. As society has acknowledged that discrimination has been the main reason for the low social standing and impoverished state of indigenous peoples, respect for Aboriginal and Maori culture has also increased. The Aboriginal Australians base their way of life on the idea that the spiritual and physical worlds are intricately related. The dead are present everywhere in spirit, and they guide the living in how to relate to the physical environment. Much Aboriginal spirituality refers to the Dreamtime, the time of creation when the human spiritual connections to rocks, rivers, deserts, plants, and animals were made clear. However, very few Aboriginal people continue to practice their own cultural traditions or live close to ancient homelands. Instead, many live in impoverished urban conditions where the guidelines for living a respectful Aboriginal life are breaking down. In New Zealand, where the Maori constitute about 15 percent of the country's population and Auckland has the largest Polynesian population (including Native Maori) of any city in the world, there are now many efforts to bring Maori culture more into the mainstream of national life

How is food produced in Oceania?

European systems for producing food and fiber introduced in Oceania have had a profound effect on its environments. Many of the unique endemic plants and animals of Oceania were displaced by invasive species, organisms that spread aggressively into regions outside their native range, adversely affecting economies or environments. Many exotic, or alien, plants and animals were brought to Oceania by Europeans to support their food production systems. Ironically, many of these same species are now major threats to food production. Australia: When Europeans first settled the continent, they brought many new animals and plants with them, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. European rabbits are among the most destructive of these introduced species. Early British settlers who enjoyed eating rabbits brought them to Australia. Many were released for hunting, but with no natural predators, the rabbits multiplied quickly, consuming so much of the native vegetation that many indigenous animal species starved. Moreover, rabbits became a major source of agricultural crop loss and reduced the capacity of grasslands to support herds of introduced sheep and cattle. Attempts to control the rabbit population by introducing European foxes and cats backfired as these animals became major invasive species themselves. Foxes and cats have driven several native Australian predator species to extinction without having much effect on the rabbit population. Intentionally introduced diseases have proven more effective at controlling the rabbit population, though rabbits have repeatedly developed resistance to them. Herding has also had a huge impact on Australian ecosystems. Because the climate is arid and soils in many areas are relatively infertile, the dominant land use in Australia is the grazing of introduced domesticated animals—primarily sheep, but also cattle. More than 15 percent of the land has been allocated for grazing and Australia leads the world in exports of sheep and cattle products. Dingoes, the indigenous wild dogs of Australia prey on sheep and young cattle. To separate the wild dogs from the herds, the Dingo Fence—the world's longest fence— was built. It extends 3488 miles (5614 kilometers) and is, unfortunately, a major ecological barrier to other wild species. Meanwhile, kangaroos (the natural prey of dingoes) have learned to live on the sheep side of the fence, where their population has boomed beyond sustainable levels. New Zealand: New Zealand's environment has been transformed by introduced species and food production systems even more extensively than Australia's environment. No humans lived in New Zealand until about 700 years ago, when the Polynesian Maori people settled there. When they arrived, dense midlatitude rain forest covered 85 percent of the land. The Maori were cultivators who brought in yams and taro as well as other nonnative plants, rats, and birds. By the time of significant European settlement (after 1825), forest clearing and overhunting by the Maori had already degraded many environments and driven several bird species to extinction. European settlement in New Zealand dramatically intensified environmental degradation. Attempts to re-create European farming and herding systems in New Zealand resulted in environments that today are actually hostile to many native species, a growing number of which are becoming extinct. Only 23 percent of the country remains forested, with ranches, farms, roads, and urban areas claiming more than 90 percent of the lowland area. The ordinary house cat (Felis catus), brought from Europe to control rabbits, mice, and rats, is an example of an interloper whose impact has been astonishing. In New Zealand, it is estimated that feral cats kill up to 100 million birds each year. Many of the victims are endemic birds such as tuis and kukupa, with little inborn wariness for predators. For some, the answer has been to eliminate all feral cats and sterilize all housecats—a project that gained steam in New Zealand in 2013. But this solution has not been popular with New Zealand's pet lovers or advocates; eliminating or reducing the number of cats may also give rise to a burgeoning rodent population. Despite the attempts to reduce the cat population, cats remain popular: in 2016, 45 percent of New Zealanders still owned one. Most of New Zealand's cleared land is used for export-oriented farming and ranching. Grazing has become so widespread that today in New Zealand, there are 15 times as many sheep as people, and 3 times as many cattle. Both farming and ranching have severely degraded the environment. Soils exposed by the clearing of forests proved infertile, forcing farmers and ranchers to augment them with agricultural chemicals. The chemicals, along with feces from sheep and cattle, have seriously polluted many waterways, causing the extinction of some aquatic species.

How is Southeast Asia able to globalize and develop?

Farmers who were once able to produce enough food for their families are now forced to migrate to cities, where they must purchase their food, and where the only affordable housing is in slums that lack essential services. Southeast Asia as a whole is only 47 percent urban, but the rural-urban balance is shifting steadily in response to the economic transformation of the region into an industrial hot spot. The forces driving farmers into the cities are called the push factors in rural-to-urban migration. They include deforestation of subsistence lands for commercial crops like palm oil, the rising cost of farming, which is related to the use of new crops, technologies, and competition with agribusiness, and to the loss of farm labor opportunities. Pull factors, in contrast, are those that attract people to the city, such as abundant manufacturing jobs, education opportunities, and the rumored excitement of urban living. In Southeast Asia, as in all other regions, these factors have come together to create steadily increasing urbanization. Malaysia is already 74 percent urban; the Philippines, 44 percent; Brunei, 77 percent; Burma (Myanmar), 34 percent; Cambodia, 21 percent; Vietnam, 33 percent; and Singapore, 100 percent. Employment in agriculture has been declining throughout Southeast Asia since the introduction of new production methods that increased the use of labor-saving equipment and reduced the need for human labor. Chemical pesticide and fertilizer use has also grown. While such additives can increase harvests and the supply of food to cities, they also can drive the cost of production higher than what most farmers can afford. Many family farmers have sold their land to more prosperous local farmers or to agribusiness corporations and have moved to the cities. These people, skilled at traditional farming but with little formal education, often end up in the most menial of urban jobs and live in circumstances that do not allow them to grow their own food. Developement: Labor-intensive manufacturing industries (garment and shoe making, for instance) are expanding in the cities and towns of the poorer countries, such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and parts of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. In the urban and suburban areas of the wealthier countries— Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and parts of Indonesia and the northern Philippines— technologically sophisticated manufacturing industries are also growing. These include automobile assembly, chemical and petroleum refining, and computer and other electronic equipment assembly. Riding on this growth in manufacturing are innumerable construction projects that often provide employment to recent migrants. Cities like Jakarta, Manila, and Bangkok, among the most rapidly growing metropolitan areas in the world, are primate cities—cities that, with their suburbs, are vastly larger than all others in a country. Bangkok is more than 20 times larger than Thailand's next-largest metropolitan area, Udon Thani; and Manila is more than 10 times larger than Davao, the second-largest city in the Philippines. Thanks to their strong industrial base and political power and the massive immigration they attract, primate cities can dominate whole countries; and in the case of Singapore, the city constitutes the entire country. Rarely can such cities provide sufficient housing, water, sanitation, or decent jobs for all the new rural-to-urban migrants. Many millions of urban residents in this region live in squalor, often on floating raft-villages on rivers and estuaries. Of all the cities in Southeast Asia, only Singapore provides well for nearly all of its citizens. Even there, however, a significant undocumented noncitizen population lives in poverty on islands surrounding the city. The experience of rural-to-urban migrants who go to Bangkok or Jakarta is more typical; migrants there often live in slums on the banks of polluted, trash-ridden bodies of water

What happened during 2019-2020 Australian bushfires?

Fires likely started by lighting strikes, accidents, and arson Creating a massive, widespread catastrophe. Australia experienced an unprecedented fire bushfire season in 2019-2020. The fire event caused billions of dollars in damage by killing dozens of people, a billion animals and destroyed over 6,000 buildings. The event was exacerbated by extreme heat (thought to have been caused by climate change) and was widely covered around the world in global media. The fires burned 47 million acres - killing 34 people and Approximately 1 billion animals

How does food production affect climate change in the Southeastern Asia region?

Food production contributes to global climate change in two ways. First, it is a major contributor to deforestation, and second, some types of cultivation actually produce significant GHGs. Shifting Cultivation: Also known as slash-and-burn or swidden cultivation, shifting cultivation has been practiced sustainably for thousands of years in the hills and uplands of mainland Southeast Asia and in many parts of the islands.. To maintain soil fertility in these warm, wet environments where nutrients are quickly lost to decay, traditional farmers move their fields every 3 years or so, letting old plots lie fallow for 15 years or more. If fallow periods are shortened or are disrupted by logging, soil fertility can collapse, making future cultivation impossible.In some cases, fertility can be temporarily restored through the use of chemical or organic fertilizers, but these can be too expensive for most farmers and chemical fertilizers may be ineffective over time or be too unhealthy for food cultivation. Tropical soils left bare of forest for too long eventually turn into hard, infertile, sunbaked clay called laterite. Where population densities are relatively low, subsistence farmers can practice sustainable shifting cultivation indefinitely, but to allow for long fallow periods and still support human populations, this system requires larger areas than other types of agriculture. Even though individual plots are small, the plots eventually become too close to one other because shifting cultivation requires clearing forest at each move.Where rural population densities are high, shifting cultivation now accounts for a significant portion of the region's deforestation. Wet Rice Cultivation: Another major indirect contributor to global climate change is Southeast Asia's most productive form of agriculture. Wet rice cultivation (sometimes called paddy rice) entails planting rice seedlings by hand in flooded and often terraced fields on land that was once forested. The fields are first cultivated with hand-guided plows pulled by water buffalo or tractors. Wet rice cultivation has transformed landscapes throughout Southeast Asia. It is practiced throughout this generally well-watered region, especially on rich volcanic soils and in places where rivers and streams bring a yearly supply of silt. The flooding of rice fields also results in the production of methane, a powerful GHG that is responsible for about 20 percent of GHG emissions. It is estimated that up to one-third of the world's methane is released from flooded rice fields, where organic matter in soil undergoes fermentation as oxygen supplies are cut off. Wet rice has been cultivated for thousands of years, but the increase in human population in the last 25 years has driven a 17 percent expansion of the area devoted to wet rice. Commercial Agriculture: During the recent decades of relative prosperity, small farms once operated by families have been combined into large commercial farms owned by local or multinational corporations. These farms produce cash crops for export, such as rubber, palm oil, bananas, pineapples, tea, and rice. Commercial farming on large tracts of deforested land reduces the need for labor by using mechanization, irrigation, and chemicals for fertilizer and pest control. The objectives of commercial farming are to generate big yields and quick profits, not to develop long-term sustainable agriculture. Many commercial farmers have achieved dramatic boosts in harvests (especially of rice) by using high-yield crop varieties, the result of green revolution research that has been applied in many parts of the world. As we have noted in relation to other world regions, large-scale commercial (so-called green revolution) farming ultimately has significant negative environmental effects, including the loss of wildlife habitat and hence the loss of biodiversity; increases in soil erosion, flooding, and chemical pollution; and the depletion of groundwater resources. In addition, subsistence farmers unable to afford the new technologies find they cannot compete with large commercial farms and are forced to migrate to cities to look for work.

What are the politics in Oceania?

In Australia and New Zealand, government is based on European-style parliamentary systems grounded on universal voting rights for adults, free speech, debate, and majority rule. Democratic principles influence debate and conflict resolution from the community level to the national level, and the internal and external political issues faced by Australia and New Zealand bear a strong similarity. Both have majority populations with a European heritage and large minority populations of indigenous people—Aboriginal people in Australia and Maori (Polynesian) in New Zealand. Political issues that drive internal debate in both countries include how to manage migration between the two countries and immigration from outside; how to maintain social cohesion in the face of increasing diversity; how to adjust their resource export based economies to a greater focus on technical innovation and services; and how to reformulate international relationships as the region pivots from strong ethnic and economic connections to Europe to closer associations with Asia The Pacfic Way: By contrast, the Pacific Way is based on traditional notions of power and problem solving and refers to a way of settling issues familiar to many Pacific Islanders. It was developed in small communities where decisions are reached in face-to-face meetings, and consensus and mutual understanding are favored rather than open confrontation and majority rule. High value is placed on respect for traditional leadership (especially the usual patriarchal leadership of families and villages) rather than on political freedoms such as free speech and individuality. As such, the Pacific Way can embody very different, but not invalid, definitions of fairness and corruption than do parliamentary systems. The Pacific Way in Fiji: As a political and cultural philosophy, the Pacific Way was articulated as a formal concept in Fiji around the time of Fiji's independence from the United Kingdom in 1970. It subsequently gained popularity in many other Pacific islands, most of which gained independence in the 1970s and 1980s. The Pacific Way carries a flavor of resistance to Europeanization and has often been invoked to uphold the notion of a regional identity shared by Pacific islands that grows out of their unique history and social experience. It was particularly influential among educators given the task of writing new textbooks to replace those used by the former colonial masters. The new texts focused students' attention away from Britain, France, and the United States and toward their own cultures. Appeals to the Pacific Way have also been used to uphold attempts by Pacific island governments to control their own economic development and solve their own political and social problems. Political responses around Oceania to the Fiji coups have been divided. Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (via APEC and the state government of Hawaii) have demanded that the election results stand and the Indian Fijians be returned to office. But much of Oceania has referenced the Pacific Way in arguments supporting the coup leaders. As in Fiji, those who govern many of the Pacific islands are leaders of indigenous descent who have not always had the strongest respect for political freedoms, especially when their hold on power is threatened. Their decisions have at times upheld traditional Pacific values such as stability, respect for authority, and certain kinds of environmental awareness, while at other times these decisions have contributed to corruption and civil disorder. On the global stage, Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations (a union of former British colonies) for subverting majority-rule democracy. As a result, it is ineligible for Commonwealth aid and is not allowed to participate in Commonwealth sports events. And because sports play a central role in Pacific identity.

Can the expansion of political freedoms bring peace in Indonesia?

Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia and the most fragmented—physically, culturally, and politically. It is comprised of more than 17,000 islands (3000 of which are inhabited), stretching over 3000 miles (8000 kilometers) of ocean. It is also the most culturally diverse, with hundreds of ethnic groups and multiple religions. Although Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, there are also many Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of various local religions and spiritual traditions. With all these potentially divisive forces, many wonder whether this multi-island country of 250 million people might be headed for political disintegration, or whether it might instead prove to be a model of social integration. Until the end of World War II, Indonesia was a loose assembly of distinct island cultures that Dutch colonists managed to hold together as the Dutch East Indies. When Indonesia became an independent country in 1945, its first president, Sukarno, hoped to forge a new nation out of these many parts, founded on a strong Communist ideology. To that end, he articulated a national philosophy known as Pancasila, which was aimed at holding the disparate nation together, primarily through nationalism and concepts of religious tolerance. In 1965, during the height of the Cold War, Suharto, a staunchly anti-Communist general in the Indonesian army who was supported by the United States because he was against Communism, ousted Sukarno in a coup and ruled the country for another 33 years. It is nowclear that Suharto's regime was responsible for a purge of ordinary citizens suspected of being communists, during which as many as a million people were killed. Despite his abrupt removal from office by Suharto, Sukarno's unifying idea of Pancasila endures as a central theme of life in Indonesia (and less formally throughout the region). Pancasila embraces five precepts: belief in God, and the observance of conformity, corporatism (often defined as "organic social solidarity with the state"), consensus, and harmony. These last four precepts could be interpreted as discouraging dissent or even loyal opposition, and they seem to require a perpetual stance of national boosterism. Pancasila has been criticized by some Indonesians as being too secular, while others see it as not going far enough to protect the freedom of people to believe in multiple deities, as Indonesia's many Hindus do, or freedom to not believe in any deity at all. Some praise Pancasila's other precepts for counteracting the extreme ethnic diversity and geographic dispersion of the country, while others say that the precepts have had a chilling effect on participatory democracy and on criticism of the government, the president, and the army. Change: The first orderly democratic change of government in Indonesia did not take place until national elections in 2004. Since then, there have been several peaceful elections, and the government is stable enough to allow citizens to publicly protest some policies. But corruption remains a threat that encourages feelings of nostalgia for the Suharto model of authoritarian government. Separatist movements have sprouted in four distinct areas in recent years, demonstrating Indonesia's fragility. The only rebellion to succeed was in Timor-Leste, which became an independent country in 2002. However, its case is unique in that this area was under Portuguese control until 1975, when it was forcibly integrated into Indonesia. Two other separatist movements (in the Molucca Islands and in West Papua; see Figure 10.18B) developed largely in response to Indonesia's forced resettlement schemes, which were begun in 1965. Also known as transmigration schemes, these programs have relocated approximately 20 million people from crowded islands such as Java to less densely settled islands. The policies were originally initiated under the Dutch in 1905 to relieve crowding and provide agricultural labor for plantations in thinly populated areas. After independence, Indonesia used resettlement schemes both to remove troublesome people and to bring outlying areas under closer control of the central government in Jakarta. Resettlement schemes continue today, though at a much smaller scale of roughly 60,000 people per year.The far-western province of Aceh, in the north of Sumatra, has long been troubled by political violence and accusations of terrorism. However, the recent expansions of political freedoms in Aceh may have helped the province chart a course to peace. Conflicts there originally developed because most of the wealth yielded by Aceh's resources, primarily revenues from oil extraction, was going to the central government in Jakarta. The Acehnese people protested what they saw as the expropriation of oil without compensation, and Jakarta sent the military to silence them. Many who spoke out against the military presence or who supported the Free Aceh movement were accused of terrorism and arrested, jailed, forced into hiding, or even killed. The conflict seemed unresolvable. Then in 2004, the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh, which killed more than 170,000 Acehnese, suddenly brought many outside disaster relief workers to Sumatra because the Indonesian government was unable to give sufficient aid to the victims. Global press coverage of the relief effort mentioned the recent political violence; this created a powerful incentive for separatists and the government to cooperate in order to receive outside aid. A resulting peace accord signed in 2005 brought many former combatants into the political process as democratically elected local leaders. Virtually all the separatists laid down their arms; but underdevelopment and lack of opportunities for youth have instigated a revival of the Free Aceh movement.

What are some climatic change impacts in water in the Southeastern Asian region?

Many of Southeast Asia's potential vulnerabilities to global climate change are related to water resources. Four areas of vulnerability to warming temperatures may affect the region's economy and food supply: glacial melting, increased evaporation, coral reef bleaching, and storm surge flooding. Also, human intervention in river systems, especially efforts to both control the water and to use it for electricity generation, increases vulnerability by interfering with ecological balance. Melting Glaciers and Evaporation: Like much of Asia, mainland Southeast Asia's largest rivers (the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, and Red Rivers) are fed during the dry season (November through March) by glaciers high in the Himalayas. These glaciers are now melting at a rate that could result in their eventual disappearance. As glacial melting accelerates, the immediate risk is catastrophic flooding. While some areas have long been adapted to dramatic seasonal floods, which have taken place in this region for most of human history, many areas are unprepared for floods. A longer-term concern is that dry-season flows in the rivers where glacial melt water has been the primary source of stream flow will be reduced to a trickle. As much as 15 percent of this region's rice harvest depends on the dry-season flows of the major rivers. The loss of these harvests would reduce many farmers' incomes and create food shortages for them and the cities they supply. Coming on top of a global rise in food prices in recent years, this would place further strain on the well-being of poor people throughout the region. The higher temperatures associated with current trends in global climate change mean evaporation rates will rise, resulting in drier conditions in fields, lower lake levels, and lower fish catches because of changing habitats for aquatic animals. Evaporation that results in reduced river and groundwater levels can also cause saltwater intrusions into estuaries and freshwater aquifers. Coral Reef Bleaching: Global climate change is expected to increase sea temperatures in Southeast Asia, threatening the coral reefs that sustain much of the region's fishing and tourism industries. A coral reef is an intricate structure that is composed of the calcium-rich skeletons of millions of tiny living creatures called coral polyps. The polyps are subject to coral bleaching, or color loss, which results when photosynthetic algae that live in the corals are expelled by a variety of human-instigated or naturally occurring changes. Both rising water temperature related to climate change and oceanic acidification resulting from the absorption of excess CO2 in the atmosphere can cause bleaching. Ocean acidification is thought to have increased by about 30 percent over the last 340 years, a rate of change that may exceed the ability of ocean creatures to adapt. Bleaching also occurs in response to pollution from urban sources, such as sewage discharges, storm water runoff, and industrial water pollution. Fish catches can be affected by bleaching as well. Many of the fish caught in Southeast Asia's seas depend on healthy coral reefs for their reproduction and survival. Under normal conditions, coral that is assaulted with just one of the bleaching situations recovers within weeks or months. However, severe or repeated bleaching can cause corals to die. Unprecedented global coral bleaching events affecting roughly half of the world's coral reefs took place in 1998, 2002, 2004, and 2006, and regional events occur somewhere every year. The thousands of rural communities throughout coastal Southeast Asia that rely on fish for food are thus also threatened by coral bleaching. So far, however, the greatest observable impacts on people have been in the tourism industry. In the Philippines, the coral bleaching of 1998 brought a dramatic decline in tourists who normally came to dive the country's usually spectacular reefs, resulting in a loss of about U.S.$30 million to the economy. Storm Surges and Flooding: Although the relationship is not yet entirely understood, violent tropical storms seem to be increasing in both number and intensity as the climate warms. When Typhoon Haiyan hit in 2013, it became the strongest typhoon to make its way onto land in recorded history. Haiyan struck the Philippines, killing at least 5600 people and leaving millions homeless. Climatologists studying data on tropical storms predict that the entire Southeast Asian region will have a somewhat higher number of typhoons over the next few years and that the duration of peak winds along coastal zones will increase. This is significant because many poor, urban migrants have crowded into precarious dwellings in low-lying coastal cities such as Manila, Bangkok, Rangoon, and Jakarta, where coping with high winds, flooding, and the aftermath of storms will likely be a frequent experience.

How does climate change affect the Mekong River system?

Many of the drivers of climate change lie beyond the policy control of Southeast Asians. Glacial melting is taking place beyond their borders. Temperature increases in oceans and lakes and increased evaporation rates must be addressed at the global scale. But Southeast Asians can drastically reduce CO2 emissions by limiting the removal of forests for lumber exports and commercial agriculture. Another way that the people of this region can moderate climate change is to reduce their own fossil fuel consumption by turning to alternative sources of energy. The demand for energy has doubled and doubled again just during the last decade as modernization increases. Both the Philippines and Indonesia have significant potential for generating electricity from geothermal energy (heat stored in Earth's crust). This energy is particularly accessible near active volcanoes, which both countries have in abundance. The Philippines already generates 27 percent of its electricity from geothermal energy (2015) and has 29 more projects under development. In Indonesia, by some estimates, geothermal energy could eventually provide a majority of energy needs; 62 projects are under development there. Solar energy is another attractive source, given that the entire region lies near the equator, the part of the planet. that receives the most solar energy. Wind energy may be cost-effective in Laos and Vietnam, where many population centers are in high-wind areas. But the energy source that is most popular and expanding the fastest is hydroelectric power.

What are some types of climate change in Oceania?

Oceania, with the exception of Australia, is a minor contributor of greenhouse gases. Australia has some of the world's highest greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis. Much of Australia's emissions, like those of the United States, result from the use of automobile based transportation systems to connect a widely dispersed network of cities and towns. Additionally, Australia's heavy dependence on coal to generate electricity has led to high emissions, much as coal dependence has in the United States. Because Australia has a relatively small population (23.9 million people in 2015), it accounts for only slightly more than 1 percent of global emissions. However, despite the negligible contributions of greenhouse gases made by the islands of the Pacific, they, as well as Australia, are quite vulnerable to the effects of global climate change. Sea Level Rise and Strom Surges: Oceania, with the exception of Australia, is a minor contributor of greenhouse gases. Australia has some of the world's highest greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis (see Figure 1.14). Much of Australia's emissions, like those of the United States, result from the use of automobilebased transportation systems to connect a widely dispersed network of cities and towns. Additionally, Australia's heavy dependence on coal to generate electricity has led to high emissions, much as coal dependence has in the United States. Because Australia has a relatively small population (23.9 million people in 2015), it accounts for only slightly more than 1 percent of global emissions. However, despite the negligible contributions of greenhouse gases made by the islands of the Pacific, they, as well as Australia, are quite vulnerable to the effects of global climate change. If sea levels rise 4 inches (10 centimeters) per decade, as predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change, many of the lowest-lying Pacific atolls, such as Tuvalu, will disappear under water within 50 years. Other islands, some with already very crowded coastal zones, will see these zones shrink and become more vulnerable to storm surges and cyclones. In late February 2016, the worst cyclone to hit the southern Pacific struck the Fiji island chain, killing 42 and leaving at least 60,000 without shelter, water, and electricity. Wind speeds exceeded 200 miles (325 kilometers) per hour and waves were 40 feet (13 meters) high. Wildfires and Other Water-Related Vulnerabilities: Much of Oceania is particularly vulnerable to the droughts and floods that could result from global climate change. Parts of Australia and some low, dry Pacific islands are already undergoing prolonged droughts and freshwater shortages requiring changes in daily life and livelihoods. The fear is that the severe droughts are not the usual periodic dry spells but may represent permanent alterations in rainfall patterns that could also worsen wildfires. Such fires emerged as a major issue in Australia in February 2009, when 173 people died in a rural firestorm near Melbourne. In 2015 and 2016, repeated wildfires struck Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria—the last three lie in the most humid, and hence most fire-resistant, part of the country. As fresh water becomes scarcer across the region, virtual water becomes an issue. All export-related activities that permanently consume or degrade fresh water in their extraction or production processes (such as mineral mining; oil and gas extraction; meat, wool, and wheat production; and tourism-related construction and maintenance) are essentially extracting virtual water from places that are already under water stress. If the true costs of this freshwater depletion were counted and added to the price of the products, these exports might no longer be competitive on the world market—at least not until all global producers understood virtual water accountability to be in their best interests and raised their prices accordingly. Another concern is that the warming of the oceans could not only result in stronger tropical storms, but also threaten coral reefs and the fisheries that depend on them by causing coral bleaching. When ocean waters warm just a few degrees, the living coral organisms expel the algae that live inside and give the coral its color. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon that has affected all reefs in this region in recent years, with scientists announcing, in 2016, Australia's "biggest ever environmental disaster": The Great Barrier Reef had lost 50 percent of its coral cover and was vulnerable to losing another 25 percent. Because so many fish depend on reefs, coral bleaching also threatens many fishing communities and ultimately the global food supply. This is especially true on some of the Pacific islands that have few other local food resources. Responses to Potential Climate Change Crises: Oceania is pursuing a number of alternative energy strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Although Australia remains dependent on fossil fuel sales (primarily the sale of coal, and also crude oil and natural gas) to Asia, it is pursuing renewable energy strategies for domestic use. These include increasing power production from geothermal, solar, and biomass sources and, because of water shortages, decreasing the emphasis on hydropower. New Zealand has set a goal of obtaining 95 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. Much of this energy will come from wind power, which has a great deal of potential in this region, especially in areas near the Roaring Forties. On low Pacific islands, solar energy is now the most widely used alternative to costly and polluting imported fuel.

How is the sex industry in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia has become one of several global centers for the sex industry, supported in large part by international visitors willing to pay for sex. Sex tourism in Southeast Asia grew out of the sexual entertainment industry that served foreign military troops stationed in Asia during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Now, primarily civilian men arrive from around the globe to live out their fantasies during a few weeks of vacation. The industry is found throughout the region but is most prominent in Thailand. In 2015, 29 million tourists visited Thailand alone, up from 250,000 in 1965. The largest number came from China, the fastestgrowing segment of tourism arrivals. Some observers estimate that as many as 50 percent were looking for some kind of sexual experience. Even though the industry is officially illegal, some Thai government officials have publicly praised sex tourism for its role in helping the country weather economic crises, because it supports more than 2.2 million jobs. Some corrupt officials also favor sex tourism because it provides them with a source of untaxed income from bribes. One result of the popularity of sex tourism is a high demand for sex workers, which has attracted organized crime. Estimates of the numbers of sex workers vary from 30,000 to more than a million in Thailand alone. Gangs often coerce girls and women into remaining in sex work once they have been tricked or forced into the trade. Demographers estimate that 20,000 to 30,000 Burmese girls taken from Burma (Myanmar) against their will—some as young as 12— are working in Thai brothels. Their wages are too low to enable them to buy their own freedom. In the course of their work, they must service more than 10 clients per day, and they are routinely exposed to physical abuse and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV.

How does deforestation and climate change affect the Southeast Asia region?

Southeast Asia has the second-highest rate of deforestation of any world region, after subSaharan Africa. With only 5 percent of the world's forests, Southeast Asia has accounted for nearly 25 percent of deforestation around the world in the last 10 years. The forces driving deforestation in Southeast Asia are global from various tropical regions to Europe and Asia, where it is turned into furniture and other products. It is extremely difficult to know the extent of illegal deforestation, but in 2006 the World Wildlife Fund estimated that more than 40 percent of the timber production in Indonesia was illegal. The regional environmental impacts of deforestation and the agriculture that often follows deforestation are explored. One effect is that indigenous people of the forest lose their living space and resources when the land is given over to export agriculture. Another, particular to Southeast Asia, is the loss of habitat for orangutans, the Sumatran tiger, the Sumatran rhinoceros, and tens of thousands of other lesser known species that are displaced when rain forests are converted to agricultural uses. Finally, deforestation processes (fires and vegetation decay) cause the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs), contributing to climate change. Deforestation is a major contributor to global climate change because enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) are released when forests are removed and the underbrush is burned. Fewer trees also mean that less CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere. Every day, 13 to 19 square miles (34 to 50 square kilometers) of Southeast Asia's rain forests are destroyed, much of it done illegally. A great deal of this deforestation takes place in Malaysia and Indonesia, where the logging of tropical hardwoods for sale on the global market is a major activity. For decades, these activities have made Indonesia among the world's biggest contributors to global climate change. Since 1950, the tropical forest cover on the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo alone has decreased by about 60 percent, threatening megafauna and valuable food plants, like the Kalimantan mango. Oil palm plantations now constitute the predominant use of land there. Palm oil has been promoted as a potential solution to global climate change because it can be converted into fuel for automobiles. The claim is that because the palm trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere just as the original forest did, palm oil could be considered a "carbon neutral" fuel. This is a fallacy because palm trees do not absorb carbon at a rate equivalent to natural rain forests—and if forests are burned to clear land for plantations, it can take decades to offset the initial carbon emissions produced by deforestation. If a peat swamp is cleared for an oil palm plantation, more carbon is released through the burning of subsurface peat than centuries of CO2 absorption by growing oil palms can counteract. Even as deforestation proceeds across the region, many people are beginning to appreciate the costs of deforestation. Forests and peat swamps are now known to perform billions of dollars per year in services: Well-managed forests provide renewable plant and animal food, medicine and construction materials, and domestic fuel resources. The peat swamps act like giant sponges, soaking up water and thus mitigating floods. They also purify fresh water, preserve biodiversity, and absorb enormous amounts of CO2 .

What is the main religion in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia is a place of cultural pluralism in that it is inhabited by groups of people from many different backgrounds. Over the past 40,000 years, migrants have come to the region from India, the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayas, China, Southwest Asia, Europe, Japan, Korea, and the Pacific. Many of these groups have remained distinct, partly because they lived in isolated pockets separated by rugged topography or seas. However, the religious practices and traditions of many groups show diverse cultural influences. The major religious traditions of Southeast Asia include Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity, and animism. In animism, a belief system common among many indigenous peoples, natural features such as rocks, trees, rivers, crop plants, and the rains all carry spiritual meaning. These natural phenomena are the focus of festivals and rituals to give thanks for bounty and to mark the passing of the seasons, and these ideas have permeated all the imported religious traditions of the region. The patterns of religious practice are complex; the patterns of distribution reveal an islandmainland division. All but animism originated outside the region and were brought primarily by traders, priests (Brahmin and Christian), and colonists. Buddhism is dominant on the mainland, especially in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia. In Vietnam, people practice a mix of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism that originated in China. Islam is dominant in Indonesia (the world's largest Muslim country), on the southern Malay Peninsula, and in Malaysia, and it is increasingly popular in the southern Philippines. Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion in TimorLeste, the Molucca Islands, and in the middle and northern Philippines, where it was introduced by Portuguese and Spanish colonists. Hinduism first arrived with Indian traders thousands of years ago and was once much more widespread; now it is found only in small patches, chiefly on the islands of Bali and Lombok, east of Java. Recent Indian immigrants who came as laborers in the twentieth century (during the latter part of the European colonial period) have reintroduced Hinduism to Burma, Malaysia, and Singapore, but only as minority communities. All of Southeast Asia's religions have changed as a result of exposure to one another. Many Muslims and Christians believe in spirits and practice rituals that have their roots in animism. Hindus and Christians in Indonesia, surrounded as they are by Muslims, have absorbed ideas from Islam, such as the seclusion of women. Muslims have absorbed ideas and customs from indigenous belief systems, especially ideas about kinship and marriage. Cultural Diversity: Southeast Asia's cities are extraordinarily culturally diverse, a fact that is illustrated by their food customs. But in some ways, this diversity decreases as the many groups continue to be exposed to each other and to global culture. For example, Malaysian teens of many different ethnicities (Chinese, Tamil, Malay, Bangladeshi) spend much of their spare time following the same European soccer teams, playing the same video games, visiting the same shopping centers, eating the same fast food, and talking to each other in English. While rural areas retain more traditional influences—of the world's 6000 or so actively spoken languages, 1000 can be found in rural Southeast Asia—in cities, one main language usually dominates trade and politics. One group that has brought cultural diversity to Southeast Asia is the Overseas (or ethnic) Chinese. Small groups of traders from southern and coastal China have been active in Southeast Asia for thousands of years; over the centuries, there has been a constant trickle of immigrants from China. The forebearers of most of today's Overseas Chinese, however, began to arrive in large numbers during the nineteenth century, when the European colonizers needed labor for their plantations and mines. Later, those who fled China's Communist Revolution after 1949 joined them and all sought permanent homes in Southeast Asian trading centers. Today, more than 26 million Overseas Chinese live and work across Southeast Asia, primarily as shopkeepers and as small business owners. A few are wealthy financiers, and a significant number are still engaged in agricultural labor. Chinese success at small-scale commercial and business activity throughout the region has reinforced the perception that the Chinese are diligent, clever, and extremely frugal, often working very long hours. Although few are actually wealthy, with their region-wide family and friendship connections and access to start-up money, some have been well positioned to take advantage of the new growth sectors in the globalizing economies of the region. Sometimes externally funded, new Chinese-owned enterprises have put out of business older, more traditional establishments that depend on local customers and employees of modest incomes (both ethnic Malay and ethnic Chinese). In recent years, when low-and middle-income Southeast Asians were hurt by the recurring financial crises, some tended to blame their problems on the Overseas Chinese. Waves of violence resulted. Chinese people were assaulted, their temples desecrated, and their homes and businesses destroyed. Conflicts involving the Overseas Chinese have taken place in Vietnam, Malaysia, and in many parts of Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi) as well. Some Overseas Chinese have attempted to diffuse tensions through public education about Chinese culture. Others have shown their civic awareness by financing economic and social aid projects to help their poorer neighbors, usually of local ethnic origins (Malay, Thai, Indonesian). Women Empowerment: Women have made some impressive gains in politics in Southeast Asia. Economically, they still earn less money than men and work less outside the home, but this will likely change if their level of education in relation to that of men continues to increase (see "On the Bright Side," below). Southeast Asia has had several prominent female leaders over the years, most of whom have risen to power in times of crisis as the leaders of movements opposing corrupt or undemocratic regimes. In the Philippines, Corazon Aquino, a member of a large and powerful family, became president in 1986 after leading the opposition to Ferdinand Marcos, whose 21-year presidency was infamous for its corruption and authoritarianism. She is credited with helping reinvigorate political freedoms in the Philippines. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, from another powerful family, became president in 2001 after opposing a similarly corrupt president, though she was then accused of corruption herself. Still, her administration kept the economy sound throughout the global recession starting in 2007. In 2010, Corazon's son, Benigno Aquino III, became president. In Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri became president in 2001 after decades of leading the opposition to Suharto's notoriously corrupt 31-year reign. In Burma (Myanmar), for more than two decades, a woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, often while confined in house arrest, has led opposition to the military dictatorship and largely succeeded in arranging for elections. In Thailand, Yingluck Shinawatra was elected prime minister in 2011 as part of a popular political movement started by her brother. She was deposed in a military coup. All of these women leaders were wives, daughters, or siblings of powerful male political leaders, which raises some questions of nepotism. However, family favoritism cannot account for several countries where the percentage of female national legislators is well above the world average of 18 percent: Timor-Leste (39 percent), Laos (25 percent), Vietnam (24 percent), Singapore (25 percent), the Philippines (27 percent), and Cambodia (20 percent). Despite their increasing successes in politics and their acknowledged role in managing family money, women still lag well behind men in terms of economic well-being. Throughout the region, men have a higher rate of employment outside the home than women and are paid more for doing the same work. But changes may be on the way. In Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, significantly more women than men are completing training beyond secondary school. If training qualifications were the sole consideration for employment, women would appear to have an advantage over men. While women are still disadvantaged in relation to men despite their more advanced education, change is beginning. This advantage may be significant if service sector economies—which generally require more education—become dominant in more countries. The service economy already dominates in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

What are some landforms that can be seen in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia is a region of peninsulas and islands. Although the region stretches over an area larger than the continental United States, most of that space is ocean; the area of all the region's landmass amounts to less than half that of the contiguous United States. Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam occupy the large Indochina peninsula that extends south of China. This peninsula itself sprouts the long, thin Malay Peninsula that is shared by outlying parts of Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, a main part of Malaysia, and the city-state of Singapore, which is built on a series of islands at the southern tip. The archipelago (a series of large and small islands) that fans out to the south and east of the mainland is grouped into the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Timor-Leste (East Timor), and the Philippines. Indonesia alone has some 17,000 islands, and the Philippines, 7000. The irregular shapes and landforms of the Southeast Asian mainland and archipelago are the result of the same tectonic forces that were unleashed when India split off from the African Plate and gradually collided with Eurasia. As a result of this collision, which is still underway, the mountainous folds of the Plateau of Tibet reach heights of almost 20,000 feet (6100 meters). These folded landforms, which bend out of the high plateau, turn south into Southeast Asia. There, they descend rapidly and then fan out to become the Indochina peninsula. Deep gorges widen out into valleys that stretch toward the sea, each containing mountains of 2000 to 3000 feet (600 to 900 meters) and a river or two flowing from the mountains of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of China to the Andaman Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, and the South China Sea. The major rivers of the Indochina peninsula are the Irrawaddy and the Salween in Burma (Myanmar); the Chao Phraya in Thailand; the Mekong, which flows through Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and the Black and Red rivers of northern Vietnam. Several of these rivers have major delta formations—especially the Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, and the Mekong—that are intensively cultivated and settled.

How big is the population in Southeast Asia?

Southeast Asia is home to nearly 630 million people (almost double the U.S. population), who occupy a land area that is about one-half the size of the United States. At current rates, Southeast Asia's population, which is large and growing, is projected to reach more than 800 million by 2050, by which time much of this population will live in cities. However, population projections could be inaccurate, both because rates of natural increase are continuing to slow markedly and because many Southeast Asians are migrating to find employment outside the region. Population dynamics: Population dynamics vary considerably among the countries of Southeast Asia. The variation is due in part to differences in economic development, government policy, prescribed gender roles, and broader religious and cultural practices. Most countries are nearing the last stage of the demographic transition, where births and deaths are low and growth is minuscule or slightly negative. In the last several decades, overall fertility rates in Southeast Asia have dropped rapidly. Whereas women formerly had 5 to 7 children, they now have 1 to 3, with Laos (3.9) and Timor-Leste (5.7) being the major exceptions. However, because in most countries populations are still quite young (regionally 27 percent of the population is aged 15 years or younger), population growth is likely for several decades because so many people are just coming into their reproductive years. Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have reduced their fertility rates so sharply—below replacement levels of 2.1 —that they will soon need to cope with aging and shrinking populations. Regionally, education levels are the highest in Singapore, where most educated women work outside the home at skilled jobs and professions. The Singapore government is now so concerned about the low fertility rate that it offers young couples various incentives for marrying and procreating. Population Pyramids: The youth and gender features of Southeast Asian populations are best appreciated by looking at the population pyramids for Indonesia. The wide bottom and then narrowing of the 2016 pyramid indicates that most people are age 34 and under, but in the last 10 years births have begun to decline. The projections to 2050 show that eventually, with declining birth rates, those 34 and under will be outnumbered by those 35 and older. Indonesia will accumulate ever-larger numbers in the upper age groups, and the pyramid will eventually be more box-shaped, as those for Europe are now. The gender disparities (more males than females) that have developed over the last 20 years can be seen by carefully examining the length of the bars on the male and female sides of the pyramid for those aged 30-34 and under. The differences are slight but significant because there is a rather consistent deficit of females, which indicates that they were selected out before birth

How did Oceania urbanize?

The global trend of migration from the countryside to cities is quite visible in Oceania, where 70 percent of the overall population now lives in urban areas. Australia and New Zealand have among the highest percentages of city dwellers outside Europe. More than 89 percent of Australians live in a string of cities along the country's relatively well-watered and fertile eastern and southeastern coasts. Similarly, 86 percent of New Zealanders live in urban areas. The vast majority of people in these two countries live in modern comfort, work in a range of occupations typical of highly industrialized societies, and have access to tax-supported health-care and leisure facilities. Vibrant, urban-based service economies employ about three quarters of the population in both countries. Declining employment in mining and agriculture, where mechanization has dramatically reduced the number of workers needed, has also contributed to urbanization. Throughout the Pacific, urban centers have transformed natural landscapes. In some small densely populated countries, such as Guam, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, they have become the dominant landscape. Although cities are places of opportunity, they can also be sites of cultural change, conflict, and environmental hazards. Most Pacific island towns and all the capital cities are located in ecologically fragile coastal settings. Many of these waterfront towns were established during the colonial era as ports or docking facilities and were situated in places suitable for only limited numbers of people. Consequently, little land is available for development and access to housing is inadequate. Squatter settlements have been a visible feature of the region's urban areas for decades. The coastal locations for towns and cities in Oceania make these settlements particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and violent storms associated with climate change. Multiculturalism has been enhanced by urbanization across the region. Many urban residents are letting go of the rural ways of their childhoods, as well as their ethnic identity and cultural commitments. As time goes on, more urban people are marrying across ethnic divisions, having only one or two children, and creating new patterns of social alliances and networks. Such cultural blending can ultimately result in enhanced social cohesion, but the result can also be new social tensions, which change the very nature of social life in the island Pacific. Urban unemployment and unrest are on the rise, and low rates of economic growth restrict the revenue available to governments to manage urban development.

What is the consequences for hydroelectric dams in Southeast Asia?

The Mekong is one of Earth's longest and most complex rivers. Beginning high in the Himalayas as a tiny glacier-fed trickle, the Mekong (called the Lancang in China) flows through deep gorges, gaining speed and volume and picking up sediment for a thousand miles or more, through Yunnan, China. It skirts the borders of far-eastern India and Burma (Myanmar) before entering Laos, the halfway point on its journey to the sea. In this first half of its path, the Mekong, with its hundreds of tributaries, drains a huge area of China, bits of India, and northern Burma (Myanmar). The river system supports a remarkable amount of biodiversity, rivaled only by that of the Congo River and the Amazon: 20,000 species of plants and 2500 species of animals live here, including freshwater dolphins, giant catfish, and spiders the size of grapefruits. The ethnic diversity is also astonishing, with hundreds of cultures intricately attuned to the variable physical environment of the river basin. In its entirety, the Mekong sustains around 60 million people, mostly rural and poor. As the Mekong flows southeast through Laos, its silt-laden waters descend from rugged mountain territory into rolling hills and then floodplains, where the silt is deposited as floodwaters slow down and spread out. Periodic floods pick up and redeposit the nutrient-rich silt over and over, providing farmers with natural fertilizer and fisheries with food. By the time the Mekong reaches Cambodia, it is a wide, slow, meandering river in a vast floodplain. In Vietnam it divides into distributaries that fan out to form the Mekong Delta. Modernity is arriving late but bringing quick change. Most everyone now has access to cell phones, which need electricity to work. Electricity is essential to nearly every other aspect of development likely to come soon, hence the emphasis on hydroelectric power, which is especially appealing in China, where carbon emissions cause frequent traffic-stopping pollution. At least 86,000 hydroelectric dams have been built across China since the 1960s. By the time the Mekong leaves China at the Laotian border, it has already passed through 20 sites where dams are operational, under construction, or planned, with more on the river's many tributaries. Laos plans 9 Mekong dams; Cambodia, 2 more. Laos, whose main resources are its fertile soil and the water of the Mekong, plans to profit from the sales of the power it generates from dams. Thailand is already a major customer for Laotian hydropower. The fact that soil fertility and river water quality will be inevitably changed by the dams has not yet gained much recognition by Laotian planners. Dams have numerous consequences for the environment. Although dams can be used to control damage from flooding, floods serve a purpose. The natural seasonal ebb and flow of river water distributes moisture and nutrients downstream. It is now apparent that seasonal variations in flow are essential for the health of many plant and animal communities, and by extension, human communities. Dams restrict the movement and hence the reproduction of freshwater fish, and create vast reservoirs that cover villages and valuable cropland and produce hospitable habitat for disease-bearing mosquitoes. As scientists have gained a better understanding of ecological nuances, they have warned that even expert planners tend to underestimate the damage done by the construction of dams and their operation over long periods of time. Planners, meanwhile, often overestimate the benefits that dams can produce. As the demand for energy increases, it is tempting to ignore the negative externalities of creating that energy with hydroelectric dams.

What are some types of flora and fauna that can be seen in Oceania?

The fact that Oceania is made up of an isolated continent and numerous islands has affected its animal life (fauna) and plant life (flora). Many of its species are endemic, meaning that they exist in a particular place and nowhere else on Earth. This is especially true in Australia (of the 750 species of birds known in Australia, more than 325 species are endemic), but many Pacific islands also have endemic species. Animal and Plant Life in Australia: The uniqueness of Australia's animal and plant life is the result of the continent's long physical isolation, large size, relatively homogeneous landforms, and arid climate. Since Australia broke away from Gondwana more than 65 million years ago, its animal and plant species have evolved in isolation. One spectacular result of this isolation is the presence of more than 144 living species of endemic marsupial animals. Marsupials are mammals whose babies at birth are still at a very immature stage; the marsupial then nurtures them in a pouch equipped with nipples. The best-known marsupials are kangaroos; other marsupials include wombats, koalas, and bandicoots. The monotremes, egg-laying mammals that include the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater, are endemic to Australia and New Guinea. Most of Australia's endemic plant species are adapted to dry conditions. Many of the plants have deep taproots to draw moisture from groundwater, and small, hard, pale green, or shiny leaves to reflect heat and to hold moisture. Much of the continent is grassland and scrubland with bits of open woodland; there are only a few true forests, found in pockets along the Eastern Highlands and the southwestern tip and in Tasmania. . Two plant genera account for nearly all the forest and woodland plants: Eucalyptus (450 species, often called gum trees) and Acacia (900 species, often called wattles). Plant and Animal Life in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands: Naturalists and evolutionary biologists have had a great interest in the species that inhabited the Pacific islands before humans arrived. Charles Darwin formulated many of his ideas about evolution after visiting the Galápagos Islands of the eastern Pacific and the islands of Oceania. Islands gain plant and animal populations from the sea and air around them as organisms are carried from larger islands and continents by birds, storms, or ocean currents. Once these organisms "colonize" their new home, they may evolve over time into new species that are unique to one island. High, wet islands generally contain more varied species because their more complex environments provide niches for a wider range of wayfarers and thus more opportunities for evolutionary change. Once they arrive, human inhabitants modify the flora and fauna of islands. In prehistoric times, Asian explorers in oceangoing canoes brought plants such as bananas and breadfruit and animals such as pigs, chickens, and dogs to Oceania. European settlers later brought grains, vegetables, fruits, invasive grasses, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, housecats, and rats. Today, human activities from tourism to military exercises to urbanization continue to change the flora and fauna of Oceania. Generally, the diversity of land animals and plants is richest in the western Pacific, near the larger landmasses. It thins out to the east, where the islands are smaller and farther apart. The natural rain forest flora is rich and abundant in New Zealand and New Guinea, and also on the high islands of the Pacific. However, the natural fauna is much more limited on these islands. While New Guinea has fauna comparable to Australia, to which it was once connected via Sundaland, New Zealand and the Pacific islands have no indigenous land mammals, almost no indigenous reptiles, and only a few indigenous species of frogs, as they were never connected to Australia and New Guinea by a land bridge that land animals could cross. Two indigenous birds in New Zealand, the kiwi and the huge moa (a bird that grew up to 12 feet [3.7 meters] tall), were a major source of food for the Maori people. The moa was hunted to extinction before the Europeans arrived. Today, New Zealand may well be the country with the most nonnative species of mammals, fish, and fowl, nearly all brought there by European settlers.

What is the climate like in Southeast Asia?

The largely tropical climate of Southeast Asia is distinguished by continuous warm temperatures in the lowlands—consistently above 65°F (18363 °C)—and heavy rain. The rainfall is the result of two major processes: the monsoons (seasonally shifting winds) and the movement of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), an area centered roughly at the equator, where surface winds converge from the northern and southern hemispheres and rise upward, resulting in rainfall. The wet summer (monsoon) season extends from May to October, when the warming of the Eurasian landmass sucks in moist air from the surrounding seas and pulls the ITCZ northward. Between November and April, there is a long dry season on the mainland, when the seasonal cooling of Eurasia causes dry, cool air from the interior of the continent to flow out toward the sea, pushing the ITCZ southward. On the many islands, however, the winter can also be wet because the air that flows from the continent warms and picks up moisture as it passes south and east over the seas. The air releases its moisture as rain after ascending high enough over elevated landforms to cool. With rains coming from both the monsoon and the ITCZ, the island parts of Southeast Asia are among the wettest areas of the world. Irregularly every 2 to 7 years, the normal patterns of rainfall are interrupted, especially in the islands, by the El Niño phenomenon. In an El Niño event, the usual patterns of air and water circulation in the Pacific are reversed. Ocean temperatures are cooler than usual in the western Pacific near Southeast Asia. Instead of warm, wet air rising and condensing as rainfall, cool, dry air sits on the ocean surface. The result is severe drought, often with catastrophic effects for farmers and for tinder-dry forests that regularly catch fire. The cool El Niño air can trap smoke and other pollutants at Earth's surface, creating unusually toxic smog and such low visibility that planes sometimes crash. The soils in Southeast Asia are typical of the tropics. Although not particularly fertile, they will support dense and prolific vegetation when left undisturbed for long periods. The warm temperatures and damp conditions promote the rapid decay of detritus (dead organic material) and the quick release of useful minerals. These minerals are taken up directly by the roots of the living forest rather than enriching the soil. Because rainfall is usually abundant during the summer wet season (when drought is only episodic), this region has some of the world's most impressive forests in both tropical and subtropical zones. On the mainland, human interference, coupled with the long winter dry season, has reduced the forest cover. The relationships between humans and the environment that affect forests elsewhere in the region are discussed in the next section. Note: -The irregular shapes and landforms of the Southeast Asian mainland and archipelago are the result of the same tectonic forces that were unleashed when India split off from the African Plate and crashed into Eurasia. -Continuous warm temperatures in the lowlands and heavy rain distinguish the tropical climate of Southeast Asia, except during those irregular years of the El Niño phenomenon

How did Southeast Asia first rise to prominence?

The modern indigenous populations of Southeast Asia arose from two migrations widely separated in time. In the first migration, about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, AustraloMelanesians, a group of hunters and gatherers from what are now northern India and Burma (Myanmar), moved to the exposed landmass of Sundaland and into present-day Australia. Their descendants still live in Indonesia's easternmost islands and in small, usually remote pockets on other islands and the Malay Peninsula, and in Australia, New Guinea, and other parts of Oceania. Colonization: Between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, several European countries established colonies or quasi-colonies in Southeast Asia. Drawn by the region's fabled spice trade, the Portuguese established the first permanent European settlement in Southeast Asia at the port of Malacca, Malaysia, in 1511. Although better ships and weapons gave the Portuguese an advantage, their anti-Islamic and pro-Catholic policies provoked strong resistance in Southeast Asia. Only on the small island of Timor-Leste did the Portuguese establish Catholicism as the dominant religion. Arriving first in 1521, the Spanish had established trade links across the Pacific between the Philippines and their colonies in the Americas by 1540. Like the Portuguese, they practiced a style of colonial domination grounded in Catholicism, but they met less resistance because of their greater tolerance of non-Christians. The Spanish ruled the Philippines for more than 350 years; as a result, except for the southernmost islands, which retain strong indigenous and long-standing Muslim influences, the Philippines is the most deeply Westernized and certainly the most Catholic part of Southeast Asia. The Dutch were the most economically successful of the European colonial powers in Southeast Asia. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, they extended their control of trade over most of what is today called Indonesia, known at the time as the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch became interested in growing cash crops for export. Between 1830 and 1870, they forced indigenous farmers to leave their own fields and work part time without pay on Dutch coffee, sugar, and indigo plantations. The resulting disruption of local food production systems caused severe famines and provoked resistance that often took the form of Islamic religious movements. Such resistance movements hastened the spread of Islam throughout Indonesia, where the Dutch had made little effort to spread their Protestant version of Christianity. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the British established colonies at key ports on the Malay Peninsula. They held these ports both for their trade value and to protect the Strait of Malacca, the shortest passage for sea trade between Britain's empire in India and China. In the nineteenth century, Britain extended its rule over the rest of modern Malaysia in order to benefit from Malaysia's tin mines and plantations. Britain also added Burma to its empire, which provided access to forest resources and overland trade routes into southwest China. The French first entered Southeast Asia as Catholic missionaries in the early seventeenth century. They worked mostly in the eastern mainland area in the modern states of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In the late nineteenth century, spurred by rivalry with Britain and other European powers for access to the markets of nearby China, the French formally colonized the area, which became known as French Indochina. In all of Southeast Asia, the only country not to be colonized by Europe was Thailand (then known as Siam). Like Japan, it protected its sovereignty through both diplomacy and a vigorous drive toward European-style modernization.

What are some natural disasters that affected the Southeastern Asia region?

Volcanic eruptions and the mudflows and landslides that follow eruptions complicate and endanger the lives of many Southeast Asians. Earthquakes are especially problematic because of the tsunamis they can set off . The tsunami of December 2004, triggered by a giant earthquake (9.1 in magnitude) just north of Sumatra, swept east and west across the Indian Ocean, taking the lives of 230,000 people (170,000 in Aceh Province, Sumatra) and injuring many more. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. There has been a series of strong earthquakes since, with several along coastal Sumatra in August and September of 2009, April and May of 2010, April of 2012, and February of 2016, but they did not generate notable tsunamis. Over the long run, the volcanic material creates new land and provides minerals that enrich the soil for farming. The now-submerged shelf of the Eurasian continent, known as Sundaland extends under the Southeast Asian peninsulas and islands. It was above sea level during the recurring ice ages of the Pleistocene epoch, when much of the world's water was frozen in glaciers. The exposed shelf allowed ancient people (including Homo erectus) and Asian land animals (such as elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, and orangutans) to travel south to what became the islands of Southeast Asia when sea levels rose.