"Don't Always Blame Climate Change": The Political Ecology of Uneven Development and Vulnerability to Flooding in Southeast Asian Megacities
Wednesday 01 June 2022 12:00pm to 1:15pm
https://www.lse.ac.uk/seac/events/2022/The-Political-Ecology-of-Uneven-Development-and-Vulnerability-to-Flooding-in-Southeast-Asian-Megacities
Hosted by the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre
In the past decade, we have witnessed deaths, displacement, and high losses due to heavy flooding in Jakarta, Manila, and Bangkok. In response to these disasters, government and urban leaders have tended to blame the devastation on the external forces of climate change and nature. While it is likely that climate change contributed to the magnitude of these floods, by blaming nature or climate change, government leaders sought to absolve themselves of any responsibility for causing or worsening the extent of the disasters. I argue that floods in Southeast Asia, have been socially and politically produced. They are outcomes of urban development, particularly political decisions, economic interests, and power relations. Vulnerability to floods, a combination of exposure to and capacity to cope with them, has been uneven across the geographical and social landscape. Those who have been worst affected have primarily been the most marginalized groups. This presentation focuses on the historical production of flooding in the region’s three largest megacities: Bangkok, Jakarta, and Manila, since a number of similarities between these cities exist.
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