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Dwindling amounts of fossil fuels, climate change, environmental impacts of energy production and consumption, and other energy-related issues play an increasingly important role in shaping the human and physical landscape of modernisation and development in Southeast Asia. More than a mere technical and economic challenge, these issues ask for a multidisciplinary approach that can connect energy production as well as energy consumption practices. This paper is an attempt to start building such an approach to study the energy transitions in Southeast Asia. The paper starts off from an atypical empirical case study in Thailand, Mae Kampong. This village has moved stepwise from no access to electricity at all, to its on micro-hydropower generator, and finally to a dual system of hydropower and electricity from the grid. By progressively contextualising these changes, a connection can be made with the marginalisation of micro-hydropower in Thailand, centralised versus decentralised electricity production, and converging conventions of modern energy practices. This approach shows that energy transitions cannot be understood as purely local or national processes but are in fact assemblages connected in time and space.
This paper calls for more social science research into energy issues, to balance the dominant technoeconomic approach. The geographical focus of the paper is Southeast Asia, a region witnessing rapid growth and transitions of energy use, related to urbanisation, economic growth and integration in the world economy. However, the challenges related to energy cannot be understood without a more detailed analysis of issues such as the geography of cost and benefit, access and exclusion caused by energy grids, the political economy of reforms in the energy sector, and changing technologies and values in the context of modernity. A political ecology approach is presented as possible framework for the inclusion of these multi-disciplinary aspects related to energy and the study of it across different scales.
Energy Research & Social Science
Reimagining energy futures: Contributions from community sustainable energy transitions in Thailand and the Philippines2019 •
This article counters conventional discourses where sustainable energy transitions in the Global South have been broadly linked to top-down policy frameworks, large-scale installations, and donor-driven interventions. It does so by highlighting the roles played by and the potentials of bottom-up, small-scale, and community-driven initiatives in shaping energy transitions in these locations. We shed light on two of these initiatives: a rural, community-based renewable energy project in Thailand, and a community-led social movement that prevented the construction of a coal-fired power plant in the Philippines. Both cases demonstrate how community mobilizations help facilitate sustainable energy transitions in the Global South, despite their many social, political and economic constraints. The analysis draws from concepts of local activism and community engagement on energy transitions, marrying the social movement concept of prefigurative activism with the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries in science and technology studies. This article highlights that valuable insights can be generated from rural- and community-driven renewable energy initiatives and their power to reimagine the futures of energy systems in the Global South.
This article aims to offer insight into the benefits and complexities of distributed generation and provide a critique of mainstream theories about energy transitions. It does so through the analysis of two village-based case studies, in Laos and Thailand, respectively. The term ‘energy trajectory’ is introduced to analyse how changing energy systems in the two villages are related to changing energy practices and socio-economic development. A combination of data on energy use, interviews and observation in the villages provides a deep historical perspective of these changes over time. In both cases, decentralised micro-hydropower systems were built, followed later by connection to the national electricity grid. These changes provide an opportunity for close-up investigation of local energy transitions over a relatively short period of time. In addition to some similarities, there are also major differences between the two energy trajectories. Besides the different economic and political contexts of Laos and Thailand, there is more involvement of development actors in the case of Laos than in the case from Thailand. However, the latter case shows more success in creating ownership for the people in the village. Both cases highlight the need to look at distributed generation projects as embedded in the wider development context and the political economy of electricity generation. The findings of this article challenge common conceptions and theorisation of energy transitions, related to contingency and the complexity of scalar interactions of the energy trajectories analysed. Finally, the article argues for better integration of distributed generation in policy and planning.
Energy Research & Social Science
Energy democracy in a continuum: Remaking public engagement on energy transitions in Thailand2018 •
Sustainable energy transitions are fundamental in making climate actions effective and in attaining sustainable development. To achieve the transition inclusively, fairly, and justly, democratizing these processes seems imperative ; yet, not all human societies are thriving in democratic spaces. Focusing in the non-democratic state of Thailand, this paper explores the materiality of energy democracy in such locations. Using mixed qualitative methods and a grounded approach, the paper offers a case study of community-oriented renewable energy transitions as practices occurring outside the realms of state-sanctioned and government-fostered apparatuses for public engagement. The case shows how these practices continually shape and co-produce energy sociotechnical orders. The paper further shows how a space for communal deliberation can become a site for the making and remaking of public engagement, and how, over time—of hits-and-misses, of consensus-and-dissensus, of stability and -uncertainty—it could became durable, yet remained open-ended and provisional.
2020 •
Talking about the energy transition in East Asia is tantamount to placing it at the threshold of both a historical and transitional relationship with energy needs, production and consumption in the East and Southeast Asian context. For this reason, each of the articles in this Special Issue replaces, in their own way, the question of energy policies in the historical evolution experienced by the countries of the region or by regional intergovernmental bodies (Mekong Commission, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN + 2, +3, +4). Despite the endless vows to maintain a collegial and cooperative spirit amongst partners and neighbors of the region and despite international pressures/agreements, these bodies are constantly struggling in achieving their original mission. In varying degrees, diversity characterizes not only the methods of managing this energy transition, but also the strategies adopted to respond to energy and de facto environmental challenges. Furthermore, it needs to be recognized that these environmental challenges are being approached more from a domestic policy platform than from an international or global one. The three chapters below highlight the complexity of the energy policies adopted in East and Southeast Asia, which is the subject of political and economic arbitrations being played out on several fronts (national, regional, international) in institutionalized forms (ASEAN, COP21, etc.) or otherwise (bilateral inter-ministerial decisions). The great range of actions and challenges, the insufficient coordination of energy policies and the competition between different governmental and institutional actors, have, until now, negated the possibility of a common, unified, and unidirectional Asian or Southeast Asian policy.
This chapter examines the transition of Thailand to energy and climate security as an energy consuming country. As an emerging economy in Southeast Asia with a democratic history, albeit one afflicted by persistent authoritarianism, environmental activists and civil society have played a significant role in the development of public energy discourses and, to a lesser extent, government policies. Governance in Thailand tends to oscillate between direct military rule and more competitive elected governments. A coup in May 2014 resulted in the current military regime, which appears unlikely to surrender power to democratic forces anytime soon. Nevertheless, energy policy over the last two decades has remained largely impervious to changes in government, although much of the good work on developing renewable energy markets is unraveling under the current government.
Infrastructures, Environments and Life in the Anthropocene, ed Kregg Hetherington
Here Comes the Sun? Experimenting with Cambodian Energy InfrastructuresOver the last decade, electricity has emerged as a core political concern in Cambodia. Currently, the country imports much of its energy, the grid is unstable and does not extend to many parts of the country, and the price is high. The solution is to build multiple dams on the Mekong and its tributaries. These plans are opposed by NGOs and by the local communities immediately affected. Their critiques of adverse social and environmental effects are crucial but they little about alternative energy futures. Finding inspiration in STS studies of infrastructure, politics and nonhuman agency, this contribution experiments with a form of argument that does not only analyze current problems and insufficiencies, but also whets the appetite for solar energy. Cambodia, dams, hydroelectric power, infrastructure, solar energy
Insider perspectives on Southeast Asiaʼs clean energy transition
P O L I C Y F O R U M Insider perspectives on Southeast Asiaʼs clean energy transition2024 •
This paper offers essential insights into Southeast Asiaʼs transition to clean energy, a cornerstone for global climate objectives. Based on 27 interviews with regional energy and climate experts conducted between September 2022 and October 2023, the research distils key factors into 3Ds: Demanding, Doable, and Dependent. Highlighting these aspects would foster readiness, persuade stakeholders, and secure international support, all of which are pivotal for advancing the energy transition towards net-zero emissions in Southeast
Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi
Türkmen Türkçesinde Köken Olarak Kendini Gizleyen Kelimeler2001 •
Waterfront dialectics. Rome and its region facing climate change impacts
The ‘Various Landscapes’ of the Ostiense Coast. Cultural and Environmental Heritage2023 •
SENSORY ANALYSIS OF GLUTEN-FREE FOODS MADE WITH GREEN BANANA FLOUR
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Prevalence of neonatal ankyloglossia in a tertiary care hospital in Spain: a transversal cross-sectional study2020 •