Asia Pacific Viewpoint最新文献

Coal-fired thermal power has recently become one of the most pressing issues in Vietnam's development agenda. The country's economic development, industrialization and modernization, and population increases have put increasing pressure on energy demands. The Vietnamese government sees coal-fired power as a way forward in ensuring energy security, which had led to the planning and construction of plants nationwide, particularly from 2016. Simultaneously, a growing anti-coal power development movement argues that coal-fired power adversely transforms local people's lives and livelihoods, and negatively impacts the ecological balance in plant locations. Through the lens of environmental justice, this paper examines the development of Vietnam's power sector with a focus on coal-fired thermal power and its impacts on local livelihoods, food production and water resources. The paper argues that Vietnam's development of coal-fired power is about much more than energy. It speaks to the state's rule over resources, and how this very process of power generation disproportionately affects local communities in the Mekong Delta.

This paper reviews progress towards the establishment of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Power Grid (APG) and the key barriers to multilateral cross-border electricity trade in ASEAN. An analysis across political, technical, institutional, economic, environmental, social and time dimensions is employed. Using a policy sequencing framework, the paper concludes it remains premature for ASEAN to pursue a strong form of power sector market integration on account of the sizeable barriers that currently remain, especially economic and institutional barriers. Focusing on bilateral power purchase agreements and large-scale investments in solar and wind power over 2022–2030 would help to develop stronger foundations for ASEAN to make steps towards deeper regional integration in the electricity sector in subsequent years, while also being consistent with renewables adoption goals.

Tertiary education scholarships for individual students from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Islands, are a key pillar of Australia's development policy. Understanding students' experiences of these scholarships are important in identifying both positives and challenges, which can help foster improved future opportunities. This is especially the case for Pacific Islander students engaging in the Australia Awards Scholarship programme for which there is limited understanding of experiences. As such, this paper identifies that although educational mobility programmes can offer a wealth of opportunities for students, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges of such programmes which can inhibit students from reaching their full potential. Educational mobility programmes that effectively address the needs of students and empower them to achieve their goals are required to better facilitate transformative development pathways for Australia's Pacific Island neighbours.

Building on the geography of sexualities and queer temporality studies, this research investigates the entanglement of sexuality, time and space with a case study of rural–urban migrant gay men in China. Based on participant observations and in-depth interviews with 46 Chinese rural–urban migrant gay men, we identify three forms of queer temporality – queer biographical time, queer life stage, and queer clock time – emerging from Chinese gay men's life stories. We also demonstrate how these different forms of queer temporality are conditioned by and influence certain spatial practices among our informants. In doing so, this analysis contributes to the geographical research on sexuality by challenging the rural/urban dichotomy in the existing literature on the one hand, and exploring the possibilities for a geography of queer temporality on the other.

The global pandemic has adversely affected tourism globally, particularly in small island states heavily dependent on tourism. The closure of borders to regular flights for over a year in places such as Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands and Vanuatu, where this research was undertaken, has resulted in massive job losses. Many tourism employees have left the once-bustling tourist hubs, returning to villages and family settlements. Such clear urban to rural migration behaviours do not dominate movement patterns in the Pacific, but are an important and enduring strategy when shocks strike. In the case of the pandemic-induced migration to villages, former tourism workers have had to engage in a complicated process of adapting to the communal setting, employing new – as well as traditional – strategies to sustain a livelihood. Thus, this paper will discuss how the pandemic has influenced return migration patterns in the Pacific, and the implications of this shift. Findings suggest that, despite their financial struggles, people have adapted to life in their ancestral homes by rekindling their relationships with kin and increasing their engagement on their customary land. They have relearned about traditional Indigenous knowledge, diversified their skills and reconnected with their social and ecological systems. This spiritual homecoming observed in the Pacific ultimately shows that there can be silver linings to the dark clouds of the current disorder.

Neighbourhood gastronomy, the agglomeration of restaurants and smaller eateries in residential urban areas, contributes to the lives of residents and visitors economically, culturally, and socially. Since winter 2020, neighbourhood gastronomy in Asian cities has been severely disrupted by COVID, compounded by many other long-term stressors. In urban Japan these stresses include gentrification, the aging of proprietors, urban renewal, and corporatisation of gastronomy. Empirically, this paper discusses how independent restaurants in Tokyo contribute to community life by supporting grassroots creative industries, small business opportunities, meaningful artisanal work, convivial social spaces, local cultural heritage, and a human-scale built environment. The study uses intensive single-site urban ethnography to discuss how restaurateurs face immediate and long-term crises at the community level. By using the “neighbourhood as method,” a concept of sustainable neighbourhood gastronomy is developed that should be applicable in other urban contexts.

Eka Nari Sanghathan (ENS), an Indigenous single women farmer's collective in Odisha, India and Norco Dairy in regional NSW, Australia are cooperatives undertaking collective action to ‘survive well’, securing agrarian livelihoods in the face of climate change. Striking differences in affluence and poverty separate these place-based cooperatives while other things connect them: an Earth unsettled by climate change and extractivist/capitalist interventions. Both cooperatives transform place in practice by engaging similar survival strategies and non-exploitative forms of cooperation. In this paper we seek to articulate the transformative nature of these places and practices in a way that goes beyond easy binaries of local/global, while enabling recognition of different affiliations between lands, related climate crisis and sustainable and shared surviving mechanisms. We develop a ‘two-thirds’ perspective building upon Bruno Latour's third attractor, the Terrestrial, together with another third, Chakrabarti, Dhar and Cullenberg's idea of the World of the Third (WOT). Their interventions open our thinking to the ecological particularities, uncertainties, and postcapitalist possibilities of surviving well in place.

Based upon a literature review, this paper first identifies and articulates the importance of studying physical activity and sport (PAS) engagement of new Asian migrants within a particular geographical location – New Zealand. A pilot study with a series of in-depth interviews highlights some challenges that New Zealand Regional Sports Organisations (RSOs) and new Asian migrants face in terms of PAS engagement. Findings from the pilot study interviews indicate that RSOs in New Zealand are well aware of these challenges, and these challenges mainly stem from a lack of understanding of the needs of new Asian migrant communities. These findings also indicate that ethnicity plays a significant role in influencing migrants' PAS engagement.