Global Implications of Development, Disasters and Climate Change : Responses to Displacement from Asia Pacific

This volume offers a thought-provoking Asia-Pacific perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes, and livelihoods due to development, disasters and climate change. It draws together theoretical and multidisciplinary perspectives with topically and geographically diverse case studies from around the region – including China’s Three Gorges Reservoir, Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and the Pacific’s Banaba resettlement. In Asia-Pacific, political economy-driven rapid economic growth and foreign investment, combined with population growth, add to heightened climatic and geographic vulnerability, deepening the displacement risks.

Displacements in the Asia Pacific region are escalating. The region has for decades experienced more than half of the world’s natural disasters and, in recent years, a disproportionately high share of extreme weather-related disasters, which displaced 19 million people in 2013 alone. This volume offers an innovative and thought-provoking Asia-Pacific perspective on an intensifying global problem: the forced displacement of people from their land, homes, and livelihoods due to development, disasters and environmental change.

This book draws together theoretical and multidisciplinary perspectives with diverse case studies from around the region – including China’s Three Gorges Reservoir, Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and the Pacific’s Banaba resettlement. Focusing on responses to displacement in the context of power asymmetries and questions of the public interest, the book highlights shared experiences of displacement, seeking new approaches and solutions that have potential global application. This book shows how displaced peoples respond to interlinked impacts that unravel their social fabric and productive bases, whether through sporadic protest, organised campaigns, empowered mobility or; even community-based negotiation of resettlement solutions. .

The volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, environmental and climate change studies, anthropology, sociology, human geography, international law and human rights.