Transcript Contemporary Oceania

Current Issues
SE Asia and Oceania
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Great Barrier Reef
• World’s largest reef system; over
2900 reefs
• What does it do?
• About $5.4 Billion in tourism for
Australia
• coral reef structure buffers shorelines
against waves, storms and floods,
helping to prevent loss of life, property
damage and erosion
• Huge biological diversity
• Supports people by providing fish
• Sacred space for Aboriginal People
Damage to the Reef
• Threats:
•Runoff
•Most pollution comes
from rivers running into
the Reef
•30major rivers and
hundreds of streams flow
into the reef
•Runoff from farms
(fertilizer and pesticides)
Climate Change and Coral Bleaching
• climate change accompanied by mass coral
bleaching
• Believed to be biggest threat
• corals expel their algae (photosynthesizing
zooxanthellae) which provide up to 90% of the coral’s
energy requirements
• turn colorless, revealing their white calcium carbonate
skeletons, under the stress of waters that remain too
warm for too long.
• the coral is still alive, and if the water cools, the
coral can regain algae
• If the water does not cool within about a month, the
coral will die of starvation.
• Australia experienced its warmest year on record in
2005. Abnormally high sea temperatures during the
summer of 2005-2006 have caused massive coral
bleaching
Coral Bleaching
More Threats to the GBR
• The Crown-of-Thorns Starfish
• a coral reef predator
• preys on coral polyps by climbing onto
them, extruding its stomach over them
(eww…), and releasing digestive enzymes
to absorb the liquefied tissue.
• An individual Starfish can eat up to six square
meters of living reef in a year
• They have been in the GBR for
thousands of years, but outbreaks are
much more recent
• Increases due to:
• Reduction of water quality associated with
agriculture can cause the crown-of-thorns
starfish larvae to thrive.
• Overfishing of its natural predators, such as
the Giant Triton, is also considered to
contribute to an increase in the number of
crown-of-thorns starfish.
Humans in the GBR
• Overfishing of key species, such as
the Giant Triton and sharks, can
cause disruption to food chains
• Impact of Fishing
• increased pollution from boats,
• by-catch of unwanted species (such as
dolphins and turtles)
• habitat destruction from trawling,
anchors and nets
• Overfishing of herbivore populations can
cause algal growths on reefs
• According to a study published in 2012 by
the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, the reef has lost more than half
its coral cover since 1985
Human-Environment Interaction
• About half of the most polluted
cities in the world are in Asia
• SE Asia was trying to stop
pollution, but financial crisis in the
late 1990s halted efforts
• pressures to export ever-larger
quantities of fish, minerals,
agricultural and plantation products
• additional incentives to increase
commercial tropical timber
production and export.
• Philippines already has lost 99% of the
forest cover it had 100 years ago
• In Indonesia, illegal fishing (dynamite
fishing, cyanide fishing for aquarium fish
exports) also appears to have increased
during this period of financial crisis.
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Southeast Asian Countries: Islam %
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Brunei
Burma
East Timor
Indonesia
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Percent Muslim
• Malaysia: majority, but great diversity
• Cambodia, Laos: very small minority
• Islam is the state religion in Malaysia and Brunei
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Buddhism in SEAsia
• Buddha established the sangha, the order of
Buddhist monks, that is still flourishing today in
mainland SEA
• Virtually all male Buddhists enter the sangha to
become monks for at least a short time during
their lives;
• provides merit for their parents
• The sangha continues to help spread and
protect the Buddhist faith
• Buddhist monks are not supposed to get
involved in politics, but in some cases, such as in
Myanmar and Thailand they do
• Mainland SEA is still predominantly Buddhist; in
all areas, Buddhism is mixed with elements of
animist and Hindu beliefs
Buddhist Monks in Burma
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Sectarian (Religious) Violence in Myanmar
• In Myanmar there is a history of tension between
Muslims and Buddhists
• Muslims mostly of Indian descent, fled from India after WWI,
tension grew during the Great Depression
• From 2012-13, violence has broken out between the
Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar
• first flared in western Rakhine state nearly a year ago, when
mobs of Buddhists armed with machetes razed thousands of
Muslim homes, leaving hundreds dead and forcing 125,000 to
flee
• Mosques and Muslim businesses have been destroyed
• Human Rights Watch has accused authorities of encouraging
ethnic cleansing
• allegations that the small Muslim minority was dominating
business there and trying to take over the country by
increasing its birthrate and secretly sterilizing Buddhists
• On Tuesday (yesterday), the Dalai Lama put out a statement
condemning the violence
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Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge
• Pol Pot
• Pol Pot was a communist revolutionary who led Khmer Rouge
(Cambodian Communist Party) from 1963-1998
• He was the Dictator of Cambodia from 1975 -79
• Forced urban dwellers into the country to work on collective farms
and in forced labor
• During the three years of his rule, 25% of the population of
Cambodia died due to forced labor, executions, malnutrition, and
poor medical care
• He was driven out of power in 1979, fled and continued to lead the
Communists in exile
• Cambodia has struggled with the aftermath of the Khmer
Rouge
• Population is very young and females outnumber males
• Tourism is beginning to return and economy is growing
• Currently, Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy
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Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi
• Leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD)
• Father was assassinated when she was 2, exiled until
1988
• Called for a non-violent revolution against Burma’s
“fascist government”
• Under house arrest for 15 years between 1989 and 2010
• Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991
• For her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights. “
• Unable to accept because she was under house arrest; finally
accepted it and made her speech on June 2012
• 1990, military junta called an elections
• Suu Kyi’s party won landslide victory, but the junta overthrew
the results and refused to hand over power
• 2012, elected to Myanmar’s parliament
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ASEAN
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations
• Founded in 1967
• Headquarters in Jakarta
• Promote regional security issues and
economic stability
• Originally wanted to stop spread of
Communism.
• Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand.
• Laos, Burma (1997) and Cambodia (1999)
joined later.
• East Timor has applied to join
• Has agreements with Japan and EU
• Since 2007, the ASEAN countries gradually
lower their import duties among them and
targeted will be zero for most of the import
duties at 2015
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July 22, 2012
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Golden Triangle
• Second largest opium producer in the
world (Afghanistan in first)
• Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand
• Exports of Opium appear to be as
much as all of the legal exports from
the area
• Brought to the US by smugglers on
commercial flights; usually to Hawaii and CA
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Human Trafficking
• Trade in humans for sexual slavery, forced labor, or for
organs
• Usually they do not “travel” anywhere
• Forms:
• Bonded Labor: Agree to work to pay off a debt or loan; most
common form of trafficking
• Forced Labor: being forced to work against your will
• Child Labor: for debt bondage, drug smuggling, prostitution,
labor, soldiers,
• Sex Trafficking: usually women are told they are going to be doing
domestic labor and are sold to brothels
• Some people act as brokers to send women to other countries
• Estimated 27 million people are in modern-day slavery
• Internet is widely used to traffick people; MySpace,
Craigslist, Facebook, etc…
• If people escape trafficking, fitting back into their regular
lives is difficult and many return to trafficking or become
traffickers
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Aboriginal People
• Much debate over where they originally
came from
• Genetic studies had shown the Aboriginal
peoples to be related much more closely
to each other than to any peoples outside
Australia
• in 2011, researchers found evidence, in
DNA samples taken from strands of
Aboriginal people's hair, that the ancestors
of the Aboriginal population split off from
the ancestors of the European and Asian
populations between 62,000 and 75,000
years ago—roughly 24,000 years before
the European and Asian populations split
off from each other.
• At the time of first European contact, it is
estimated that between 315,000 and
750,000 people lived in Australia,
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Europeans and the Indigenous People
• wave of European epidemic diseases such as
chickenpox, smallpox, influenza and measles,
• worst-hit communities were the ones with the greatest
population densities
• The second consequence of British settlement was
appropriation of land and water resources.
• took the view (Terra Nullis) that Indigenous Australians were
nomads with no concept of land ownership, who could be
driven off land wanted for farming or grazing and who would
be just as happy somewhere else.
• loss of traditional lands, food sources and water resources
was usually fatal
• By the 1920s, the Indigenous population had declined
to between 50 000 and 90 000
• The 1967 referendum, passed with a 90% majority,
allowed the Commonwealth to make laws which
discriminated Aboriginal people and those of other
races
• In 1992, the Australian High Court declaring the
previous legal concept of terra nullius to be invalid.
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The Stolen Generation
• the children of Australian Aboriginal descent who were
removed from their families by the Australian government
agencies
• Reasons
• Protection
• Fear that the black populations would die out
• Results
• no tangible improvement in the social position of "removed" Aborigines
• less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely
to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use illicit drugs.
• removals occurred in the period between approximately 1909
and 1969 although in some places children were still being
taken until the 1970s
The hand-written note reads: “I like
the little girl in the centre of the
group, but if taken by anyone else,
any of the others will do, as long as
they are strong”
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• enabled the Aborigines' Protection Board to remove Aboriginal children
from their parents without having to establish that they were in any way
neglected or mistreated;
• Some accuse this of being attempted genocide, the idea
being that the aboriginal people would die out
Rabbits in Australia
• Introduced to Australia in 1788Century
• Bred as food animals
• First outbreak in 1869
• Cause millions of dollars of damage to crops
• suspected of being the most significant known
factor in species loss (plants) in Australia
• Major cause of erosion: eat native plants, leaving
the topsoil exposed and vulnerable to erosion
• Many methods to try to contain them
• Rabbit-proof fence in 1907 (not so practical)
• Myxoma virus in 1950s
• population went from 600 million to 100 million, but
began to recover in 1990s
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July 22, 2012
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Erosion caused by rabbits
Location of the
rabbit-proof fences