Economic Growth, Sustainable Development and Ecological Conservation in the Asian Developing Countries: The Way Forward

Abstract

The Asian developing region, defined here for the purpose of analysis to include China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, is one of the most economically vibrant regions in the world. Acknowledging that rapid economic growth has had damaging environmental consequences, leaders in the region have made concerted efforts to strengthen the protection of the regional environment which is home to some of the richest and most biologically diverse habitats in the world. Each country has set up its environmental ministry or equivalent agency and enacted numerous laws to ensure stronger effort in biodiversity conservation and environmental protection. Despite these environmental protection initiatives, however, environmental degradation in the region remains a serious problem. Existing legislative efforts to halt extensive deforestation in the region have been hampered by various unsustainable resource use practices. In an attempt to make headway in an urgent task to contain this critical problem, this paper seeks to develop more adequate perspectives and concepts for an analysis of the complex process, which has led to the present conundrum, and to offer a way out of it. More specifically, in addressing the issues at hand, the paper examines the role of environmental ethics in fostering stronger environmental controlling actions based on the philosophical insights of Aldo Leopold's land ethics and empirical evidence drawn from field research on the indigenous environmental worldviews conducted between 2007 and 2011 in Malaysia. It is concluded that in halting further environmental decline in the region, it is necessary for the regional leaders to mark a higher level of ethical engagement with the natural environment.