During the last fifty years Asia has gone through a remarkable transformation from a largely rural, agricultural and protoindustrial region underpinned by Monsoon Asia’s resource and ecosystem characteristics, to the global center of economic growth driven by massive imports of fossil fuels and the policy directives of the developmental states. Beginning from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and diffusing to Southeast Asia, China and to some extent even to South Asia, a series of industrial clusters were created along the coasts of Pacific and Indian Oceans. Political and economic forces reorganized Asia’s resource base by combining locally available endowments of labour, land, water and eco-system services with imported capital, oil, natural gas and mineral resources. Manufacturing labour productivity rapidly rose, and urbanization was accelerated. A 1983 World Bank Survey The Energy Transition in Developing Countries spoke confidently of the transition from biosphere-based to fossil-fuel-based energy as a global trend.

Today the energy transition refers to a transition from fossil-fuels to cleaner and renewable energy. The term Anthropocene is used to express deep concerns for human impact on the planet. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a UN initiative, include a number of indicators relating to sustainability and resilience to disasters, along with socio-economic ones such as poverty reduction and inequality. Thus the entire ‘economic miracle’ projects, which dominated Asia and were underpinned by growth ideology, are under serious scrutiny. Yet how to absorb the legacy of such a history back into the more natural and sustainable resource base of Monsoon Asia is not in sight.

In 2016 the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature (RIHN) started its third term research program (2016-2023) with a new organizational design under three programs of social transformations under climate change, resource management and the creation of the “lifeworlds” beyond the “economic miracle” perspective. In this symposium, we present frontier knowledge directing these programs, to discuss the future of Asia’s transformations to sustainability.

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