Sarah Alison Milne

• PhD, University of Cambridge
• Senior Lecturer at Australian National University

Increased conservation action to protect more habitat and species is fueling a vigorous debate about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of protected areas. Here we review the literature that compares the effectiveness of protected areas managed by states and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and/or local communities. We argue that thes...

In our article, 'Rupture: Towards a Critical, Emplaced, and Experiential View of Nature-Society Crisis,' we advocated for contextually rich and critical understandings of environmental crises and their catalytic effects. This authors' reply responds to four commentaries whose authors raise helpful questions and insights. We first review the spatial...

We are currently seeing a global escalation in social and environmental disruption, yet concepts like the Anthropocene do not fully capture the intensity and generative scope of this crisis. ‘Rupture’ is being used as a term for specific and intense episodes of change, such as wildfires or toxic pollution releases. This is a useful addition to our...

China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is facilitating massive infrastructure investment globally. Yet little is known about the BRI's local impacts, especially in countries like Cambodia where regulations are weak and government enthusiasm for the BRI is high. This article examines a set of BRI-linked investments in rural Cambodia, invol...

Comment: Carbon neutrality targets are often not as ambitious as they sound, relying on problematic carbon offsets and unproven technologies By 41 scientists The idea of carbon offsetting, which underpins so-called net zero targets, is founded on a number of myths. In many cases, offsetting relies on capturing carbon in vegetation and soils. Such...

The global land grab has played out vividly in Cambodia, giving rise to rural upheaval and new political dynamics. This article explores how the Cambodian government has dealt with the social and political consequences of this land grabbing, with the aim of exploring state formation in the context of socio-environmental disruption and dispossession...

The green economy now dominates global environmental governance, but its potentially insidious inner workings and effects remain poorly understood. To probe this problem, it is necessary to explore how value is created and distributed in the green economy, and how the production processes of new green commodities like carbon credits shape the socia...

The 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement on Climate reinforces actions to conserve and enhance forests as carbon reservoirs. A decade after sub-national demonstration projects to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) commenced, we examine why many REDD+ schemes appear to have fuelled social conflict while having limited...

This paper examines how a boom in industrial cassava served as a ‘gateway’ to intensify capitalist relations in Cambodia's north eastern borderland. Situated on Cambodia's border with Vietnam, Mondulkiri province has experienced a rapid increase in cassava production and trade since 2006, with transformative consequences for the region's forests an...

The implementation of “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD+) will inevitably be affected by local social and political dynamics, with the potential for success depending significantly on cooperation from a range of stakeholders at the subnational level. Building on recent critical research on REDD+, we look at how gl...

Cambodia has recently demonstrated one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. While scholars have long explored the drivers of tropical forest loss, the case of Cambodia offers particular insights into the role of the state where transnational governance and regional integration are increasingly the norm. Given the significant role log...

This article develops the idea of “dirty money states” by defining and exploring the problem of illicit state financing in Southeast Asia. Most diagnoses of Southeast Asia's flourishing illicit economies focus on the prevalence of corruption and the “decay” of the state, but the authors of this essay develop a more nuanced explanation by exploring...

Cambodia's headlong 'development' since 1993 has given the country one of the highest growth rates in Asia. This clear-headed, disturbing and often poignant volume counts up the human and ecological costs of uncontrolled 'development', deforestation, land-grabbing, foreign intrusions and endemic corruption on Cambodia's depleted landscape and on it...

Deforestation is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and an important source of global carbon emissions. This means that there are important synergies between climate policy and conservation policy. The highest rates of deforestation occur in tropical countries, where much of the land at the forest frontier is managed informally by smallholders an...

Two opposing land tenure policies are being implemented in upland Cambodia: indigenous communal title, the product of a decade of advocacy for indigenous rights; and Order 01, a dramatic new initiative to provide private individual titles to thousands of farmers living on state public land. This policy conflict has precipitated painful deliberation...

Market-based interventions to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) enable the carbon stored in land and forests to be traded as a new and intangible form of property. Using examples from Cambodia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, we examine the property negotiations underpinning this new forest carbon economy. We...

Forest carbon is a new commodity to be produced and traded through market mechanisms that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). This paper examines the likely origins and effects of forest carbon through analysis of property relations associated with a REDD-like scheme in Cambodia. Two contracts in the Cardamom Mountain...

Interventions to conserve carbon stored in forests are central to the emerging global climate change regime. Widely referred to as REDD+, these interventions engage local resource holders in contracts to restrict their use of land and forests in exchange for conditional benefits, effectively creating a market for forest carbon—a new and intangible...

A growing number of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes are being implemented at the community level in developing countries, especially in the context of climate change mitigation efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). In parallel, there is vigorous commentary about the implications of market-ba...

The idea of direct payments for biodiversity conservation in developing countries has generated much debate. Despite substantial experience with related economic instruments in high-income countries such approaches are rare in tropical developing countries, where conservation action is most urgently needed. We explore current experience with the ap...