Overview
- Focuses on the entanglements between ecology and international politics in the Himalaya
- Reimagines the politics of an environmentally crucial global region with insights from international political ecology
- Includes three deep case studies of environmental and political issues in the Himalaya: icecaps, foothills, and rivers
Part of the book series: Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific (CSAP)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- Geopolitics of the Himalayas
- Ecology of the Himalayas
- International Politics of the Himalayas
- International political Ecology
- India-China-Pakistan boundary
- Nepal-Bhutan-Sikkim borderlands
- India-China-Bangladesh dispute
- Himalayan ethnographies
- Ladakh-Gilgit-Western Tibet Icecaps
- Yarlung Tsampo-Brahmaputra river basin
- Mountain Politics
About this book
The book addresses the urgent need for rethinking the geopolitics and ecology in the Himalaya, by emphasising the entanglements between these two factors. Most international relations analyses of the Himalaya emphasize the central role of the region’s states and their great power struggles. By reducing the region to its state actors, however, we miss the intense more-than-human diversity of the region, and the crucial role that the mountains play in the global environment.
In doing so, the book makes a major contribution to international relations theory by drawing on insights from international political ecology. It first theorises international political ecology and examines the Himalaya as a global region, before moving looking at the international aspects of political ecology in the Himalaya through key areas of the mountains where international politics and ecology are deeply, inextricably linked. It presents three detailed case studies of different environmentaland political issues in the Himalaya: icecaps (the India-China-Pakistan boundary dispute in the western Himalaya), foothills and forests (the Nepal-Bhutan-Sikkim borderlands), and rivers (the India-China Bangladesh dispute over the Brahmaputra River basin). Each case study draws on a mix of source materials including fieldwork, government sources, foreign policy discourse, Himalayan ethnographies, and environmental and ecological sciences scholarship.Reviews
"This book makes a paradigm-shifting contribution to the geopolitical study of the region by including the Himalaya itself—its geology, ecologies and peoples—in its analysis. Given that these mountains provide water to half of humanity, the book is a much-needed, internationally important intervention" (Ruth Gamble, IIT Madras)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Alexander E. Davis is a lecturer in International Relations at The University of Western Australia. His research focuses on South Asia’s foreign relations, from historical, postcolonial and environmental perspectives.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Geopolitics of Melting Mountains
Book Subtitle: An International Political Ecology of the Himalaya
Authors: Alexander E. Davis
Series Title: Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1681-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-99-1680-1Published: 13 May 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-99-1683-2Due: 13 June 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-99-1681-8Published: 12 May 2023
Series ISSN: 2662-222X
Series E-ISSN: 2662-2238
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 200
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Development Studies, Ecology, Environmental Geography, Geography, general