Exclusion and Re-emplacement: Tensions around Protected Areas in Australia and Southeast Asia

THE DEBATES AROUND CONSERVATION and social justice are urgent, as Ranga­rajan and Shahabuddin (this issue) demonstrates, but these debates have not followed the same course in different countries. The histories of protected ar­eas and people in countries other than India highlight differences as well as similarities. This response considers the questions raised from an Australian perspective, but these issues are not constrained by national borders. They re­flect instead the three-way tensions between the specifics of local circum­stances, the motives of governments and the prevailing international pressures. So while this paper starts from an Australian position, it moves to consider East Timor and Thailand, where numbers of Australians can be found today working as researches, staff or volunteers in conservation or de­velopment NGOs. Just as important are the questions arising in Vietnam, be­cause it is from here that significant and articulate minority of Australia's population draw their family background, their continuing relationships and their experience of the interaction of protected areas and local peoples