Sabah, Malaysia, was one of the first regions in Southeast Asia to have experienced large-scale commercial logging. In this paper, the author investigates the drastic change of forest landscape and its impact on the subsistence activities of local communities in order to evaluate the effects of commercial logging. The analysis was conducted through interviews with villagers and collection of data on historical changes of land use in the research area. Before the 1950s, villagers customarily gathered forest products and engaged in swidden agriculture. From the 1960s the area was demarcated as a forest reserve, and logging companies conducted massive logging. This logging had an impact on the villagersʼ livelihood, as many of the villagers worked as logging workers. However, in the 1990s, after forest resources were depleted, the Forestry Department implemented strict control of forest resources—especially after it introduced the forest certification scheme. Villagers became restricted in their use of the forest. The paper concludes that in the post-commercial logging area, without securing tenure rights over their customary land, villagers face difficulty earning sufficient income, and conflict may arise over the use of forest resources and land.

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With the increasing demand for mud crabs (Scylla spp.) in international markets, these crustaceans have emerged as important fishery resources in Indonesia since the early 1980s. As part of the effort to increase the production of mud crabs, the Indonesian government established a department to conduct research into various aspects of mud crab aquaculture techniques. However, mud crab aquaculture in the field is still dependent on natural seedlings collected from mangrove areas, because until recently cultured larval production from mud crabs was difficult, yielding low and inconsistent quantities. Mud crabs have a life cycle that depends on the mangrove ecosystem, and their resources are limited by the mangrove area. Decreases in mangrove area caused by the expansion of aquaculture ponds for increased mud crab production, and overfishing driven by increased market demand, are expected to have significant direct impacts on mud crab natural resources. However, in comparison with information on mud crab aquaculture techniques, there is a paucity of data on the actual state of mud crab fishing activities in response to the growing demands of the market. This study, carried out between 2009 and 2011, focuses on the state of mud crab fishing activities in three regions of Indonesia: Sinjai and Palopo in South Sulawesi Province, and Walirou Island in Maluku Province; Indonesia is one of the countries with a high production of mud crabs. The results show that it is difficult to apply intensive fishing methods to mud crab fisheries due to the physical structure of mangroves—and thus traditional fishing gear is still used, despite the increase in catch production since around 2000. Mud crab fishing can be easily done even with no special techniques, which provides a good opportunity as an income source for local people in coastal areas. However, mud crab fishery production showed a decreasing trend in Palopo and Sinjai between 2000 and 2010. This was due to increased fishing pressure, especially as immature mud crabs, which were not previously valuable to the market, came to be the targets of fishing efforts. Therefore, the imposition of size limits on crab purchases made by middlemen would be an effective management strategy for the conservation of mud crab resources.

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After the 1980s, China's one-child policy became the cause of a serious imbalance in the country's sex ratio, especially in the rural areas. Increasing regional economic differences as well as economic reforms are pull factors for the migration of young single women from rural Han villages to coastal urban areas as cheap laborers. These social changes have resulted in a wife shortage in rural Han areas. Impoverished rural Han bachelors who cannot find partners in their own areas have turned to ethnic minority areas in Southwest China to seek a solution. This paper focuses on the Lahu area, in the hills of the China-Myanmar borderland, which has one of the heaviest concentrations of such out-marrying women. The article has two objectives. The first is to elucidate how Lahu people understand marriage migration against the background of their marriage practices. The next is to show the social changes that can be observed along with marriage migration, especially the changing ways of sealing the marital bond among Lahu. The outflow of young women has created a wife shortage in Lahu, which has widened women's choice of mate in Lahu village and led to Lahu marriage practices being easily disregarded by young single women. As a result, Lahu men have begun to attach greater importance to official marriage registration. In several negotiations with the woman's side, the marriage registration has brought about changes in Lahu marriage practices so as to deal with young women's uncertain behavior.

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In Myanmar, tea is used not only as a drink but also as a food product in the form of pickled tea. The Namhsan Township, which is in the highlands of northern Shan State—and where the Palaung people, of the Mon-Khmer group, constitute 90 percent of the population—is the largest tea-producing region in Myanmar. All three kinds of tea—pickled tea (post-fermentation tea), green tea (non-fermented tea), and black tea (fully fermented tea)—are produced in Namhsan, where producers choose the particular kind of tea they process from among the three. The objective of this study is to investigate how tea producers in Namhsan choose the particular kind of tea they process based on three factors: various changes in tea leaves according to season and processing; social relationships among tea producers, including laborers, farmers, agents, and factory owners; and influences of the consumer market in urban areas such as Yangon and Mandalay. Furthermore, this study examines how the choices made by tea producers characterize their social relationships.

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