Sustainability Inverted: How Environmental Policies Control People

What environmental policies do to people, beyond what they do to the climate, forests, air, or water.

Sustainability Inverted explores the hidden politics of environmental policy and the unintended consequences of “inversion” policy—policies that turn potential local collaborators into adversaries, thus creating relationships that undermine the very objectives the policies seek to achieve. Jin Sato argues that the key to addressing inversion lies in rebalancing the disrupted relations of interdependence and empowering individuals and organizations closer to the ground. The result is a more sustainable policy direction, the wisdom of which has been overlooked in favor of self-reliance and independence in developmental goals.

Based on extensive fieldwork in Southeast Asia, this book vividly illustrates how the state exploits the most lucrative resources while local communities are left with what are deemed “communal resources.” Consequently, these local people, who are supposedly partners in conservation efforts, become adversaries of the state. The book offers a fresh perspective on fostering interdependency among communities and challenges the conventional wisdom in the Global North that excessively prioritizes technology as a solution to environmental problems.

Jin Sato is a Professor of Development Studies at the Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo.