Projecting trends into the future

What can be predicted about the future? The expansion of agricultural land use will certainly continue, but its limits are fast approaching. Moving into more remote and steeper areas, land clearance for settlement has already surpassed economic limits in Peninsular Malaysia, and is therefore close to being terminated. The yield in some transmigration areas in Indonesia is extremely poor, and their future is uncertain. The intensification of production can certainly be further enhanced in the region as a whole, but it is likely that increasing pressures will be placed on uplands where intensification, rather than further extension of the arable area, will soon be the only way forward. The reduction of fallow periods will, in the absence of other changes, soon lead to degradation in those areas still practicing landrotational systems of agriculture. With rapid growth of the urban population. and the emergence within the region of three of the world's megacities, the resource demands of industry and the towns will become increasingly pressing. In general, the South-East Asian region has since 1980 entered a period in which availability of natural resources will become more constrained. The view, current until the late 1980s, of South-East Asia as being abundant in resources is in the process of being discarded. During the 15 years up to 2005, a great deal will necessarily change, not least in the form and direction of the path of development itself. To this, the discussion now turns.