Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas: Symbiotic Indigeneity, Commoning, Sustainability is an edited collection that makes a welcome addition to the burgeoning field of environmental humanities. Coeditor Dan Smyer Yü defines environmental humanities in his introduction as an “interdisciplinary field of environmental studies addressing locally manifested global environmental endangerment” (p. 1). Research in the environmental humanities draws upon perspectives from such fields as anthropology, biology, climate science, geography, political ecology, and religious studies to critically reconsider human-environment relationships in an era of rapid change (p. 3). As Smyer Yü points out, to date, much of the environmental humanities work has radiated out of what he calls “neo-Europe”—settler colonial societies in Australia and North America (p. 3). This volume is therefore a welcome addition to the diversification of this field. Three-fourths of the authors are originally from the Himalayas (specifically, Bhutan, China, Nepal, India, and Pakistan), and the volume includes authors based in nine countries. There is also an admirable balance of gender identification and scholars at different stages of their careers.

Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas clearly establishes the Himalayan region as a crucial site for thinking through environmental change and interspecies relationships. Scholars from multiple disciplines, as well as those who work on environmental humanities elsewhere in the world, will find much inspiration in the volume. This is no surprise. The Himalayan region has long been considered the “Third Pole” of the world because of the importance of the mountain range as the source of the water systems on which a large percentage of the world's population depends. The volume delves into the significance of the mountains and their connected environments for the many humans and nonhumans who live in the region, encouraging readers to go beyond “modern scientific and utilitarian” knowledge to understand “our sentient relations with the earth as a planetary living being” (p. 4). This is an especially relevant and important move because, as Smyer Yü and many of the authors point out, all too often in the recent Anthropocene, the Himalayas are seen as a sum of their resources, ripe for extraction, as opposed to vital sites of interspecies connection.

The book has an introduction by Smyer Yü, thirteen chapters, and a conclusion written by John Grim, a leading scholar of religion and ecology in the Americas. The chapters are divided into four parts, corresponding to the themes of interspecies relations, water, climate change, and the notion of “commoning”—that is, the way Himalayan communities understand and exercise their common rights to water and land use, despite individual or state-prescribed boundaries. While the contributions raise many different interconnected themes and conceptual ways to approach the Himalayas, for the purpose of this review, I will focus on the three themes mentioned in the subtitle of the book to draw out the richness of the volume.

The first theme, symbiotic indigeneity, considers how indigenous communities throughout the region understand their lifeways and well-being as interconnected with those of other nonhuman beings residing throughout the landscape in the mountains, waterways, rocks, and plants. A number of scholars in this volume draw on the theoretical models that have emerged from scholarship engaging indigenous knowledge in Australia and the Americas, which has been the focus of much environmental humanities research to date. For example, in his chapter, Jelle Wouters demonstrates the “trans-species knots” between humans and yaks in the highlands of Bhutan by drawing on anthropologist Philippe Descola's work in the Amazon to go beyond “the ontological frontiers of humanity” (Descola, quoted on p. 30). In his innovative critique of how the discipline of international relations has studied the Himalayas through the lens of the experiences of human residents of the Indian territory of Ladakh, Alexander Davis also invokes work from South America when he posits a conceptualization of the region as a “pluriverse,” or “a world where many words fit” as inspired by Arturo Escobar (p. 221). Erik de Maaker's chapter on the Garo Hills, near the India-Bangladesh border, also considers the model of the pluriverse when exploring relationships between human Garo communities and spirits of the forest.

While this incorporation of transnational theories encourages connections with other parts of the world, the volume is balanced by chapters that are rooted in indigenous Himalayan theoretical frameworks. In a beautifully self-illustrated chapter, Rongnyoo Lepcha and Mongfing Lepcha critique the limited colonial representations of their community and landscape, and instead center folklore and insights from “our ancestors, our spirits, our community members, our mountains, rivers and animals who are our flesh and blood” (p. 112). They do this, they say, to acknowledge and uplift the Lepchas’ recognition of the agencies of their environment.

Ruth Gamble's chapter on the wetlands of Tibet skillfully interweaves research from the physical sciences with Tibetan understandings of wetlands (gleaned from ethnographic, literary, and historical sources) as an important “home of water spirits, water sources, or cherished birds” (p. 116). She demonstrates the multiple forms of damage wrought by “Marxist-inspired, high-modernist, socially controlling and engineering-intensive schemes” (p. 116) since Tibet's incorporation into the People's Republic of China. In Thinley Dema's chapter on the Haa region in Bhutan, she considers how human Haap communities understand the responses of local protector deities to developmentalist and neoliberal interventions in the landscape.

In a collaborative chapter that brings together environmental scientists and hydrologists, Rashila Deshar, Dibas Shrestha, Sarina Mahajan, and Madan Koirala explore local knowledge as a form of “commoning” among Dalit and Tharu communities in downstream Mahakali River in Nepal. This chapter is especially valuable for outlining how these communities respond to flooding and makes a powerful case for the importance of incorporating local environmental knowledge into environmental policy. In Bhargabi Das's chapter, she explores beautiful poetry from the chardwellers of Assam for insight into how they understand the idea of home in the fragile, constantly shifting environment of the char areas.

The second theme is commoning, the collective use of a resource, which coeditor and contributor Smyer Yü specifically relates to water resources. He argues that even though the Himalayas have been divided into nation-states, national claims to waterways are complicated since they are part of the Earth's hydrosphere, which “transgresses and transcends human territorial boundaries and national identities” (p. 249). Two chapters disrupt nationalist discourses about water management and claims to ownership. In her fascinating multidisciplinary exploration of water in Hunza, Pakistan, Zainab Khalid outlines the concept of Rajaki, a mutual aid system in which local Hunzakutz work together to clear the way for glacier water to be managed and distributed for local use. Anwesha Dutta and Shailendra Yashwant's chapter examines another system of common water management, the dongo or jamfwi system in the Dooar region of Assam and considers the use of historical and contemporary technologies (including the social media platform WhatsApp; p. 196) to manage irrigation systems among communities along the river.

The third theme of sustainability is threaded throughout the volume. Particularly important chapters connected with this theme are those by Charisma Lepcha and Kinley Choki, as both authors consider the anthropogenic impacts of climate change in the eastern Himalayas. In her chapter, Charisma Lepcha examines different elements of Lepcha perspectives on water and skillfully deconstructs Orientalist and colonial representations of Lepchas as “born naturalists” (p. 45). Instead, she shows how Lepcha lived experiences and understanding of climate change form a powerful critique of rapacious hydroelectric development in Sikkim. Kinley Choki explores how people in the Lingzhi, Bhutan highlands express their concern about the “ambiguity of wealth” brought about by the collection and marketing of yartsagunbu (Ophiocordyceps sinesis), or caterpillar fungus. This chapter is a valuable addition to literature on this fungus, and it is especially noteworthy as it does not frame it as merely a commodity, but as a sentient being. Collecting them therefore can bring karmic retribution along with wealth, which problematizes the trade (pp. 156–57). Both of these chapters, along with others, demonstrate how local perspectives and practices can posit alternatives to conceptualizations of the Himalayas as a resource frontier, and instead encourage more nuanced and, hopefully, caring engagements.

There are many other thought-provoking elements to this volume, and the chapters would work well in courses related to the environmental humanities and environmental studies across disciplines from lower-level undergraduate through the graduate level. Scientists and policymakers who work in the area would gain much from reading this volume as well, as it encourages the crossing of national, disciplinary, and epistemological boundaries through a conscious “undisciplining” of knowledge (p. 5). While some chapters include some quite complex theoretical terminology, this terminology is unpacked and explained in the rich case studies provided by the authors. As a volume, Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas inspires new theoretical and conceptual models for the study of more-than-human landscapes in the diverse ecosystems of this important region.