Southeast Asia is characterized by a chronic lack of energy resources for its rapidly growing population. With the demand for energy soaring at the same time that the region faces severe environmental risks, countries have responded to the challenge in various ways. The goal of energy security has propelled some of these governments to further exacerbate environmental insecurity. As a result, local communities suffer a great deal, prompting many authors in the field to contend that energy security should not be achieved at the expense of grassroots communities and to highlight cases where the pursuit of energy security has resulted in environmental insecurity in the global South.

Adam Simpson is one of these authors. His book Energy, Governance and Security in Thailand and Myanmar (Burma): A Critical Approach to Environmental Politics in the South is a timely and significant contribution that highlights the global South-North energy interplay and how it impacts communities in the South. Drawing on extensive qualitative research based on interviews, Simpson investigates environmental campaigns in Thailand from the 1990s to 2006 and in Myanmar from the 1990s to 2011.

An important function of this book is its critical engagement with existing theories of environmental politics. Simpson provides an appraisal of the environmental organizations model postulated by Doherty and Doyle (Reference Doherty and Doyle2008) and argues that grassroots movements have a pivotal role to play in environmental politics, which is “particularly important under illiberal regimes” (25). He acknowledges the rigour of Doyle and Doherty's model, especially the writings on transnational environmentalism and environmental activism in the global South and the nuances these add to contemporary environmental mobilizations, but he foregrounds the model's weaknesses in its limiting of “the constructive role that emancipatory environment groups and movements can play” (26) in energy governance. Environmental governance is not simply an interaction between the South and Northern funding partners but rather a “complex interplay among state and non-state actors” in both South and North, which is rooted in the emancipation of underprivileged and “voiceless” communities. Simpson asks the question, Why have current theories of environmentalism failed to “emancipate” people of the global South?

This is an important question for anyone interested in environmental politics, critical security studies, mass social movements, energy governance and the quest for alternative energy resources other than fossil fuels in the South. Simpson grounds emancipation in the four pillars of Green politics, initially posited by German Greens in 1980: “participatory democracy, ecological sustainability, social justice and non-violence” (28). By calling the governance model in Thailand and Myanmar into question and stressing the emancipatory model, Simpson accentuates the voice of subaltern and marginalized communities in the South affected by this governance model, averring that the current environmental governance is reductionist and dismissive of grassroots communities.

The book's argument is substantiated by a methodologically rigorous comparative study that draws on the author's extensive fieldwork in and knowledge of the region. In chapters 3 and 4, the focus is on Thailand (1990–2006) and Myanmar (1990–2011) and the role of both governments in responding to social resistance, as well as on volatile businesses that, in the author's view, widen the gap between those who dominate the economy, such as the political elites and military, and those who don't. Before delving into the methodological components of his study, Simpson shows how environmental security can result in insecurity for local communities who are at the receiving end of the implementation of large-scale energy projects. This approach feeds into the core argument of the book: that the so-called environmental agenda imposed by the global North on the South is discordant with local communities’ needs.

On a slightly different note, Simpson's book is of great use to those interested in transactional social movements, local-regional interactions and regional-global interactions within the prism of energy governance in the South. In chapters 6 and 7, the author broadens the empirical case study to the international level by focusing on international environmental movements in order to analyze international activism and its impact on the global South. Starting with Earth Right International, Simpson demonstrates how important the international movement is in bridging the gap between the local and international. He adds that local movements benefited a great deal from transnational movements by learning how to mobilize people into resisting volatile large-scale projects. At the nexus between transnational and local movements there lies an interaction between South and North that often exacerbates the insecurity of Southern communities. While the spillover to international activism is important to our understanding of resistance, this discussion drifts from the main argument. It is beyond the scope of one book to bridge transnational activism and local resistance in two countries. Thus, Simpson's argument would have been more robust had he just focused on environmental movements in Thailand and Myanmar instead of devoting two chapters to transnational groups.

Overall, though, Simpson has produced a groundbreaking book that enhances our understanding of environmental politics, social movements, energy security and global South-North energy relations. The book's emphasis on communities of the global South makes it particularly relevant to the debate on how the referent object in security studies can be broadened and deepened by expanding its focus from the state and military to the human and environment, befitting the urgent need to address newly emergent threats, apart from the study of war and the military, in international relations and security studies.

While most will tend to situate Simpson's book within international relations and security studies, especially environmental security, the book is a welcome contribution to comparative politics as well. The comparative case study of Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) fits neatly into the structure-agency debate in the field. The repressive government of Thailand and its oppression of environmental movements illustrate the role of the state in comparative politics; the environmental movements, comprising civil-society organizations that react to large-scale and volatile energy projects, illustrate the role of agency in domestic politics. Situating the book within the realm of international relations alone is definitely a narrow reading of its influence. Hence, future work on the region should probably focus on the state and institutions of the two countries, particularly on their responses to the external pressures and demands of the North with respect to energy cooperation.